Soon: big test of refillable Epson Pro 3800 cartridges + resetters

[mikling]

Ok here's a link for the service manual. This would dispel any guesses as to how this printer works.

http://blackred.spb.ru/tech/print/StylusPro3800_service_manual.pdf

Now to get to how the ink system works, go to pages 41 and 42.

The OEM system works by pressurizing a bag of ink contained within a sealed container.

The refillables work by directly pressurizing each ink chamber. The ink is not separated physically by a wall.

Now, the following will require that you understand some basic principles of fluid mechanics and pressure within vessels and piping.

As best as I could tell how the system works, there is ONE single pressure pump. You can see this on page 41.

The pressure pump is supposed to compress air by squeezing the accordion until the pressure sensor detects that sufficient pressure is reached , and this pressure will be same amongst all cartridges.

Based on this, the pressure that is within the cartridge is consistent amongst the cartridges and should be regulated and remain the same regardless of ink level.

Now here is where the possibility of transgressing this comes in. In the event that the contained volume within the cartridges is too large for the displaced volume of the accordion to generate sufficient pressure thus it runs out of travel before sufficient pressure is generated then the pressure regulator never trips . Now, I would think if this were the case then the printer would have thrown out an error code that indicated that required pressure was not reached. I would expect that the Epson engineers would have put in a closed loop system with error handling. How could this also occur, suppose for example a sealed cartridge walls were breached, or a hose was disconnected. then insufficient pressure would be generated. Seeing that such a code or error was not generated would lead me to believe that sufficiient pressure was indeed generated.

The next step is for someone to take the time to determine how the pressure pump resets and whether there are check valves within the cartridge that prevent the ink from flowing back towards the accordion pump. And beyond this what the potential effect of refilling the cartridges while it is still connected to the pressure system.

 

[mikling]

Pages 77 of the service manual describes the error codes for the pressure pump and these are 14xx codes.

No codes were thrown out so indeed sufficient pressure was reached independent of what ink level was contained within the cartridge for the testing.

 

[irvweiner]

I would further expect that the accordion would actually function as a pump similar to the footpumps used to inflate a rubber raft or plastic mattress. The user, with his foot steps o the 'accordion' compressing and forcing air into the raft. When the foot is raised, a checkvalve in the accordion permits the re-entry of more air--which then gets re-pumped into the raft--repeat until finished.
Yes, enclosing this into a simple feedback loop would maintain a set level of air pressure. The volume of the accordion may be sufficient to maintain a constant pressure from a all bags 'full' to all bags empty --but not when the larger carts are used. The Cone, IR and Inkjetcarts cartridges can hold up to 150mm, the IJF 'bigfoot' can hold a whopping 280ml! The OEM cart holds a 'mere' 80ml, that's quite a wide range of volume the accordion has to play for!

I believe the pressure pump operates as I described, a check valve on its output prevents the ingress of ink or air. This is identical to the simple checkvalves on my squeeze bottles. A second checkvalve in/on the accordion permits air to enter when the accordion is reset to its uncompressed original size/volume. Variations of this mode would permit pressurization of almost any size and number of carts, but the number pumping cycles and ink waste would be disturbing as the Pharmacist has discovered. Most important ITF that were operating outside the initial design considerations. Worse is the obvious negligence of the vendors to alert the customer (us) and provide a proper priming protocol-if not make sure that one exists and can be implemented. It does not take to many negative (and well justified) posts to destroy the potential promise of a new, worthwhile product.


irv weiner

 

[RDoc]

I believe the new IJF 3880 SmallFoot cartridges have some kind of bag inside them which explains their small size. Unfortunately they don't have as sophisticated a chipset so all the OEM chips have to be used and AFAIK the waste tank doesn't get reset.

Irv - have you tried these yet? I have a set but haven't installed them yet. I'm making sure I can make good printer profiles while I still have the OEM ink to compare my results to known profiles.

It would be good if Leo would put up some more information on his site about all these cartridges and how they work.

 

[mikling]

I could not hold back from bringing up the issue about priming and its importance and judging by what occurred, it reared its ugly head.

The intake to the ink lines is at the bottom. On conventional cartridges Epson recommends that the cartridge be shaken prior to installation. The bubbles that this produces generally does not enter the into the ink system.
For example, if you take a bottle of ink and shake it a but, the bubbles will always migrate to the top. The intake within the cartridge is at the bottom. Thus the ingested ink into the system does not generally have bubbles unless there is very little ink and shaking creates to total foam environment. Thus like I had warned when I joined this thread. priming and the removal of the air column between the ink inside the cartridge and ink intake spigot is highly recommended to avoid frustration.

What also needs to be measured/investigated as well is if there is any correlation between the glossiness of the carrier and the ability of the carrier to break down foam or bubbles. That would be interesting because the amt of cleaning pharmacist had to perform seems inordinately high. The OEM pigment bag system, being devoid of any air within the bag cannot create any bubbles so foam breakdown is rarely an issue with OEM cartridges.

Pharmacist with his background with liquids/chemicals might be more knowledgeable about this than myself actually. I claim no knowledge on this aspect but simply a hunch.

 

[imaggie]

Just an update: leo Chang of Inkjetfly contacted me and told me the real problem of the excessive cleaning cycles is caused by the fact these large 280 ml Big Foot cartridges need at least 150 ml's of ink to perform well the first time when the cartridges are be primed by a few cleaning cycles.

He explained to me that due to the large capacity of these cartridges, the amount of air so large one has to fill these cartridge at least 50 % or about 150 ml to counter these types of problems. The pressure pump is programmed to pump a certain amount or pressure inside the printer and when it does not reach this amount of pressure, due to these large cartridges having so much air, the printer will perform suboptimally, sometimes giving a 1404 error on the display panel (pressure pump error). .....

This all sounds very odd to me as on the Inkjetfly site the Bigfoot cartridges are only sold with 100ml bottles and there is an explicit warning that similar cartridges from Alibaba will produce 1404 errors. If the cartridges won't work with 100ml of ink, I wonder why they are sold that way.

very long discussion here. Indeed, it's odd. Maybe the chinese factory inkjetfly bought from is simply a copy cat of InkRepublic's iRefill system without knowing it's core concept? or they just want to sell you more inks to get good profit at once? even though 150ml of inks each color would remain unusable.
It is important to know that 3800 is a pressurized cartridges, any incorrect or temp air lock might damage the printer temporarily or permanently.

 

[pharmacist]

Just an update: after the first initial problems with priming the system seems to work well. No clogged nozzles sofar, but I noticed the printer always gives a 1404 error everytime I power on the printer. I always have to power off the printer and immediately power on the system again to eradicate this error. Since I only put one small bottle of ink into the cartridges (100 ml), I think it is because the amount of air is huge in these very large cartridges. Maybe they should cut off that gun-like handle to make the cartridges more like the usual models, so to decrease the dead volume of air inside these cartridges considerably. Only a small elevation where the refill hole is at the end of the cartridge would suffice.

Printing is superb, no clogs, great ink flow (after the initial problems with priming). Nice feature with the auto reset maintenance chip, always staying full chips, needs only 2 original chips (PK and MB). Ink quality is superb, great gamut....only those cartridges: priming problems and too large with too much air volume.

 

[The Hat]

pharmacist
Question: - If you werent going to fill or use that volume of ink then why did you get such big cartridges in the first place ?..

 

[pharmacist]

Hi The Hat,

Leo of Inkjetfly contacted me to test these cartridges and the problem there were some issues with the ink bottles (extra VLM and VM ink, which do not fit my Epson Pro 3800), confusing me whether or not the order was wrong and I ended with filling these huge cartridges with just 1 bottle of ink (100 ml) of ink per cartridge.

 

[The Hat]

Thanks pharmacist