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Ciss
I fitted a CISS system to my Epson R285 4 years ago after spending a small fortune on replacement cartridges. The thing uses cartridges with only 7ml of ink in them which means changing at least one every 5th or 6th photo printed. Considering a full set of genuine replacements has an Ebay price of £50 over here, using the thing was far too expensive . I tried the cheap re-manufactured cartridges and had very mixed results. Some arrived dry and some didn't seal correctly to the base of the print head leading to a flood. I guess it depends on finding a good supplier and sticking with them.
I didn't see the point of the refillable cartridges, if your going to get yellow fingers why not make it once a year rather than once a month. I bought my CISS from Continuous Ink Systems, CISS for Epson, HP, Cannon, Ink Refills - CISS Solutions for around the price of a set of new Epson cartridges but with 600ml of ink instead of 42ml . Fitting it was a doddle, it just involved removing the cover of the cartridge case, clipping in the CISS cartridges and routing the tubes. I had to cut a notch in the lid to get the cover switch to work but that only took a couple of minutes with a sharp file. And up until a couple of months ago it never gave a moments trouble. Problems started when we bought a new Xerox laser printer for the office and the Epson was no longer used to print the 50 page software manuals for our customers. It is now only used for printing the occasional photo and the odd paper model. I went to use it the other day to print a couple of photos from my new camera and everything came out with a yellow tint. Doing a clean and nozzle check made no difference and showed that three quarters of the nozzles were blocked. I bought a pack of printer head cleaner on-line and squirted it through each of the ports but it made very little difference. This morning I decided that it was kill or cure time, fixit or throw it. I pulled the head from the printer and dunked the tip into our ultrasonic cleaner along with the air inlet ports from the CISS tanks which after a period of time had become contaminated with ink. After a 10 minute wash cycle at 40ºC using the remainder of the printer cleaner as a solvent, I put the head in a very low oven to dry for a couple of hours. After reassembling the printer,replacing and re-priming the CISS cartridges (by pulling ink through the cartridges and pipes with an empty syringe to remove any air in the system) I retried the nozzle check . All but 2 of the black nozzles worked and the photo printing was almost perfect. Considering that I've had the printer for nearly 5 years and this is the first time I've had problems. I'm not totally sure that the CISS caused the trouble. All inkjet printers need to be used on a regular biases or the ink will dry in the ports and mine hasn't been used that much recently. The savings gained by using a CISS certainly out weigh the hassle. A new set of 6x100ml inks cost me £28 and last 10 times longer than Epson cartridges. Regards Andy |
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