Injet printer cartridge refills

[Steve Firth]

The cartridges sold with such a printer are usually only 1/3rd full.

So not such a bargain as it might at first appear.

The printers are also usually slow, clunky GDI printers.

Recently I've been forced to accept a change from Xerox Postscript printers to another make at the place where I work. This is largely because of ideology. The replacement printers are the same physical size but they are slow, clunky and rattle through consumables at about 2x the rate of the printers they replaced.

At home I voted with my wallet and use only Xerox Phasers which are expensive to buy but have a much lower consumable cost than many others. I think Kyocera are cheaper for consumables but I have no experience of the brand. Ink jets seem largely pointless apart from photo quality printers and large format printing.

[Alan]

In message , Djornsk wrote

These days you have to be careful with this. Printer manufactures now produce "demo" cartridges included with their printers enough for a limited number of test pages.

[Nightjar]

That depends upon which kit you buy.

Colin Bignell

[Pete Zahut]

Nightjar

[Lobster]

Mm... chatting to my daughter away at uni the other day, she told me how she'd just bought a new Epson printer for about 35 quid and was really chuffed with herself (ie having done this without having to get Dad's advice).

Me: "So presumably it's an inkjet then?" Her: "Eh? it's a printer." Me: (having established that she'd just installed inkjet cartridges) "How much are new cartridges then?" Her: "No idea, I don't need any at the moment"

Hey ho. The answer turned out to be about 45 pounds a set... :-(

David

[Martop]

Depends on what pixma series it is, I have both the 4300 and 4500, been refilling them for years with no issues. I get my ink from hobbicolors in the USA as its almost a direct match to the oem canon ink.

You would need a re setting gizmo to reset the carts chips

Have a look here for sound advice.

[<me9]

I gave up filling inkjets many years ago. I got a laser printer, originally a mono one. Cartridges are more expensive, but last much longer, particularly with irregular use. Not much later I added a colour laser, replacing a standby inkjet. A cyan cartridge ran out (so it said) after a year and a half. I bought a replacement set (they did cost nearly as much as the printer) but two years later I haven't fitted them, but will need to soon.

If I'd still used the inkjet I'd have got through more money, and torn even more of my (scant) hair out trying to get it to print.

Get a laser printer, you know it makes sense!

I'm now looking to replace my B&W laser with a colour multifunction networked one. Any suggestions?

[F Murtz]

As you said,just buy the ink in bulk, fill with hypodermic, plug hole with bluetac. with pixma you can cancel the chip reporting and just watch ink levels manually.

[Alan]

In message , [e-mail] wrote

Do colour laser printers give an acceptable results for photo outputs or are they more suited to the type of output where you have blocks of a limited colour range in, say, something like a logo.

Many of the cheap inkjets these days are 1400 to 5000+ dpi whereas a most of the affordable lasers are still in the 300 or 600 dpi range.

[Nightjar]

On 02/10/2010 23:41, [e-mail] wrote: ...

Colour lasers are fine for printing documents but they are not good for photo printing. As a minimum, to print good photos you should have a six colour inkjet and the more expensive inkjet photo printers have up to nine different cartridges to get the best results.

Colin Bignell

[<me9]

Mine is reasonably good on photos, a dedicated photo printer would be better, but it doesn't have any striations that a typical 3/4 colour inkjet gives. Photo prints are achievable next day, and much cheaper than inkjets, from many on-line printers.

I think the laser will modulate the dots, unlike a typical inkjet. This allows gradations that would need more dots on an inkjet. I'm much more impressed with its output than I've ever been been with inkjets. SWMBO has never complained either!

Another big advantage is the output is waterproof.

[John Rumm]

For low cost colour laser work at high volumes, the Ricoh colour lasers are pretty good. Infotec also badge them.

[Dave Liquorice]

I've also switched from an inkjet to colour laser. We don't do much colour printing so the inkjet would take many cleaning/nozzle check runs to kick back into none stripey life. I reckon I could count the actual wanted pages produced per cartridge set on the fingers of two hands! Not to mention the 30 to 60 mins of time wasted. I found that if you ran a cleaning cycle and left it for 10 mins before a nozzle check the "soak" would clear it quicker (and use less expensive ink) than constantly going round the check/clean/check/clean cycle.

Yep, that was my logic as well for dumping the mono laser and colour inkjet in favour of a colour laser. The colour laser is fine for most output and if I want something done properly I send away and get it done properly...

[Timothy Murphy]

What colour laser printer did you choose, as a matter of interest? (I'm about to make such a choice choice.)

[Dave Liquorice]

HP Colour LaserJet CP1515n. It's on my LAN so is accessable from all machines. It does occasionally (once every couple of months) disappear from the LAN as far as printing is concerned but you can still talk to it over the LAN to its web interface...

[Dave]

Out of nothing but curiosity, are the ink nozzles in the printer or the cartridge? I once had an Epson photo printer and the nozzles on that are in the printer and I had to use a full brand new cartridge to unblock them when I hadn't used it over the summer. I have now switched to HP printers and in general, I have been pleased with them. I was in Staples yesterday and there was a woman pushing Kodak printers and how little the ink costs and how many pages it would print. She showed me one manufactures cart. that was reputed to print X number of photos and then the Kodak one, which would print twice the number at a lower cost per cart.

Has anyone had any experience with Kodak printers?

Dave

[Dave]

I tried printing a colour photo onto an A4 glossy photo paper and it came out matte I couldn't fault the quality though.

Dave

[John Rumm]

Some of the earlier cannon pixmas had the reasonable compromise of the head being a separate plug in component that can be changed independently of the ink.

[<me9]

Be wary with using inkjet (coated) photo paper on lasers. It may ruin the fuser. Lasers use heat to fix the toner.

Anyone know a source of laser photo paper?

[Dave Liquorice]

HP have quite a range. I've seen laser photo paper in the likes of PC World (spit) and Staples.

I have some HP 220gsm Glossy(*) paper in A4 and 100 sheets cost around =A320, better value than 6x4 of the same stuff. Have gullotine will cut...

(*) Well "glossy" as in not matt or textured but it's not glossy like an optically glossy print is.