Epson printer forcefully wasting ink confirmed!

macstatic · Oct 14, 2013

I've previously read (what I believed was a cynical view on the subject) about how printer manufacturers force printers to "clean" their heads every so often regardless of how much they're actually used in order to satisfy their greed so we have to spend even more $$$ on their expensive ink.

I first hand saw this to be true today after printing just a single sheet of black text on a brand new Epson XP-850 multi-function printer:

(I checked the ink levels right before printing and they were all full!)

Other than the above I've only printed 2-3 pages of text in the past few weeks, and the printer has been powered on all the time just so it won't start "cleaning" every time I turn it on.
What happened when I started printing was a whole lot of activity in the printer. It took about 3 minutes before any printing was done.

Is there anything I can do to prevent this, or is this so called "cleaning" programmed into the printer's firmware? I did hear about a utility called SCC service utility which seems like it could be of help, but it's neither for Macs nor did I see my printer in the list of what's supported.

Gav2k · Oct 14, 2013

Nothing you can do tbh and you wouldn't want to stop it cleaning. If it printed without cleaning first you'd see nothing but a mess!!

takeshi74 · Oct 14, 2013

macstatic said:
I've previously read (what I believed was a cynical view on the subject) about how printer manufacturers force printers to "clean" their heads every so often regardless of how much they're actually used in order to satisfy their greed so we have to spend even more $$$ on their expensive ink.

It's not just greed. Some heads require cleaning for proper printing because of their design. Best way to avoid IMO is to just not use inkjets in the first place.

Giuly · Oct 14, 2013

Those are estimates, your ink cartridge is empty when it doesn't print properly anymore.

Mine even literally says that, and so should yours.

If you want something that's impressively low-consumption, get a laser printer.

And that's on the highest DPI setting, with the starter cartridge, mostly text with the occasional graph or chart. However that, too, is an estimate (the toner is rated at 700 pages).

carestudio · Dec 26, 2013

well, it is not a "news" to Epson users. I have seen such thing for more than a decade... and I finally found the solution to overcome it.
Since the printer must trigger cleaning cycles from time to time, it uses expensive Epson inks to clean the nozzles. To prevent this, I use a couple very high quality of continuous ink system and refillable system from below

http://www.inkrepublic.com/
http://www.ufosystem.net/

you use cheaper inks to clean nozzles while maintain much lower cost of printing. Especially inkrepublic.com they have excellent bulk ink feed system and great quality of pigment and dye inks for epson printers.

MCAsan · Dec 26, 2013

well, it is not a "news" to Epson users.

Exactly. That is why we have Canon A3 printers: 9500II, Pro0-100, and Pro-1 arrives tomorrow. I hope Pro-1 has not picked up any bad habits.

carestudio · Dec 27, 2013

MCAsan said:
Exactly. That is why we have Canon A3 printers: 9500II, Pro0-100, and Pro-1 arrives tomorrow. I hope Pro-1 has not picked up any bad habits.

Same here but I am still with Epson, since they are making GREAT printer.
On the other hand, I am using Epson R3000 printer along with InkRepublic's iRefill kit that can let me refill inks

http://www.inkrepublic.com/R3000-irefill.asp

been working pretty well, even better than Epson's carts and inks. As I mentioned before, Epson is a good printer manufacturer, but the way they waste ink in cleaning nozzle or for "no reason" is not acceptable. I opted to 3rd party inks and have been extremely happy with inkrepublic's IRK4-nano inks.

carestudio · Dec 28, 2013

carestudio said:
Same here but I am still with Epson, since they are making GREAT printer.
On the other hand, I am using Epson R3000 printer along with InkRepublic's iRefill kit that can let me refill inks

http://www.inkrepublic.com/R3000-irefill.asp

been working pretty well, even better than Epson's carts and inks. As I mentioned before, Epson is a good printer manufacturer, but the way they waste ink in cleaning nozzle or for "no reason" is not acceptable. I opted to 3rd party inks and have been extremely happy with inkrepublic's IRK4-nano inks.

It may be worthy to mention waste ink kit here,

At work we use an Epson R3000 with a CISS from inkrepublic.com

Since the waste ink pad is limited and Epson's printer design is required to run cleaning cycles, so we got a waste ink kit for it as well to route all the waste ink externally.
http://www.inkrepublic.com/WasteInkKit.asp

Also the CISS benefit from being routed over the top of the printer.

I hope this helps.

MCAsan · Dec 28, 2013

MCAsan said:
Exactly. That is why we have Canon A3 printers: 9500II, Pro0-100, and Pro-1 arrives tomorrow. I hope Pro-1 has not picked up any bad habits.

Got the Pixma Pro-1 from the brown truck last night. I downloaded the Mavericks driver and installed the latest firmware in the printer. After setup I did a test print of an 11x14 image on Canon A3 Luster. Great test print. I did not see any ink bad habits. I paid $575 on Ebay including shipping for a new unit. That is a big saving compared to $799 after a $200 rebate from Canon.

Good luck to all with your print jobs regardless of printer brand and model!

Richdmoore · Dec 28, 2013

I had an r200 Epson printer, it worked good except for the frequent need to clean the print head.

The printer finally reached it's service life limit. It gave an error that it needed service due to reaching the limit on the waste ink pad and refused to continue printing. The service would have cost more than a new printer. I replaced it with an HP (one of the few models with cd printing.)

I love that the HP never clogs, probably because when you change the cartridge you also replace the print head due to the design.

I don't know what I am going to do once the hp dies, hp no longer makes cd printers due to a patent Epson holds, and if have been unsuccessful in finding a cheap cd only printer to pair with a full sized normal printer.

MCAsan · Dec 28, 2013

We had the Canon 9500II for years without any clogs. Same for Pixma Pro-100 we have had since March.

Fishrrman · Dec 28, 2013

I had one Epson printer once. I'll never have another.

'Nuff said!

paulrbeers · Dec 28, 2013

macstatic said:
I've previously read (what I believed was a cynical view on the subject) about how printer manufacturers force printers to "clean" their heads every so often regardless of how much they're actually used in order to satisfy their greed so we have to spend even more $$$ on their expensive ink.

I first hand saw this to be true today after printing just a single sheet of black text on a brand new Epson XP-850 multi-function printer:
Image
(I checked the ink levels right before printing and they were all full!)

Other than the above I've only printed 2-3 pages of text in the past few weeks, and the printer has been powered on all the time just so it won't start "cleaning" every time I turn it on.
What happened when I started printing was a whole lot of activity in the printer. It took about 3 minutes before any printing was done.

Is there anything I can do to prevent this, or is this so called "cleaning" programmed into the printer's firmware? I did hear about a utility called SCC service utility which seems like it could be of help, but it's neither for Macs nor did I see my printer in the list of what's supported.

This is why I never recommend ink jets at all. Get a laser and your per page costs drop dramatically. You have a bit more up front costs but it pays for itself in no time. Not to mention you never have to worry about the heads clogging due to non-use.

Ink jets are cheap because they know they will get you when it comes time to buy new cartridges! It's a lot like Nintendo vs Sony gaming systems. Nintendo makes money off the gaming system thus all their games are cheaper. Sony sells at a loss and makes up for it by charging more for their games. In the end Sony comes out on top!

MCAsan · Dec 28, 2013

Get a laser and your per page costs drop dramatically.

Indeed. We have a HP 2025N for everyday printing stuff from the web or from productivity apps. Our Canon ink jets are for printing photographs....something you can't do well with consumer laser printers.

paulrbeers · Dec 29, 2013

MCAsan said:
Indeed. We have a HP 2025N for everyday printing stuff from the web or from productivity apps. Our Canon ink jets are for printing photographs....something you can't do well with consumer laser printers.

Why aren't you using any of the ridiculously cheap services on the web or in your town? A picture printed with ink jet cost something like 50 cents a piece for a 4x6. Print to target or walgreens and it is something like 15 cents a piece, printed by commercial hardware on commercial grade paper, and usually ready with in an hour.

MCAsan · Dec 29, 2013

There is printing and then there is printing.

I print art prints, not 4x6 snapshots of vacation pictures. I need to select the paper...etc. Can you image trying to tell Walgreens you want a 16bit 11x14 image centered on A3 13x19 Hahnemuhle Photo Rag or Moab Slickrock? Will they have the paper and the ICC profiles loaded on their computers? I don't think so.

carestudio · Dec 29, 2013

Richdmoore said:
I had an r200 Epson printer, it worked good except for the frequent need to clean the print head.

The printer finally reached it's service life limit. It gave an error that it needed service due to reaching the limit on the waste ink pad and refused to continue printing. The service would have cost more than a new printer. I replaced it with an HP (one of the few models with cd printing.)

If you have not tossed it (Epson R200) yet, you can try this
http://www.inkrepublic.com/KnowledgeBase/ResetCounter.asp

waste ink pad can be reset and same to main printer board.

Richdmoore · Dec 30, 2013

carestudio said:
If you have not tossed it (Epson R200) yet, you can try this
http://www.inkrepublic.com/KnowledgeBase/ResetCounter.asp

waste ink pad can be reset and same to main printer board.

The printer was tossed years ago. When it reached it's life limit I yahho'd it (I did toss it years ago, lol) and found where people had overflowed the waste ink pad and fried the printer's motherboard or made a total mess when the ink stained their carpet, I decided it was easier to replace.

I looked a bit and cannon currently makes an inkjet with both cd printing and AirPrint (for ios printing) that may be the solution for me. I just really hope it doesn't have ink jamming like the old Epson.

carestudio · Jan 4, 2014

Richdmoore said:
The printer was tossed years ago. When it reached it's life limit I yahho'd it (I did toss it years ago, lol) and found where people had overflowed the waste ink pad and fried the printer's motherboard or made a total mess when the ink stained their carpet, I decided it was easier to replace.

I looked a bit and cannon currently makes an inkjet with both cd printing and AirPrint (for ios printing) that may be the solution for me. I just really hope it doesn't have ink jamming like the old Epson.

Sorry to hear that, if you have the smaller form factor printer from epson, it really requires some skills to maintain it and prolong it's life time

(I know you dont have epson printer anymore but I would like to share my setup here to help other loyal Epson customers )

1.
Waste ink: http://www.inkrepublic.com/WasteInkKit.asp
For 3800, 3880 printer, you can reuse waste ink tank if you are using Inkrepublic refillable system or similar ones
http://www.inkrepublic.com/3880-iRefill.asp
http://www.pro3800.com/
http://www.ufosystem.net/products.asp

how to reuse waste ink tank:
http://www.inkrepublic.com/KnowledgeBase/3800-irefill-faq.asp#3800-iRefill-MaintenanceCart

2.
Adjust software to reset Epson waste ink counter and mainboard counter:

http://www.inkrepublic.com/KnowledgeBase/ResetCounter.asp
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/InkPadsForm.jsp

3.
As far as the Epson printer "drinks" a lot of inks, well, it is design thing but I still believe Epson makes great inkjet printer for years. We just need to use 3rd party inks and systems to save hard earn $$$.....

Hope this helps,

carestudio · Jan 14, 2014

macstatic said:
SCC service utility[/URL] which seems like it could be of help, but it's neither for Macs nor did I see my printer in the list of what's supported.

I did have similar experience and the workaround is to install bootcamp and windows then use SCC software.

carestudio · Jan 29, 2014

paulrbeers said:
Why aren't you using any of the ridiculously cheap services on the web or in your town? A picture printed with ink jet cost something like 50 cents a piece for a 4x6. Print to target or walgreens and it is something like 15 cents a piece, printed by commercial hardware on commercial grade paper, and usually ready with in an hour.

true but you are unable to print CD and unable to print on some professional photo papers such as Ilford and others. Printing at home is great fun and can be really cheap if you get the high quality 3rd party inks.

warvanov · Jan 29, 2014

This isn't confirmation. This is an on screen estimate of approximate ink levels. Of course ink levels will go down after printing.

Now, what I would like to see is someone take a color printer, weigh the color ink cartridges with a precise scientific scale, and then print a bunch of black and white documents. Then measure the weight of the color cartridges again to see if there is any loss. That might be a clearer indication of wasted ink.

carestudio · Jan 31, 2014

warvanov said:
This isn't confirmation. This is an on screen estimate of approximate ink levels. Of course ink levels will go down after printing.

Now, what I would like to see is someone take a color printer, weigh the color ink cartridges with a precise scientific scale, and then print a bunch of black and white documents. Then measure the weight of the color cartridges again to see if there is any loss. That might be a clearer indication of wasted ink.

That will be an interesting experiment.

MCAsan · Jan 31, 2014

Performed by whom?

brand · Jan 31, 2014

MCAsan said:
Performed by whom?

He said someone.

Epson printer forcefully wasting ink confirmed!

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