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Post by ignatious on May 11, 2015 12:10:07 GMT -9
time to get a new printer. thinking about a ciss. any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, or recomendations would be appreciated. thanks
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on May 11, 2015 13:16:57 GMT -9
I have been using a continuous ink system for quite a while now. When it works it works well. When it doesn't, it is a frustrating and messy process... I finally have the hang of it, but I'm not sure it was a smarter deal than buying cheap ink carts off of amazon or eBay... My printer is approaching its end of life, so I will have to decide whether to try a new ink system or go with cheap carts.
If you have any specific questions, I will try to give you some honest answers.
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Post by emergencyoverride on May 11, 2015 19:56:53 GMT -9
I got a great ciss for my new epson xp-310 last summer. It has been great. It was also completely plug and play. It came with the cartridge brick already filled and primed, the tanks full and ready to be plugged into the printer. It also has a cool reset button on it so when the printer says you should be out of ink you just press the button and voila it says you are full! Also, I dont have to worry about back pressure problems, feed problems or air pressure problems. To fill up the tanks I just order the bottle of ink and use the large syringes they include in the set to fill the tanks with. That's it no muss, no fuss. They have really come a long way with the technology in the last few years. I have heard horror stories about having to adjust air pressure and stuff in the past, but its not like that now. This is the actual set I got for my printer, but they have them for tons of others. Check em out. www.inkproducts.com/ink-store441/product.php?productid=966&cat=87&page=1 Hope it helps!
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Post by ignatious on May 12, 2015 11:32:00 GMT -9
Thanks to both of you for your imput. mproteau, when you speak of " a frustrating and messy process" what kind of problems do you encounter. I'd like to be more specific, but don't know enough to know what questions to ask. emergencyoveride mentions things like back pressure, air pressure, and feed problems(which he doesn't have to worry about). any thoughts?
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on May 12, 2015 12:21:54 GMT -9
Yeah - I didn't know what to expect either when I got mine. The installation process was pretty simple for mine (I bought it via inkproducts.com) though I admit I read the instructions twice and still didn't do what it said. Specifically, I didn't uncork the ink tanks after completing the installation, so it wasn't pulling ink through. My bad, but easily fixed. I can't begin to imagine how much ink I've used, or how many pages I've printed. A *lot*. And for a long time, the thing was a real dream come true. At one point, my printer stopped believing that the yellow ink cart was legit. The tech support guy was good about hand-holding me through some steps - I replaced the crystal on the ink cart using an old cart - and ultimately just told my printer to never yell at me about the yellow ink. I often have trouble these days with the pigment black or the cyan not feeding through the system well. I find that if I go a day or two without printing (which happens a lot these days) then I first have to do a cleaning to pull some ink through the system. I also do this whenever I refill the tanks. Seems like a massive waste of ink, but so be it - the printer is near its end of life, and with it will go the CIS, so I have some large tubs of ink to use up! My printer uses five ink carts. The CIS is designed such that there are five tubes of ink running from the external tanks into the printer and into the carts. The tubes are connected in a ribbon for the most part, but they're separated for the last couple of inches of the tubes. When taking them out of the printer for any reason (like having to draw ink through the tubes, which can sometimes be necessary) you need to pull them all out at the same time and get some covers on them or else they'll drip ink. If one of them slips out of your grip, they seem to have a natural tendency to tangle, and I think the rate at which the ink drips out is tied somehow to your pulse and stress level. Refilling the system is really dead simple, and that's never been messy. However, as my system started aging, I found I had to pull ink through it more often, and that process will make a little mess. One time I didn't fully seat one of the carts into the printer (normally they light up, but remember I had to disable that for my yellow cart? It's always dark...) and that leaked a bunch of ink, which meant cleanup. I replaced my print head once, which required pulling the ink carts out. I managed to forget to uncork the tanks on more than one occasion, and printing that way will cause the tanks to dry, which means manually pulling ink through... I accidentally bumped the external tanks off of the printer stand, too, once, and that made a mess. Luckily it was contained to a plywood tabletop that absorbed a lot, so it didn't hit the carpet. I've never heard about systems where you have to adjust for air pressure - my process sounds comparable to emergencyoverride's. However, over time, things can happen. The biggest frustration for me is that my wife relies on this printer for all sorts of things, and so when it craps out, I have to really dedicate my time to fix it right away.
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on May 12, 2015 12:22:11 GMT -9
Yeah - I didn't know what to expect either when I got mine. The installation process was pretty simple for mine (I bought it via inkproducts.com) though I admit I read the instructions twice and still didn't do what it said. Specifically, I didn't uncork the ink tanks after completing the installation, so it wasn't pulling ink through. My bad, but easily fixed. I can't begin to imagine how much ink I've used, or how many pages I've printed. A *lot*. And for a long time, the thing was a real dream come true. At one point, my printer stopped believing that the yellow ink cart was legit. The tech support guy was good about hand-holding me through some steps - I replaced the crystal on the ink cart using an old cart - and ultimately just told my printer to never yell at me about the yellow ink. I often have trouble these days with the pigment black or the cyan not feeding through the system well. I find that if I go a day or two without printing (which happens a lot these days) then I first have to do a cleaning to pull some ink through the system. I also do this whenever I refill the tanks. Seems like a massive waste of ink, but so be it - the printer is near its end of life, and with it will go the CIS, so I have some large tubs of ink to use up! My printer uses five ink carts. The CIS is designed such that there are five tubes of ink running from the external tanks into the printer and into the carts. The tubes are connected in a ribbon for the most part, but they're separated for the last couple of inches of the tubes. When taking them out of the printer for any reason (like having to draw ink through the tubes, which can sometimes be necessary) you need to pull them all out at the same time and get some covers on them or else they'll drip ink. If one of them slips out of your grip, they seem to have a natural tendency to tangle, and I think the rate at which the ink drips out is tied somehow to your pulse and stress level. Refilling the system is really dead simple, and that's never been messy. However, as my system started aging, I found I had to pull ink through it more often, and that process will make a little mess. One time I didn't fully seat one of the carts into the printer (normally they light up, but remember I had to disable that for my yellow cart? It's always dark...) and that leaked a bunch of ink, which meant cleanup. I replaced my print head once, which required pulling the ink carts out. I managed to forget to uncork the tanks on more than one occasion, and printing that way will cause the tanks to dry, which means manually pulling ink through... I accidentally bumped the external tanks off of the printer stand, too, once, and that made a mess. Luckily it was contained to a plywood tabletop that absorbed a lot, so it didn't hit the carpet. I've never heard about systems where you have to adjust for air pressure - my process sounds comparable to emergencyoverride's. However, over time, things can happen. The biggest frustration for me is that my wife relies on this printer for all sorts of things, and so when it craps out, I have to really dedicate my time to fix it right away.
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Post by ignatious on May 12, 2015 15:41:50 GMT -9
From your response I have gained some degree of specificity. how long ago did you get it? for how long was it a "dream"? how long has it been a pain to deal with before the printers life dwindled to replacement? thanks for your help.
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on May 13, 2015 4:23:06 GMT -9
Lets see... I looked through my posts on the WWG forums (http://www.worldworksgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10361) and found that I have had the CIS since December of 2011. The printer was still under warranty at the time, I had commented. I ran into my first issue within the first couple months. After four months of use, I was still loving the setup and printing a lot. At the 8-month mark, I reported the issue with the yellow cart's chip not being recognized by the printer any longer. I had only been looking at continuous ink systems for a short while, and I had split the cost with my parents, who were at a loss for what to get me as a Christmas gift. I've really had printer trouble in the last 6 months or so. The rollers are warn down so I have to be careful feeding more than one page at a time (ugh!) and if I attempt to print while the cover is closed, something is getting hung up somewhere causing gears to grind and prints to get messed up. So, I feed one page at a time while the cover is open, and deal with my wife rolling her eyes at me whenever she needs to use the printer.
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Post by ignatious on May 18, 2015 5:36:48 GMT -9
Thanks again mproteau and emergencyoverride. I was hoping for a broader base of input, anybody else using cis?
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