Epson Ink Consumption

[andrezz]

Hi guys,
I have a question about my multifunction EPSON DX4800:
I've been using it rarely(at least once a week), but everytime I power
on the printer,
the ink level suddenly decreases.I think it's a test performed by the
printer or something similar..but printing about 50 pages ends the
cartridges...
Is there something I can do about it?
thanks a lot and sorry for my poor english!

Andry

 

[Bob Headrick]

Hi guys,
I have a question about my multifunction EPSON DX4800:
I've been using it rarely(at least once a week), but everytime I power
on the printer,
the ink level suddenly decreases.I think it's a test performed by the
printer or something similar..but printing about 50 pages ends the
cartridges...
Is there something I can do about it?

You probably need a different printer. With printing once a week you
are getting to the point where the printer is running through a rather
aggressive cleaning cycle when you turn the printer on. It does this to
keep the printhead clean, but as you have seen the effect is reduced
printed yield. The graph in the middle of the page at
http://h10060.www1.hp.com/pageyield/articles/us/en/EfficiencyArticle.html
gives some indication of the issue. While the printer may give
reasonable yield if printed at high rates it can be very inefficient if
printed infrequently. With small print jobs and a few days between
printing as much as 70% or more of the ink can end up in the service
station on some printers.

Regards,
Bob Headrick, MS MVP Printing/Imaging

 

[Ron P]

Hi guys,
I have a question about my multifunction EPSON DX4800:
I've been using it rarely(at least once a week), but everytime I power
on the printer,
the ink level suddenly decreases.I think it's a test performed by the
printer or something similar..but printing about 50 pages ends the
cartridges...
Is there something I can do about it?
thanks a lot and sorry for my poor english!

Andry

If you are in the habit of turning the power off to the printer rather than
just turning the printer off by the power switch on the printer, you could
possibly be causing more cleaning cycles to be performed than are necessary
for your printer.

 

[Arthur Entlich]

Your printer is performing a cleaning cycle each time you turn it one,
which drains ink from each ink nozzle of all the colors. This is to
keep the nozzles clear of clogs from old dried ink.

This ink is wasted, and ends up in a pad in the base of the printer.

Each cleaning cycles like this uses up several percent of the ink in the
cartridges.

If you print principally black text documents, a monochrome laser
printer is more economical.

Art

 

[Richard Steinfeld]

Your printer is performing a cleaning cycle each time you turn it one,
which drains ink from each ink nozzle of all the colors. This is to
keep the nozzles clear of clogs from old dried ink.

This ink is wasted, and ends up in a pad in the base of the printer.

Each cleaning cycles like this uses up several percent of the ink in the
cartridges.

If you print principally black text documents, a monochrome laser
printer is more economical.

However, a laser printer does something similar that reduces the life of
its expensive drum. I don't remember the particulars, but the effect on
drum life can be quite dramatic, let's say, on my Oki's drum -- which is
good for a nice, long 20,000 nominal copies, but will set me back a
whopping $165 street price when the time comes.

Your explanation is excellent, Arthur, but allow me to make another
statement which is even more sobering: let's say that our black printing
is a bit patchy and we want to clean the itsy-bitsy nozzles. So, we run
a cleaning process to firm up the black printing. And, hey: guess what?
Why, we get our color cartridge cleaned, too: even more wasted ink.

I came across an interesting concept in print head cleaning: print a
single-color page to "exercise" just the desired array of nozzles.
There's a nice set of them at Kalvins.com -- the manufacturer of the
real "Universal" (tm) brand of ink -- one of the ones that can truly be
said to be "generic."

Richard

 

[Arthur Entlich]

Yes, on current machines, they no longer have separate cleaning stations
for color versus black ink, so indeed all the nozzles are equally
"exercised". However, on many Epson (and other) since the black head
often has double the number of nozzles as each color head (to speed up
text printing in black) twice the amount of black ink is used up with
each cleaning as each color. Printers with more color cartridges waste
more ink per cleaning cycle.

The newer HP printers have within them a design to recycle some of this
ink, so the loss is much less, but do look at the size and yield of the
cartridges.

On many newer laser printers they recycle excess toner left on the drum
hen it is cleaned off after each print.

There are rebuilt and refilled toner cartridges/drum units for a number
of models of laser printers which can save considerably with minimal
quality loss. Some will even guarantee against quality loss.

Art