Did you know?
Ink cartridges are tiny gadgets with mundane features, which are indispensable to the inkjet printers which suck them dry.
They're also very expensive, which I am sure you can vouch for that based on personal experience.
Two ink cartridges can be more money (as high as $80) than the initial investment which was your pretty little printer.
Buyers do not always do the research they are supposed to do before actually committing to the sale.
They purchase an inkjet printer and find out about 3 months down the road that the cartridges cost more than the actual inkjet printer.
Consumers don't always have time to be sure whether cartridge producers are giving them their money's worth.
Resellers are practically giving the printers away knowing the future cost of your ink carts.
No wonder why printer divorce is so high, the printer and ink costs can't keep a cheap relationship. The only one's cheeping are the birds.
We took a look at a few cartridge secrets, such as page yields and the effectiveness of multiple-cartridge schemes, to see if manufacturers are delivering on their ink promises. You need to be aware of this information.
Ink Cartridge Primer:
Inkjet printer technology became affordable for average consumers roughly about 11 years ago. Color printers used only one cartridge, containing colors CMY (cyan, magenta, and yellow) ink, all stored in separate chambers inside the cartridge.
This was sometimes called a tri-color cartridge, as you may know referred to by Hewlett Packard.
To print text, the printer simply squirted all three ink colors simultaneously, which created a composite (and sometimes greenish or brown) black.
Then each dot would be placed on top of each other in order to reduce the picoliters. The smaller the drop size the more clear vibrant colors and detail images you would get.
Modern printers improve upon the one-cartridge design by supplementing the CMY cartridge with an individual black (or K) cartridge.
Not only does this improve the quality of black, but it also helps conserve the more expensive color inks for photos.
The addition of black cartridges also spawned the C (cyan) M (magenta) Y (yellow) K (black) acronym that you see on many inkjet specification sheets and equipped printers with enough color power to create approximately 16.7 million tones.
More recently, a few photo printers began shipping with light cyan and light magenta for improved color transitions; Canon's S820, for example uses six individual cartridges to deliver all 6 color schemes.
Manufacturers, such as Canon and Epson, are also implementing four-cartridge schemes, in which each tank carries only cyan, yellow, magenta, or black.
The primary reason this system is catching on is that it wastes less ink. With a three-color cartridge, you're forced to dispose of the cartridge when one color runs out, even if one or two chambers still contain ink. This can increase your cartridge cost.
The four-cartridge setup lets you toss only empty cartridges, so you'll save ink, but depending on your printing habits, you won't necessarily save as much money as you like.
If you print one color more often than another color, your ink costs may drop significantly. Average users won't see a huge cost reduction by switching to a printer that uses four individual cartridges.
Some of them won't print unless all four cartridges are sitting and locked into position within the carriage itself.
Ink Sensors & Page Yield:
Of course, to get the most from your cartridges you have to determine how much ink you've used. By this, just calculate the amount of pages you print within each month.
There are two primary methods printer makers use to accurately display ink levels on your screen. Most companies, such as Epson, use a dot-count method.
The dot-count system works using your printer's driver, which analyzes each image before printing and keeps a running total of the number of droplets sprayed.
Canon claims to have a superior system that uses both dot counting and an optical sensor.
They contain reservoir inside the sponge in the ink tank, [and] the reservoir has an optical ink sensor in it, very impressive.
A light inside the printer shines in the reservoir and the sensor helps determine ink levels.
If the reservoir is empty, the printer estimates that there's about 20% ink remaining in the sponge below the reservoir, and your PC begins using the dot-count method.
Because cartridge cases are typically opaque, some sort of ink monitoring system is a necessity. But how can you determine if the cartridge will yield as many pages as the manufacturer claims?
Most manufacturers assign yield ratings to black cartridges after draining the tank by continuously printing a 1,500-character document at the default resolution setting.
I decided to test a few cartridges with our own test, which we felt more accurately mimicked real-world use. To maximize your ink yields you need to drop each printer to its lowest resolution.
I also wanted a document that covered the entire page, so my "extreme inkjet test" document contained nearly 3,500 characters.
I loaded our Lexmark Z65 with a new $30.00 black cartridge, company-rated at 600 pages. Our test document printed nearly 694 times before text began to fade, resulting in a cost of about 4 cents per page.
I also subjected the black cartridge in Canon's S820D to our test. The $13.00 black cartridge has a manufacturer rating of 620 pages. Our test yielded 565 pages of text, approximately 2 cents per page.
You will get your money's worth from original manufacturer cartridges. Still, it can be painful to spend $30.00 on a new cartridge when you see ads for cartridge refill kits promising to save you loads of cash.
Refill Kit Caper:
We tested a number of refill kits to see if they'll save money and to compare their output with the results of manufacturers' inks. For our tests, we gauged ease of use in preparing and refilling two black cartridges and then subjected those tanks to the Extreme Inkjet Test. Further tests took place on the yield potential and color quality of one color refill system.
Each kit works in basically the same way. You apply rubber gloves and pry, slice, or screw your way into the empty cartridge. Make sure you have a good top cutter. You don't want to crack the plastic.
Then you carefully open a bottle of ink and use a syringe to withdraw a few milliliters of ink. After injecting the ink into the cartridge, you seal it up using the provided tape or rubber stopper. Sounds easy, right? Easier said than done.
Actually, I found it nearly impossible to avoid spilling ink. Be careful not to get ink on your clothes, it can soak your skin, and when covered properly, ink slopped on the table.
After all this, the cartridge produced about 25 full-page photos, which was OK, considering the huge bottles of ink should last for about nine more refills (about 25 cents per photo).
Photos looked remarkably good on both plain and photo paper, but they were grainy compared to photos printed with Epson ink. Worse yet, shortly after printing a few photos we attempted to print black text, and after a few pages, the tank stopped working and ink spewed all over the printer.
The chip resetting software may have caused the malfunction.
In spite of the uncertain cost savings and poor photo quality, refill kits are hot items, flourishing in spite of printer manufacturers' efforts to convince customers that third-party inks are super inferior.
In spite of advances made by third-party ink makers, printer manufacturers refuse to back down from their claims that such inks simply don't work correctly with advanced print head technology.
Refill Rebuttal:
Canon, Hewlett-Packard, and Lexmark all use thermal print head technology. Epson uses patented Piezo-electric print heads. The technologies employ slightly different ink cartridges and dissimilar ink formulations to work with the print heads.
In thermal inkjets, a tiny resistor in the print head warms the ink, causing a bubble that forces a droplet out of the print head nozzle.
Epson's Piezo-electric technology doesn't heat ink. Instead, a tiny crystal in the print head works like a pump; when a negative charge is applied to the crystal it bends out from the ink chamber and draws in a droplet, while a subsequent positive charge flexes the crystal in, pushing the droplet through the nozzle.
Both technologies have exacting specifications for the inks they shoot.
Inks used in thermal printers are typically dye-based and must be formulated to retain good print qualities under heat stress.
Epson's ink developers, however, are free to dismiss heat factors and instead create smaller and more consistently shaped droplets. Pairing inks properly with tiny print heads and nozzles is no simple feat.
Ink chemistry is "very complex stuff" in part because the various characteristics of inks affect the way droplets interact with each other on paper. Because every manufacturer's papers and inks are so different and multifaceted, there's just no way can a third-party lab reproduce the original ink quality.
Although refill kits may produce prints that initially look nice, it's doubtful they have the same fade-resistant or water-resistant properties of original printer inks.
Manufacturers also stress that while using a refilled cartridge doesn't affect your printer's warranty, if your printer malfunctions due to a refilled or modified cartridge, the warranty is voided.
Whether you trust printer makers or their refill-kit competition, our opinion of refill kits is that they're a bit of a hassle to use.
If you print a lot of text, they may save you money. However, we wouldn't pair third-party inks with expensive photo paper, especially if you want your prints to last for years.
Print Job Complete:
Ink cartridges are complex, sometimes controversial, and always necessary for the users who depend on inkjets for their stellar text and graphics production.
Understanding cartridges and their refill potential will help keep you printing for years to come, and your knowledge may help you save a few bucks, too.
Hopefully this information has been supportive to you printing means and instances that you may have encountered before. You now have the confidence to deal with any printing matters.
"Be in charge of your printer ink; don't let your ink cartridges be in charge of you."
These exposed secrets will prevent you from falling into the ink river and printer pit drowning on the retail shore which happen to be overpriced in the first place
