J
Jan Alter
By last December I was fed up with the six C84 printers in our school.
Only one of them was still running without a clog. The other five had
partial clogs of either the black or colors that I had put into service
within the past year and a half. What was more painful to bear was that I
still had another ten new C84 printers sitting in unopened boxes that I had
expected to place into service into class rooms. I started to think about
the eventual printer death disaster and waste of money. What was further
pain to this was that the previous summer I had bought two of these printers
for my two kids at home. One was already clogged completely and the other
had a partially clogged black. Both were still on their OEM cartridges
within less than a year's use.
With each printer that clogged I had tried the Windex annointment of the
docking sponges. I tried alchohol/ammonia concoctions into the printheads.
I'd inspected the waste tubes for clogging. None of it worked. Once the head
on a C84 clogged, I began to realize, it was the simple death of the
printer. I'd read many times from this newsgroup about the Epson Dura-brite
ink problems and was convinced that to use the Dura-brite was essentially to
be feeding the printer poison despite all the wonderful benefits Epson
espoused of this pigment ink; mainly being permanence, light fastness, water
resistance.
I got in touch with MIS, a company that made aftermarket ink, and asked if
they could recommend a dye base ink for the C84. They did, with no
guarantees, and over the next three months I started three new C84 printers
with that ink that I loaded into their spongeless cartridges, along with a
chip resetter to allow refilling them. Up to June they all ran fine and then
sat for the summer for more than ten weeks without running.
Today all three of them were run and they all work fine. One had to have one
cleaning cycle run before it gave a good nozzle check pattern. So what I'm
concluding is that the C84 and C86 can both be assured a long life, along
with any other Epson printers that use the Dura-brite inks, by switching
over to dye base. There are some paper limitations imposed by switching to a
different ink and the printer software, but for decent color printing in the
class room and everyday text printing these machines give pretty decent
results. Obviously it will be more work for me to have to refill the
cartridges, but with the spongeless cartridge design it goes very fast and
these machines will become cheaper to run than any aftermarket cartridges I
could ever buy
Only one of them was still running without a clog. The other five had
partial clogs of either the black or colors that I had put into service
within the past year and a half. What was more painful to bear was that I
still had another ten new C84 printers sitting in unopened boxes that I had
expected to place into service into class rooms. I started to think about
the eventual printer death disaster and waste of money. What was further
pain to this was that the previous summer I had bought two of these printers
for my two kids at home. One was already clogged completely and the other
had a partially clogged black. Both were still on their OEM cartridges
within less than a year's use.
With each printer that clogged I had tried the Windex annointment of the
docking sponges. I tried alchohol/ammonia concoctions into the printheads.
I'd inspected the waste tubes for clogging. None of it worked. Once the head
on a C84 clogged, I began to realize, it was the simple death of the
printer. I'd read many times from this newsgroup about the Epson Dura-brite
ink problems and was convinced that to use the Dura-brite was essentially to
be feeding the printer poison despite all the wonderful benefits Epson
espoused of this pigment ink; mainly being permanence, light fastness, water
resistance.
I got in touch with MIS, a company that made aftermarket ink, and asked if
they could recommend a dye base ink for the C84. They did, with no
guarantees, and over the next three months I started three new C84 printers
with that ink that I loaded into their spongeless cartridges, along with a
chip resetter to allow refilling them. Up to June they all ran fine and then
sat for the summer for more than ten weeks without running.
Today all three of them were run and they all work fine. One had to have one
cleaning cycle run before it gave a good nozzle check pattern. So what I'm
concluding is that the C84 and C86 can both be assured a long life, along
with any other Epson printers that use the Dura-brite inks, by switching
over to dye base. There are some paper limitations imposed by switching to a
different ink and the printer software, but for decent color printing in the
class room and everyday text printing these machines give pretty decent
results. Obviously it will be more work for me to have to refill the
cartridges, but with the spongeless cartridge design it goes very fast and
these machines will become cheaper to run than any aftermarket cartridges I
could ever buy