I finally sold my 4 years old Epson Pro 3800 and bought a new Epson Pro 3880 printer. To lower the purchase price I have sold the original cartridges and I was searching for a good alternative refill system.
Until now I have used the very good Inkrepublic I-refill system with large but very well-built cartridges, which were very easy to refill and to maintain and are very reliable. Despite this, not everybody wish to use these large cartridges due to the size/accommodation problems this. However: these cartridges are the number one for heavy duty printing, because of the ease of refilling and resetting and the fact the maintenance cartridge is reset too by the advanced two master chips.
For those with a more moderate printing need, the smaller refillables might be good alternative. As a pioneer of the very first (prototype) refillable cartridge systems for the Epson Pro 3800 I have encountered not so good experiences with the first models: unstable ink flow and rupture of the cartridge ink outlet valve, causing leaking and other problems. The Inkrepublic.coms I-refill system was the first system that worked reliable. This is system is one the best of the market for heavy duty printing, but the large size might be problem for those who do not wish to remove/modify the ink cover and do not have much space to accommodate these cartridges.
I have purchased a set of these smaller size refillable Epson Pro 3880 cartridges from a Chinese manufacturer (
www.winnerjet.com) and also the Inkrepublic.coms Pro 3880 I-refill system, which I will review in my next topic.
I had some problem at first, because the normally only sell to refill companies.but I could convince them to sell me just one set for testing. These cartridges are similar to the ones sold by Inkjetmall.com, Inkjetfly.com (small foot) and many other refill companies:
These cartridges are the same size as the original ones and works with a master/tuning chip combined with the original OEM chip, which must be seated into a cradle underneath the tuning chip. Together the cartridge will become auto-reset. Just removing the cartridge and reinstalling, will reset the ink level back to 100 % full.
Now because I have sold my original Epson Pro 3880 cartridges, I did not have the necessary Vivid Magenta and Vivid Light Magenta chips to fire up my printer. I still do have a set of original Epson Pro 3800 chips, but with the normal magenta and light magenta chips included.
What should I do: try these old chips for the Epson Pro 3800 chips into my new Epson Pro 3880 printer and pray it will work ?
First time refilling the cartridges:
-Remove the colored rubber plug with the flap on the back of the cartridge and inject the ink into the cartridge. It can accommodate about 60-70 mls of ink only, despite the claim it can hold 80-90 ml. But I discovered the reason for this. Have a look at the picture of the yellow cartridge I have filled the very first time with ink. Notice the 2 empty ink buffer compartments:
-After the first refill, you will need to prime the cartridges with a syringe without needle to remove the air from the cartridge:
-The priming procedure will fill the 2 ink buffer compartments and this is how the cartridge should look like after priming. Most refill companies do forget to mention this necessary step, because otherwise you will pump up a lot of air into the internal tubing system and your print head, causing massive banding and clogs, caused by printing air bubbles onto your paper surface:
-Installing the refillable cartridges into your printer:
Now the big test into my printer.Because I do not have the original Epson Pro 3880 Vivid Magenta and Vivid Light Magenta OEM chips to drive these refillable cartridges, I substituted these with normal magenta and normal light magenta.
After several minutes of pumping to prime the internal tubing system and print head, I have a look at the printer LED display panel, this is what my printer says:
A dramatic drop in the maintenance cartridge level to 55% and most importantly.The printer is accepting the normal magenta and light magenta chips. This is rather a surprise to me, but I suspect the reason is that for Epson it was cheaper to alter the physical indentation of the cartridge for the M/VM and LM/VLM position than redesign a new chip and thus alter the whole logic board of the Epson Pro 3800, which is actually the same printer as the Epson Pro 3880 with some modification in the print head (Teflon coating to repel ink better) and the way how the ink droplets are placed (more accurate droplet placement and internal RIP).
-Printing properties of the refillable cartridges:
After this ink gushing initial charging/priming operation I printed a manual nozzle check and it was perfect. So I printed several printer targets to profile my refill ink. Meanwhile I also tested my resetter for the maintenance tank, which does not seems to work directly. The printer must be powered down before resetting, otherwise the ink level is not reset. This is the resetter I used for resetting the maintenance tank:
After a few days of printing, the printer suddenly executed a full print head cleaning cycle and the reset maintenance tank dropped from 100 % to 94 %....I decided to execute an automatic nozzle check and this is the result:
I also decided to test the auto-reset capability of the cartridges, but somehow it was difficult to remove some cartridges from the printer. It seems the tuning chip cradle somehow stuck, when you want to remove the cartridges. The problem seems to be caused by the cradle not sitting firmly/deep enough on the cartridge and hooks against the inner parts of the cartridge slot. Watch out NOT the pull out the cartridge when it seemingly get stuck in the cartridge slot, as this can damage the chip contacts.
Conclusion:
Despite the flimsy looking cartridges, they actually performed much better than I have expected. Ink flow has been excellent during the testing period of over a week now. I also have discovered that these particular refillable cartridges accept the normal magenta and light magenta chips from the Epson Pro 3800 without any problems (same chips as the vivid magenta/vivid light magenta cartridges ?). Not sure how long these cartridges will last before you will need to replace them. The ink outlet valve is still made from rubber, a material that can degrade/starve overtime.
I am not very found off this type of material for the ink outlet valve for these types of pressurized cartridges. Any leakage (rubber starvation, cracks) can result into a disastrous ink spill. Inkrepublic.com I-refill system shows how it can be dealt with by using a material similar to the ink outlet valve as the original Epson cartridges. For the Epson R3000 this is less critical, despite the same construction of print head fed by a tubing system from stationary cartridges. The reason is that the ink is not pushed into the tubing system as in the Epson Pro 3800/3880 by pressurizing the cartridges, but actually sucked into the print head (print head contains a mechanical pump, that sucks the ink into buffer dampers, which hold a certain amount of ink and get replenished on regular intervals). The other concern is the position of the refill hole/plug. If there is a leak and the cartridge is under pressure, the ink will spill out from this holeuntil the ink level falls down beneath the level of this refill hole, before it the air can escape through this very refill hole. Why not put the refill hole on top of the cartridge ? This way it is safer in case the refill hole is not properly sealed and it is less likely the ink will escape from the top, as the air can escape directly on top of the cartridge above the surface of the ink. If they managed to get these two improvements in the next designs, it would be a great step forward.
Do not forget to prime the cartridges properly the very first time when you inject the ink into the empty cartridges: an essential step to get properly functioning cartridges. This is only necessary the first time, afterwards just inject the ink into the cartridges and the chips will reset automatically.
However: the maintenance tank chip still needs an expensive resetter to be reused. Also the chip must be registered completely empty, otherwise resetting is impossibleSometimes you will need a second maintenance tank (registered as completely saturated) to get a successful reset, adding to the cost of this already very expensive resetter (like the one from Inkjetmall.com). The one I have seems to deal with just one maintenance tank, but the chip was not below 15 %. I purchased this resetter a few years ago and I paid $99 for it. If the chip of your maintenance tank is registered empty by the printer, the is chip is shut down and any attempt to reset the chip will give this (my very old and first maintenance tank of my Epson Pro 3800):
The first picture shows the new and my old maintenance cartridge:
This is the result if I insert the reset old maintenance tank into the printer:
My next review will be about the
www.inkrepublic.com Pro 3880 I-refill system, which I also have bought, because my particular (more than average usage) and the ease of refilling (no syringe/needles) and the fact this advanced system also can drive the maintenance tank chip without the need of a separate (and expensive) resetter.
