Printer whiners

[Tim Williams]

Since the topic comes up here from time to time, I just thought I'd brag a
little.

I've had a Canon Pixma iP6000D for years.

- Full color
- Photo quality prints
- Refillable ink cartridges (but I'm lazy, so I buy new anyway)
- Two sided (duplex) printing (slow, but it works)
- Allows printing with "low ink" warning, in fact, you can print until it
says "okay, now you're screwed, change the ink all damned ready!"

In the last two years, I haven't had much need for it, so it's been
sitting on its table, inactive. Plugged in but turned off. Never heard
it self-cleaning or anything, I'm quite sure it's "off-off", standby only.

Last week I needed a document, so I turned it on. After this long, I'd
expect it needs at least a deep clean. But for the hell of it, I printed
a test page.

Just a few jets were sticky, not even clogged.

The test image was actually quite passable, just not up to my standards.
So I gave it a single, basic cleaning. Nearly perfect test page after
that. Good to go.

With all the P&M people do about printers, why would they buy anything
besides this and a laser?

Of course, I doubt these machines are manufactured anymore, but used units
should be as cheap as a new POS-1 printer.

Tim

 

[Joerg]

Since the topic comes up here from time to time, I just thought I'd brag a
little.

I've had a Canon Pixma iP6000D for years.

- Full color
- Photo quality prints
- Refillable ink cartridges (but I'm lazy, so I buy new anyway)
- Two sided (duplex) printing (slow, but it works)
- Allows printing with "low ink" warning, in fact, you can print until it
says "okay, now you're screwed, change the ink all damned ready!"

In the last two years, I haven't had much need for it, so it's been
sitting on its table, inactive. Plugged in but turned off. Never heard
it self-cleaning or anything, I'm quite sure it's "off-off", standby only.

Last week I needed a document, so I turned it on. After this long, I'd
expect it needs at least a deep clean. But for the hell of it, I printed
a test page.

Just a few jets were sticky, not even clogged.

The test image was actually quite passable, just not up to my standards.
So I gave it a single, basic cleaning. Nearly perfect test page after
that. Good to go.

With all the P&M people do about printers, why would they buy anything
besides this and a laser?

Of course, I doubt these machines are manufactured anymore, but used units
should be as cheap as a new POS-1 printer.

All this greatly depends on the climate you live in. Out here we have
summers where it can be 100F for weeks. If you live eco-friendly and
don't run the big fat A/C then it can be a toasty 90F in the office.
Takes just one summer for pretty much any ink cartridge to gunk up.
Lasers don't have that problem.

 

[Tim Williams]

All this greatly depends on the climate you live in. Out here we have
summers where it can be 100F for weeks. If you live eco-friendly and
don't run the big fat A/C then it can be a toasty 90F in the office.
Takes just one summer for pretty much any ink cartridge to gunk up.
Lasers don't have that problem.

Ah, but this is Wisconsin! Our summers aren't quite as nasty as in the
South, but it nonetheless gets to the 80s and 90s for weeks at a time,
with similar humidity.

Add to that, I'm on the upper floor of an apartment with no central AC (I
do have AC, but it's only in the bedroom... no way it's doing any good in
the rest of this place!). Summers are sweaty here. s

Tim

 

[Joerg]

Ah, but this is Wisconsin! Our summers aren't quite as nasty as in the
South, but it nonetheless gets to the 80s and 90s for weeks at a time,
with similar humidity.

With high humidity the cartridges have a chance. Our summers are also
bone-dry and that aggravates the problem. Anything that contains even
minute amounts of moisture will have those sucked out within days. Very
visible outside, where grass can turn yellow and then brown in a matter
of days.

Add to that, I'm on the upper floor of an apartment with no central AC (I
do have AC, but it's only in the bedroom... no way it's doing any good in
the rest of this place!). Summers are sweaty here. s

Can be here as well, because we have a small evap cooler in the living
room. Not much of that makes it here into the office but I have a very
high tolerance for climate extremes. One of the reasons why my large
laptop is one of those mil-spec deals

 

[gregz]

Since the topic comes up here from time to time, I just thought I'd brag a
little.

I've had a Canon Pixma iP6000D for years.

- Full color
- Photo quality prints
- Refillable ink cartridges (but I'm lazy, so I buy new anyway)
- Two sided (duplex) printing (slow, but it works)
- Allows printing with "low ink" warning, in fact, you can print until it
says "okay, now you're screwed, change the ink all damned ready!"

In the last two years, I haven't had much need for it, so it's been
sitting on its table, inactive. Plugged in but turned off. Never heard
it self-cleaning or anything, I'm quite sure it's "off-off", standby only.

Last week I needed a document, so I turned it on. After this long, I'd
expect it needs at least a deep clean. But for the hell of it, I printed
a test page.

Just a few jets were sticky, not even clogged.

The test image was actually quite passable, just not up to my standards.
So I gave it a single, basic cleaning. Nearly perfect test page after
that. Good to go.

With all the P&M people do about printers, why would they buy anything
besides this and a laser?

Of course, I doubt these machines are manufactured anymore, but used units
should be as cheap as a new POS-1 printer.

Tim

I've seen 4, got one. Still works last time I tried it. It's slower. I use
cheap ink. It does use a lot of ink turned on. Works pretty fast on draft
mode. I'm using a do all network printer, and I can print with iPad. I'm
also turning it off to conserve ink.

Greg

 

[Martin Riddle]

It was introduced in Oct 2004. You have no more than 8.4 years of
bragging rights.


The Canon IP6000d printer is unique in that it has a removable and
replaceable print head. That makes it very easy to remove the print
head, baptize in dilute ammonia cleaner, and any head clogs should be
cleared. For desperation cases, I use a low power (4 watt) ultrasonic
cleaner. Oddly, I rarely see clogged heads on the older Canon
inkjets.

However, the newer models are awful. Fixed print head (like Epson)
that can't be removed or easily cleaned. The best you can do is run a
paper towel soaked in cleaner through the paper feed to clean the
print head. The firmware is apparently uniformly suicidal in that it
will often NOT park the head over the rubber seal in the parking
position, preferring instead to drip ink into the mechanism. This ink
is eventually caught by a felt sponge at the bottom of the printer,
which is difficult to access. I'm not quite sure exactly where Canon
transitioned between quality and junk, but my guess(tm) is that it was
about 2006.


You might want to check out the prices on color laser printers. The
initial costs are down to $150 for refurbished:
<http://www.staples.com/Brother-Refurbished-EHL-3070CW-Digital-Color-Printer/product_322268>
A 4 color toner refill kit is $20 on eBay. Carts are about $23/ea for
about 1400 pages or about 7 cents per page.

Compare that to an inkjet printer. About $60 for a decent refill,
that's good for maybe 500 pages, on a good day. That's 12 cents per
page, ignoring the cost of the counterfeit refill protection chips.

Incidentally, the color laserjet is rated at 17 ppm and delivers about
15ppm, while the typical inkjet might be rated at 8 ppm color, and
actually do about 4 ppm at a resolution similar to the laserjet. Fast
is fun.


I solve the inkjet printer and fax problem for my customers by
refusing to repair them beyond a simple cleaning. I coerce them into
buying a laser printer, usually an AOI (all in one) device. Nobody
has complained (much):
<http://www.staples.com/Brother-Refurbished-MFC-7360N-Laser-Multifunction-Printer/product_424336>
Hmmm... The price has been going up and down between $120 and $99
since about November 2012. No clue why.


--
Jeff Liebermann [email protected]
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

The Color stability in the printed images is very good.
I have a print that is over a year old and still looks fantastic.
It was from a 2025 or something like that, the refils are $80 for each
CMYK and Black.

Cheers

 

[Robert Baer]

I have a few Laserjet CP1525's, which are great color laser printers if you
don't print a lot. The toner price is silly for quantity printing. They seem to
be perfectly reliable, but they do whine... they clean or calibrate themselves
at random, and it's pretty dramatic.

We have a huge Sharp digital copier at work, all networked. It works as a very
nice, very fast, B-size printer and we buy toner by the pound. It will feed and
scan stacks of paper into PDFs and dump that onto a server. Very cool.

In the bathroom downstairs here, next to the toilet, I have an Epson dot matrix
printer with 11x14 fanfold paper. Guests have to work around it.

Isn't 11x14 a bit large for TP?

 

[mpm]

Since the topic comes up here from time to time, I just thought I'd brag a

little.



I've had a Canon Pixma iP6000D for years.



- Full color

- Photo quality prints

- Refillable ink cartridges (but I'm lazy, so I buy new anyway)

- Two sided (duplex) printing (slow, but it works)

- Allows printing with "low ink" warning, in fact, you can print until it

says "okay, now you're screwed, change the ink all damned ready!"



In the last two years, I haven't had much need for it, so it's been

sitting on its table, inactive. Plugged in but turned off. Never heard

it self-cleaning or anything, I'm quite sure it's "off-off", standby only..



Last week I needed a document, so I turned it on. After this long, I'd

expect it needs at least a deep clean. But for the hell of it, I printed

a test page.



Just a few jets were sticky, not even clogged.



The test image was actually quite passable, just not up to my standards.

So I gave it a single, basic cleaning. Nearly perfect test page after

that. Good to go.



With all the P&M people do about printers, why would they buy anything

besides this and a laser?



Of course, I doubt these machines are manufactured anymore, but used units

should be as cheap as a new POS-1 printer.



Tim



--

Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.

Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

I've pretty much reached the conclusion that I will never be 100% satisfiedwith a color printer. We still have the inkjet HP something-or-other, theBrother HL-4040CN color laser (2 of those), and the previously mentioned El Cheapo Brother B/W laser. For the latter, we still haven't found the right combination of secret herbs and spices to get it to play nicely with ourcorporate LAN.

That said, there are a couple things that might get me closer to 100%. Forinstance, if staff would quit printing in color when only a few insignificant portions of the page are actually in color - such as a logo at the top of a datasheet when everything else is B/W.

We went around and set "black only" as the default but of course, not all programs enforce those settings (I guess they have their own defaults?) We should probably rename the printers too: color - B/W.

Another thing: Not everything needs to be printed in the first place.

I know I sound like the "Print Czar" or something. It's actually just a pet peeve, I guess. (And speaking of pets: maybe if we got that unicorn someone here mentioned previously as our company mascot we could DIY the blood use to make all those ink cartridges!)

 

[mpm]

In the bathroom downstairs here, next to the toilet, I have an Epson dot matrix printer with 11x14 fanfold paper. Guests have to work around it.

Have you considered using softer 2-ply paper?

-mpm

 

[[email protected]]

In the bathroom downstairs here, next to the toilet, I have an Epson
dot matrix printer with 11x14 fanfold paper. Guests have to work
around it.

Logging printer for some kind of security system?

Or, there are some electrodes and pumps and chemistry-set stuff in the
bottom of the toilet, and guests get a free analysis printout a few
seconds after they flush?

Or maybe something like this:

After a while the style settles down a bit and it begins to tell you
things you really need to know, like the fact that the fabulously
beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative
erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance
between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the
planet is surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave: so
every time you go to the lavatory it is vitally important to get a
receipt.

(Douglas Adams, "The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy")

Matt Roberds

 

[Tim Williams]

I started by
installing a POTS phone in the bathroom (called the "head phone").
That was replaced by a cordless phone after the POTS phone corroded
beyond repair.

Too much garlic and cabbage in your diet?!

Tim

 

[Joerg]

Too much garlic and cabbage in your diet?!

Or teenage daughters that take daily 1/2h showers each