The 60-hour Myth on Canon printers (Not Here-say)

[stratman]

ran for 72 hours non-stop

Wow! That is a stress test for any printer. Is this the same printer you are using now? Same print head?

unless I get lucky...

You've got that in spades. After all, you have Mrs. The Hat!

If and when I get to use the printer again

No rush. Sometimes these things are more "thought experiments" than actual tests. But if you do get around to it I'll be interested to read your observations, of course.

 

[Artur5]

I use my PRO 9500II more often but mostly for a few photos every 2 weeks or so.
I print also occasional A3 office work to keep it busy (most is done in A4 on the Maxify).
At this moment I am printing the annual family reunion photo book (50 pages A4) and I changed all carts since 3 of them were almost empty. Others needed only 5 or 6 ml to top up.
This is only the 3th time this year I change the carts and the total amount of ink is much less than 14x10 ml.
So even when switched on every week to print 5-10 A4 and A3's a set of carts keeps 2-3 months before the first ones are empty. Let's say 70-80 ml is needed for topping up, I use 500 ml over the year for having a printer available all the time including the prints.
Agree, most of it will be purged, but last time I paid € 53.48 for 16 oz at Precision Colors shipping included.

Only 53 Euro for that amount of pigmented ink ?. Sorry, but either PC has raised a lot the prices lately (I wouldn’t think so ) or I’m missing something.
Right now they charge $8 for each 2 ounce bottle of Pro9500 ink -> 8 bottles = $64. Shipping to Europe is $22.76. Total $88.76 - roughly 77 Euro. Also, I’d think that a parcel of this value wouldn’t pass unscathed Customs inspection. Didn’t they charge you VAT for the goods and the shipping plus the fees for Customs clear ?.
Until now I refrained from purchasing ink from PC due to the expected extra charges applied to any merchandise entering Europe from the USA and this is a pleasant surprise. Or do you have a special connection with some high-up Customs officer ?.

 

[palombian]

Only 53 Euro for that amount of pigmented ink ?. Sorry, but either PC has raised a lot the prices lately (I wouldn’t think so ) or I’m missing something.
Right now they charge $8 for each 2 ounce bottle of Pro9500 ink -> 8 bottles = $64. Shipping to Europe is $22.76. Total $88.76 - roughly 77 Euro. Also, I’d think that a parcel of this value wouldn’t pass unscathed Customs inspection. Didn’t they charge you VAT for the goods and the shipping plus the fees for Customs clear ?.
Until now I refrained from purchasing ink from PC due to the expected extra charges applied to any merchandise entering Europe from the USA and this is a pleasant surprise. Or do you have a special connection with some high-up Customs officer ?.

Sorry, I paid the regular Precision Color prices (for 8 oz bottles) and shipping fee.
I order one or 2 bottles every time a color becomes low in inventory.

Maybe the EUR was stronger then, and indeed, until now I am lucky with Belgian customs.
Key is sending in small packages by ordinary mail.
But even with 21% VAT and € 15 customs clear the price is not prohibitive for me regarding the quality of the ink.
Still more than 4 times cheaper than Canon one.
Anyway I spread the risk.

Precision Colours indicates "best before 2 years from now", but pigment ink lasts much longer.

The problem with refilling is that you have a lot of upfront costs with no guarantee, you have to jump in the deep one day.
With your PRO-10, I would not hesitate, you'll never find a better refillable printer (to be crude, the PRO 9500 has the additional advantage you can reset the ink counter, making it virtually eternal as long as you have printheads in stock, since the PC 2015 inkset gloss differences are not such an issue that you need the GO).

You will not print for free, you will print as much as you want for what someone else pays while worrying about expensive ink.

 

[The Hat]

Is this the same printer you are using now? Same print head?

Yes, this is the same printer I bought back in 2008 and on its second head, and when you’ve got A3 Brochures to print you need a good reliable printer, and this is it, slow, dependable and easy refillable ...

After all, you have Mrs. The Hat!

Well I look at it the other way, she’ got me now for 50 years, and an axe murder gets less time... ...

When I get ink from PC, it comes free from any customs or VAT, I order 4 to 6, 8 oz bottles in the pack, and it gets into the EU by way of Belgian Post @$15, Postal charges are cheaper from Canada than Germany...

 

[Artur5]

Sorry, I paid the regular Precision Color prices (for 8 oz bottles) and shipping fee.
I order one or 2 bottles every time a color becomes low in inventory.

Maybe the EUR was stronger then, and indeed, until now I am lucky with Belgian customs.
Key is sending in small packages by ordinary mail.
But even with 21% VAT and € 15 customs clear the price is not prohibitive for me regarding the quality of the ink.
Still more than 4 times cheaper than Canon one.
Anyway I spread the risk.
...

I got you wrong thinking that you purchased eight small bottles of 2 oz each instead of two bigger 8 oz bottles. As you say, probably back then the Euro was stronger and I recall Mike from PC saying that shipping costs abroad had raised a lot lately. That explains the difference. Anyway, 16 ounces of ink isn't a very small parcel and the value should be written in the Customs form, so you’ve been very lucky in this matter.

I took the plunge and ordered from PC two oz. of OEM red for the Pro10s. That’s $24 plus $8.5 shipping. In theory, up to 25 Euro you won’t incur in extra fees, but it depends on the mood of the Customs officer. There’s no written rule. If I’m not lucky, I’ll be paying an extra of around 30 Euro. In total it would cost me the same than buying regular Canon PGI-72R cartridges. Let’s wait and see what happens.

 

[palombian]

Yeah, if you buy a small quantity there is no advantage, and if you buy big you risk to get stuck with unuseable ink.
What if your printer breaks ?
I have 2 PRO 9500 II's, one with a recently new head, plus a brand new printhead in stock (Canon doesn't sell them anymore).
So I will downscale my ink inventory to the expected life of 3 printheads.

But since I bought the printers second hand, in the worst case I printed 5 years for less than the cost of one new printer.

Fingers crossed !

 

[BruceW77]

Now just in case you’ve missed it, The Pro 9000 manual states quite clearly on the top of the page that print head cleaning is preformed before the start of printing when the clean flag is active, and the printer also does a purge when any cartridge has been replaced, so the myth has been hit on the head once again.

You seem to be ignoring the note at the bottom of the table:
*1: If an ink tank is removed for 60 seconds or longer, cleaning is performed.(Cleaning is performed according to the period of time an ink tank is removed from the print head, regardless of whether the ink tank is actually replaced or not. If the same ink tank is removed and installed back multiple number of times, cleaning is performed based on the accumulated period of time the ink tank is removed.)

That is why I was testing the 60s timer for the Pro100S. Since then I have replaced 5 cartridges, in the Pro100s with new OEMs, without incurring an ink purge. The Service Manual only refers to ink purges and makes no reference or insight into vacuum purges, which I believe are usually very small purges. It is useful to make a distinction between the 2 types as they are often lumped into one group, causing confusion.

OK here is the information you requested, but the time allotment only refers to how long the print head will stay in the middle of the carriageway before it moves back to the purge station, its got nothing to do with running a purge. (All carts out = 100 seconds)

I believe you have misinterpreted the column in the table labelled “Est. required time (sec.) (from cap closing to standby) “ This is how long the purge takes in seconds. You will notice the column is relevant to all rows of the table, not just the ink tank replacement row. In fact they also tell you how long the purge would take if you only replaced carts in Group 1 or Group 2 (ie. 90s).
For the Pro-100S the printhead stays in the middle of the carriageway for 10 minutes before it moves back to the purge station. So I would expect the Pro9500 to be similar or even longer. ie. Much longer than 100s.

For the Pro9500 you will see that the note at the bottom of the table states:

*1: Cleaning is performed when an ink tank is removed from the print head, regardless of whether it is actually replaced with a new one or not.

Quite different to the Pro9000. This point relates to my earlier question about one of the differences between Pro9000 and Pro9500.

Has anyone ever tested the possibility that the Pro9500 has the same 60s cartridge timers as the Pro9000 and Pro-100? It may just be an omission in the Pro9500 Service Manual.

I believe this is the “golden 10-20s timer” being discussed in some posts, but no actual value determined?

over the two hours, in all the time the printer was powered on it did 4 ink purges and 1 vacuum purge.

I assume it is not possible to tell the difference between an ink purge and a vacuum purge by just observing the printer potty? Are you saying there were 4 times the printer paused and made noises for say 100s+ before the print initiating the purge emerged?

The total waste came to 9.5 grams

If you had asked me to estimate the amount of ink that would be purged, I would have said:
If the printer is able to track time (eg. Battery backup or time check the PC to determine the time), based on the Pro9500 Service Manual (I can’t find a free version of the Mk 2), then for greater than 480 hours it indicates 8.9g and would take 140s. I would expect this to happen when you initiated the first print, which was the nozzle check. In addition I would expect a small amount of wasted ink as a consequence of the vacuum purges during printing and power down. So we are in the same ballpark except the difference is that you say you had 4 ink purges.

I am wondering if the purge you noticed with print 2 and 4, and again when you powered off, were just vacuum purges and because you observed ink being delivered to the printer potty you interpreted them as ink purges?

If the printer cannot keep track of time, after losing mains power and then being power up, then there is no info in the Service Manual about what purges will take place. The only case covered is when the Printhead has not been capped at power on, which I am sure yours would have been. If that had been the case the Service Manual states that 8.8g would be purged.

If there was a battery backup, you would expect it would be mentioned in the Service Manual and there is no mention.

To actually test your hypothesis then plug your printer back in, print something to start the 60 hour clock fresh

Printing does not start the 60 hour timer or any of the 4 cleaning timers. A manual clean is the most likely way to restart the timers.

 

[The Hat]

@BruceW77, this Feckin 60-hour thing is getting you nowhere and you seem to be hung up on how many times your printer is pissing in the pot and its all based on outdated information long since gone, have you not learned anything from the fact that there are no more manuals being released. (Misinterpret ?)

I did the test on my 9500 mk2 and displayed it here, I have no reason to lie or get it wrong,
they were the facts that I could expertly ascertain at that time, and I know the difference between purging ink and blowing air to clean the pipe work, do you ?, like them or loath them they are what they are, facts,

My advice is to get on and enjoy you printer while you still can and stop all this kerfuffle and worry about a little wasted ink and let your printer get on with looking after its own maintenance and personal hygiene without your interference.

Let it go and talk about something your printer can do and not what you imagine it does, I can enjoy a swan on the water and not worry about what it might be doing below it, try looking at things from another prospective, a pleasant surprise awaits you..

Tip: if you still can’t leave this waste ink thing alone, then get yourself a Printer Potty and you’ll have years of pleasure toilet training your printer and you’ll then know for sure each time it takes a dump or breaks wind and you can write your very own waste ink manual...

 

[Artur5]

I
I took the plunge and ordered from PC two oz. of OEM red for the Pro10s. That’s $24 plus $8.5 shipping. In theory, up to 25 Euro you won’t incur in extra fees, but it depends on the mood of the Customs officer. There’s no written rule. If I’m not lucky, I’ll be paying an extra of around 30 Euro. In total it would cost me the same than buying regular Canon PGI-72R cartridges. Let’s wait and see what happens.

I'm glad to inform that the bottle of Canon PGI-72R OEM red was delivered today by the postman. No Customs duties of any kind. Kudos to Mike/Mikling of PC for an excellent service.
BTW, In the Customs form he declared the real value ($24) but no mention of shipping cost ($8.50) that would have increased the total value of the merchandise above the fatidic 25 Euros limit.
In total I paid 28.7 euros for 1 oz (59ml) of OEM ink. Half the cost per ml. that If I'd purchased OEM PGI-72 carts from Amazon, even with free shipping.