Refill Epsons--No more compatibles

[WhiteDog]

Mikling-thanks for that post. It's very useful for myself and many others who may be looking at Epson for their next printer, to get away from chipped Canons. Do you know if this configuration is used in any wide printer with large cartridges? Cartridge size will be near the top of my list for the next b

 

[mikling]

OK, the new file is up.

The only issue one might think of is removing the glue the second time around. Well a pair of tweezers will do the trick and if you're lazy, just drill it off again. Don't worry about it getting into the printhead. The glue blob will not get sucked into the intake as it is too big and there is a polyester filter before the intake anyway. Just using tweezers and scraping it to get a hold will do the trick. I just did 14 cartridges for a stash. Each one refilled to 41 to 42 grams. BTW, each color ink has different weight per cc.

Remember no special techniques. Just be neat and stand the cartridge up.

Just visit www.precisioncolors.com and follow the link to Epson Refill Procedure. For light users this refill method is fine, for moderate users, you may want to consider refillables and not all are the same! For heavy users, a CISS could be a consideration.

Whitedog, your question is timely. I just got back from a week in the tropics and took over 1000 pictures. So I decided I'm going to print some pics out. Well after one week, my Epson R800 fired right up and never skipped a nozzle line after a nozzle check ... perfect. I was expecting to do at least one flush but I didn't need to. My other i950 did the same.

I then decided to use the i950 as I was just composing a non serious album. After about 60 pages I get the first whiff of banding. Did a head clean and soldiered on, another ten and then I get it again. After this only one or two pages and I get banding again. Well I sold off my R200 for which I would normally use for this purpose, The R200 was a true workhorse and never exhibited any problems. I didn't use my R800 as the i950 is still faster and though I sell ink, pigment ink does cost much more so I use dye for fun stuff.

What I am coming to?

My personal opinion is this. The Epson and Canon are really two different printers and which to choose really depends on the intended use. My feeling is that with Epsons, you should use the printer frequently and it will keep soldiering on as long as the cartridges are good or the CISS is well designed. I never would worry about banding or burning out heads as long as the cartridge is properly refilled.

The Canon is also equally good but probably is better suited for the light user or if used heavily, be prepared for flushing cartridges and keeping a stash of cartridges ready to go. I also have an i9900 and use it only for large prints which is not that often. To store it, I wash the heads out before I put it away. When I need it I pop some carts in, wait overnight and it's ready to go next morning. For the amount of 13x19 prints that I do, the small Canon carts are suitable for me but they are too small in capacity for lots of prints.

So ink capacity is not everything.

Remember these opinions are mine and not gospel.

 

[ghwellsjr]

What brand of cartridges did you have the banding problem with?

 

[mikling]

Canon OEM, it was about the 4th or 5th refill but I refill just as soon as it is low. Popped in a new flushed set of refills and it went away as I expected. It's just that compared to the Epson R200 which does not print as well, it is a nuisance and I can see uninformed users getting into trouble with this issue on Canons.

One thing I suspect is that when lots of ink is used on a sustained basis this exacerbates the problem. If I let the printer rest a few minutes between pages it looks like the cartridge can recover and not band. I didn't do any extended testing as I treasure my head so as soon as banding pops up I head clean when it pops up again. In goes a newly flushed and refilled one. The issue is that when this happens in the middle of a large queued print job it's irritating.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Would you say that once a cartridge starts exhibiting the banding problem it never goes away for any extended period of time until you flush it and refill it? You mentioned that it first started happening after 60 pages of printout and then after a little rehabilitation it went for ten more pages and after repeating it would only go for a couple of pages. So what if you let it sit for a day? Would it rejuvenate itself enough to printout another 60 pages, or would it start banding after just a couple pages?

If it turns out that the cartridges are permanently compromised and don't recover on their own, and you haven't already flushed them, I would like to find out if vacuum filling them is enough to put them back to their original state. If you can't or don't want to do this, I would like to trade you for some virgin re-inked (with Inktec ink) Canon cartridges and I will refill them to see if they are rejuvenated.

 

[mikling]

With the short time of observation, this is what I observed. As the ink gets used up, small voids start appearing in the sponge, these voids/air appear to travel down slowly and grow. I suspect as they grow, they then cause a lockup situation. Upon refilling and even resting, the voids don't completely disappear.

If I were to refill a dried out cartridge without flushing, I find that I often get more voids that grow after resting.

I believe that both situations are related. As the ink gets used up from the sponge, a thin layer of ink traps air within the sponge and as the ink further dies out, it become thick. Upon refilling, the dried ink is rehydrated but the bubbles are now trapped within the ink as it cannot move back up since the refill ink envelopes the bubbles before they are released. When the sponge is clean none of this occurs and that is probably why flushed and cleaned sponges refill perfectly. I think this a weakness of sponges... and all of them when refilling is performed.

Gospel? No, my suspicion only at this point.

 

[Tin Ho]

What brand of cartridges did you have the banding problem with?

Canon OEM, it was about the 4th or 5th refill but I refill just as soon as it is low.

Obviously it's an ink quality issue. Canon OEM carts can be refilled far more than 4, 5 times before anything would go wrong. What ink are you using?

 

[mikling]

No it's not an obvious conclusion because with the same inks I can refill many times as well but the ink usage was at a slow rate. This is important in my observation.

This is what prompted me to give the cart a rest between pages. I was printing at a non stop rate at the highest resolution setting on photo paper pro setting. What was noticeable as well was that at these settings the driver was predominantly using the Light Cyan and Light Magenta at a rate of 10:1 compared to the other colors. Lest you say I lie, the ip8500 does the same thing as tested by Photo-i. When you think about it, that requires lots of ink from two colors most of the time for full bleeds of 8 1/2x11 on a continuous basis that I was doing.

So it's not an ink issue solely because my prior experience with multiple refills with the same ink shows otherwise but it looks like a host of other factors play a role in this issue and rate of use and time are variables involved for sure. Exactly what and how ......I am not sure......

 

[Tin Ho]

I was printing at a non stop rate at the highest resolution setting on photo paper pro setting.

Well, if the cartridges are OEM (not refilled) you can print continuously without problems. Refilled OEM cartridges can do that too no doubt about it. If they give you banding the ink quality is questionable. Many people refill their OEM carts for over a year and they still work extremely well. Think about i9900 or pro9000. When you print full size photos it's almost non stop too. You can expect just about zero possibility of banding from your OEM cartridges. If the refilled OEM carts don't match such level of performance you have to question the ink quality.

Sure people still have problems even when they only use OEM cartridges. The problems are mostly caused by not printing frequently, improper storage of partially used cartridges or improper power down the printer. But it's extremely rare that people have problems in printing continously with OEM carts.

 

[mikling]

Tin Ho, I initially did not have any problems, only after successive multiple refills. So yes, my refills print like OEM as well continuously. Please read the complete experience. I am a mechanical engineer by training so I don't normally overlook the obvious but have learnt to discern influencing factors in various problems that are not obvious to the casual observer.