How much ink is in Epson cartridges?
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- Опубликовано: 16 окт 2023
- If you print a lot of glossy photos you will know how annoying and expensive it is when an ink cartridge runs out. Worse still, a new printer may only come with "demo" cartridges with hardly any ink in them, as they are looking to make their money from ink sales.
After a VERY messy evening of completely dismantling an ink cartridge layer by layer, I discovered there is a hidden air valve built in, so I was pulling a vacuum in the cartridges with the syringe during this video.
In the past Epson used to be one of the worst for locking down their cartridges, and Canon were the gift that kept on giving with their easily refilled cartridges and washable print heads. But that has now reversed with Canon being completely obnoxious by actively disabling printer features if you use an unofficial cartridge. (Like disabling the scanner!)
Epson have gone the direction of selling more expensive Ecotank printers with a bulk ink system where you can literally pour large bottles of ink in and then print to your heart's content. I wonder if they will try to introduce a revenue protection system at some point to enforce their official inks.
Prior to the ecotank printer I used an unofficial bulk ink tank system which sat next to the printer and connected to the ink cartridge adaptors with a ribbon-pipe system. It had a bit of circuitry and a push button so that if the printer saw the cartridge "getting low" you could just press a button and it would reset all the cartridge counters to full.
Note that while the cheap generic inks will produce an acceptable quality image in the short term it is more likely to fade or colour shift than the proper inks. Companies like Epson spend a lot of money on ink chemistry research.
With unbranded inks there's also the risk of clogging up a printhead if the ink contains random goo. Fortunately there are often ways to clean out ink systems if you're technically inclined.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of RUclips's algorithm quirks, allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
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One question of course: just how much of a bad idea is it to put in a Sodastream ?
The taste test would be a bit unpleasant in many ways.
I dunno that Cyan looks tasty.@@bigclivedotcom
@@bigclivedotcomnothing you cant handle....
@@bigclivedotcomplease do it
That -syphilis- *would* be the thing to do when you want to get RID of the Soda Stream! 😂
Also, to be edible, use Squid Ink or the kind for decorating cakes.
Still, a calamity for the Soda Stream, but _recoverable_ lol
_edit: thanks, swipe prediction!_ 🤦♂️😅
It might be worth running one until the printer says it's empty and then seeing how much ink is actually left.
What’s worse are the triple colour cartridges, as they stop working if you run out of one colour
Yeah, it's always just one color.
@@brianallen9810 Black tends to run out first even if they supply a bigger black tank. Three ink printers are not generally used for much colour printing after all.
@@hedydd2What...? Black is a completely separate cartridge so that's hardly relevant. Also, plenty of people print in color on 2 cartridge printers.
And on a color printer, you still need the color cartridge do print black and white
@@12345....... You still need the cartridge, but it doesn't have to have ink AFAIK. Don't throw the cartridge out, easy.
Years back I was working at an advertising agency where we had a large format Epson printer with big cartridges. When these big catrtridges were "empty" I took them home with me and emptied the remaining ink with a syringe. 1 portion of this leftover ink was enough to refill my home printer 6 times! I've been printing with free original Epson ink for several years 😂
Fired
😳🤯
Edit: I was reminded of an older model HP printer my dad has where it's used so infrequently that it tends to run out of ink even though HP's software shows that there's still ink remaining.
@@Crecross He doesn't work there anymore.
Experimenting with wax thermal transfer printing many years ago, I once obtained a few used reels of „ink“ ribbons from a local business to try and re-use them for second-grade prints in an old printer I'd come into possession of. When rewinding the ribbon to fit it, I noticed that every document printed on them was duplicated in perfect detail on the ribbon, and some of those documents weren't exactly for public consumption! 🔒
Needless to say; If I ever use one of those printers again, I'll be making darned sure to keep the used ribbons under close control and effect proper disposal, like I did with the few mentioned above! 😎
That's proper recycling ♻
There's a labyrinth of breather passages under the labels. If you take the side label off you'll see a long wiggly path - that's where the air goes in... They're wiggly and long to stop ink coming out of the airholes. Most of the time it works.
I gave up on ink jet printers years ago when I realised the scam they were. Expensive cartridges mysteriously needing replacement even when their colours weren't being used. Yep. Epson. Looking at you. Changed over to a laser printer and haven't looked back.
There's really no room for ink jet printers when your printing habits are "once in a presidential election." Toner doesn't go bad.
I remember HP used to put a rather conservative expiration date in a PROM chip on their cartridges. Microsoft’s HP print driver didn’t care if my Business Inkjet 2250 had old cartridges, but when I loaded the HP driver, my printer suddenly stopped working. I poked through the driver and found one of the first things it did was to send a Universal Exit Language string &DATE=. The printer had no sense of time until the driver told the printer the date, so the date in the cartridge PROMs was irrelevant up to that point. I patched the HP driver to send the word HUGS instead of DATE and then I was able to use old cartridges to my heart’s content. I kind of liked the notion of sending my printer hugs. I believe HP started putting a battery backed clock in their newer printers so printer would have an innate sense of time and things went screwy if the coin cell running the clock died. I suspect the HP driver sends Universal Exit Language commands to set the printer’s clock so the printer can correct any drift.
Tank printers tho
@@nickwallette6201 I’ve serviced HP printers which had poor print quality despite having plenty of toner in the magazine. It was the rubber scraper which turned hard and did not clean the OPC drum. There are vendors which sell parts allowing cartridges to be serviced, but that is above the pay grade of many customers
It's really not mysterious. The ink lines that weren't being used (the colours in your case) will become clogged with dry ink if the printer does not periodically flush them. It does this by squirting a bunch of ink into a waste ink pad inside the printer. If the printer did not have this feature then you'd just get a bunch of thin white lines through your prints when you do go to use that colour, and the repair would be so expensive you'd probably just prefer to replace the printer.
Although the relevant metric is to weigh it, then print until the printer won't print anymore, and then weigh again. Because that is the amount of ink you're actually able to utilize.
Many printers register them as "empty" in order to save the print heads.
@@jonnoMoto Yeah, I wouldn't defend what printer manufacturers are doing right now. "Fstoppers" did a good video on it.
@@graealex "Right now"...as in for the past decade or more... ;)
@@Case_ I think it has gotten progressively worse. The video I mentioned showed that you would barely get a few pages out of a single tank. In fact, it was 35 pages of text (!), which calculates to about 45 cent cost per page. That is an absolute new low. Plus, printers try to use CMY in addition, unless explicitly told not to. That is absolutely intentional.
@@graealexYeah it's intentional. It's intentionally done to make your black cartridge last longer as it's the one that usually runs out first.
A dye is a molecular colorant and a pigment is tiny particles. In theory you could physically separate a pigment ink with a filter or something, but dye inks are a true solution.
@chemprofdave
They do say, "If you're not a part of the solution, you're a part of the precipitate." 😉
Thank you for this interesting fact. Until now I believed pigment was the colour itself and dye was like the pigment disolved in a solvent.
I haven't really thought of it before but i think it's really nice that with 3d printer there is a standardised filament roll that fits basically all 3d printers.
Yeah... if your printer happens to be a filament printer. And compatible with the exact type.
@@Gary_Hun oh right I forgot that there is also resin 3d printers and some others too but I don't think they are nearly as common.
Except the first industrial ones that had VERY expensive chipped cartridges with a roll of filament inside.
Don't worry, as the industry matures I'm sure they'll innovate and find ways to lock the customer into proprietary solutions instead...
@@foogod4237 ofcourse. It would be too nice if they didn't and we can't have that. 😛
The new epson eco tanks are actually great value for money, you get a years worth of ink with them, and then you can refill with essentially any ink you want, just refill the bottles you get with the printer. The only disposable part is a waste ink pad which on most models are a breeze to replace. The epson of today is so much different to the epson of old.
That being said, I’m really shocked to see so much ink in a cartridge, the canon and brother carts I’ve worked with in the past barely have 5ml of ink in them
I'm currently using the Epson Eco Tank system, and it's the best ink printer I've ever had. It's a very efficient printer, and since the replacement ink is relatively cheap, I'll buy the genuine Epson refill bottles when the time comes.
Only downside to the Eco tank system is in transporting the printer (if cleaning, or moving office...) it has to be transported in horizontal position. You also have to keep watch on ink levels to ensure printer never runs dry. Eco tank is the way to go.
Amazed that Clive didn't get any ink on his trademark work-bench! No newspaper... what a pro!
I gave up on inkjet printers eons ago. Laser printers FTW. They last a very long time, with my oldest one being 20 years old and 500,000+ pages on the clock. Generic toner cartridges are $18 or so and are good for 5,000 pages. Even if it hasn't been used in a year, it'll still fire right up.
That's the reason I went laser. Got sick and tired of dried out ink and clogged printheads.
@@kimchristensen2175 Not an issue with new inkjets. They have an automated system that periodically cleans the printheads even if the printer is off for a long time. Lasers work great until they don't, if the drum unit fails it's practically e-waste at that point.
Having been around mostly laser printers during my work in various companies, I found it much safer to get myself a laser printer instead of any ink printers. I rarely had any real need for color printing, so I went for the monochrome black option, which was very easy to handle. I also had a lot of experience as a customer support person most of the time, hearing how much the customers complained about their messed up ink printers. In my experience, there were a lot less calls from customers about the laser printers. I did enjoy this episode and seeing this method of determining how much ink is in the cartridges, since I have seen a couple of different videos from other RUclipsrs, where they complained about other printer manufacturers like Canon and how little ink is in those cartridges.
I have a Brother laser that must be about 10 years old. With regular use a full toner cartridge last years for me. Two years ago, I bought a complete refill set (tone+drum). Haven't needed to use it yet. On the other hand, I have a large-format Xerox laser and it does use the chip on the toner cartridge. Fortunately, I found a Chinese seller of replacement chips for cheap....
Same here. Am on my 3rd Kyocera laser printer in 25 years. For color photos i just go down to the drugstore and print them out. Larger format I can order and have sent to me.
Same here, 10 year old Brother mono laser printer and a second hand Samsung (HP really!) colour laser both working well for a fraction of the cost of ink :)
@@zebo-the-fat Add my name to the Brother mono laser list. Duplex network printer for under a hundred quid, about 8 years ago. Love it.
@@root42 When I wasn't in rural area I did that. But you have to be careful of the shop because some just don't care about the quality of the print.
Generally, I hated Epson ink because the dye based inks fades. Fades terribly, even under glass.
Their pigmented inks, however, are excellent. I've had photos printed with their pigment inks in bright sunlight for months without any color change.
I think you need to do the same thing with HP cartridges as a comparison.
I'd watch this too!
I agree with this, but I'll also raise my understanding that there's a lot less content in HP ink cartridges...
(As little as 5ml, if I'm not that mistaken... 🤏)
@@dieseldragon6756 I opened up an HP cartridge once. It had a spongey foam material material in it with only a tiny little spot of ink that didn't even cover the entire sponge.
@@dieseldragon6756But the HP system is more efficient than Epson. Epson uses fixed piezo printheads, a significant amount of ink every replacement is squirted out just to prime the system. HP uses disposable thermal printheads in the cartridge, they waste less ink because air doesn't enter the system. Ultimately, it's how many pages you can print.
You mean the 5ml full size cartridge, the 2ml starter cartridge, or the 10ml extra life cartridge. All the same exact size, but with different size foam pads and plastic filler blocks in them, because the cartridge contains enough space to fit 50ml in there.
I have one of the first epson ecotanks and it has been excellent. The only thing that I'm worried is regarding the printing heads. Once they start printing with lines or get clogged, there's no way to replace or service them as they are firmly attached to the continuos ink system with 4 tubes that carry the ink and are well hidden inside a non serviceable area of the printer. Tilting printers with reservoirs of ink sounds like a terrible idea also
There are videos on RUclips showing how to remove eco-tank print heads. But also techniques for unclogging them with a layer of kitchen towel under the print head and a suitable ink dissolving liquid.
@@bigclivedotcomHP used to advice rubbing theirs clean with a sheet of printer paper .
The eco tanks without the screen have a built-in hardware ink purge for cases like this.
Just hold the button that has the stop print icon for 10 seconds, and it'll do an ink purge. For heavy clogs, do it 4 times, turn the printer off and on again. Do the purge a 3rd time and then turn off the printer.
Hold the ink button when powering on the printer, and it should do nozzle test print.
The only reason I know this niche bit of information is that I used to sell them, and I got told this by trick back by Epson tech support.
It drinks a lot of ink, though doing this.
If you need an inkjet and can get an older Canon model that uses BCI-24 ink then you don't have to worry about the printer claiming the cartridges are empty as there are no chips at all, if you ever open the front cover the software will ask you if you have changed a cartridge as that's the only way it knows. It will warn you that the cartridges are low/empty but it won't stop printing.
A friend's printer told her that the black ink was low and needed replacing... She continued to use it frequently for like *_2 years._* 😏🤣
1:30 to answer your question there is usually an air port on the top of the cartridge when you get refillable ones, however typically the cartridges simply pull air through the membrane sticker that is on the side of them. That's why they warning labels saying DO NOT REMOVE on it as if you do you'll spill the ink everywhere.
When I was looking for a printer I chose a Brother primarily because the ink cartridges (only black needed to print) were less than $10USD for a double size black.
The color ones (3) were $6USD so I could print in color for pretty cheap as well...though I rarely needs to print colors...mostly just needed documents to print.
Originally I paid $80USD for the printer...I recently looked up the price for the same model...they are over $120USD now :)
Why not an laser printer ?
Have ink prices increased?
@@VideosVlogsThatsIt I use a Brother laser printer. and I live about three miles from brother blvd. in Memphis (there is a Brother factory there but I'm not sure if they make printers or sewing machines there)
I was reminded of when I used my stepdad's Brother MFC (connected wirelessly to an old HP ProBook he gave me and I keep at his house), and even though I was only using it for the scanner, the software looked much nicer than HP's printer software and felt less annoying to use.
When I was choosing a printer, I went for a WiFi capable laser printer from Brother, because it also had the most and cheapest 3rd party replacement toner assemblies.
Never looked at the cost of the original.
Some years ago while working for a large firm I gave up on buying ink as it became more cost effective to buy cheaper printers that came with ink cartridge I then gave away the old printers. Not sure I did much for the environment but made the IT department look a lot more efficient on paper.
I used to work for a large multinational company that had a leasing agreement with Samsung. The print servers had software on them that counted how many pages a printer had printed since the last toner cartridge change, and when it got down to 10% or so some guy knocked on the office door with boxes of new toner, never had to order the stuff at all..! I asked him if he'd deliver to my house once, he wouldn't, the swine 🤣
One sneaky thing that you do not see many people talk about is that the ink jet printers throw away ink every time you power it on. Even if you do not power it off, it will go through the "cleaning" cycle if you leave it powered on after a while. and depending on the model it also goes through a cleaning process after printing X ammount of pages.
After horrible experiences with HP ink jet printers, I switched to a black and white laser printer. Been happy with it as I rarely print things so it fits my printing life style. With the HP ink jet I had issues with the cartridges drying out when I needing it, and inconsistent print jobs requiring print head needing to be cleaned.
While happy with current printer, sometimes I miss color printing. If I ended up getting a 2nd printer for color things, I have strongly considered the Epson Ecotank line.
Lexmark were always a cheap printer expensive as hell inks
love how you get right to the point, no boring intros! keep up the work
I recall my first color inkjet, a Xerox 4020, ink cartridges were just plastic tubs with foil end covers, flipping to the back pages of the manual was the safety data on the ink, which was non-toxic.
*blinks
Erm, non-toxic ink? So food coloring? A little experimentation and surprisingly equal parts red/blue food color resulted in the best black.
I find Epson to be one of the less egregious when it comes to the ink content of their cartridges... Probably because especially with their WorkForce line their cartridges don't have that stupid absorbent sponge in them, so you actually end up being able to extract almost all of the ink from a given cartridge.
then there's the RIPS system which is basically the printer equivalent of a capri-sun!!
The worst ones are where the Scanner stops working because the cyan ink ran out (or expired). Its ALWAYS the cyan in my case...
The scanner thing is so annoying because I use a colour laser printer for printing, so the ink in my inkjet/scanner is always expiring..
I use a Samsung multi-function machine, printer/scanner/copier/fax (yes I still use fax..!) and it's working perfectly after 5 years. I do sometimes have problems with paper pickup in the additional paper tray that I added, but a little isopropyl alcohol on the pickup roller sorts that.
As someone who has been following the tech scene since the early 80s, I have found this particular type of price gouging to be at the top of my list of grievances. When you realize how much they're charging per unit volume of ink in these systems, it is bad enough. And then you find out that it's also just adding to our trash pile footprint as well -- along with those contemptible single-use plastic coffee pods. Not only are laser jets far better value, they don't bleed if the printed page gets a little wet. Sorry, but I find this market saturated with scammers who are all trying to figure out how to screw people out of as much money possible for some damn colored ink. It's not only greedy, but it doesn't give one iota of concern about the human footprint on the planet. How many pounds of plastic will a normal user waste in a lifetime buying those molded plastic ink cartridges? One of the first things I did with my laser printer toner cartridges was to make a hole in them so that I can pour new toner into each as well. All you need is a funnel, and a sticky plastic label to cover the hole. And it's a color printer, so I had to do each of the three colors plus the black. I bought replacement toner bottles when I got the printer over a decade ago. I got a larger amount of black, and one of each of the three colors. And I haven't needed to replace anything else since then. And in the whole 10+ years since, I have not needed to add any toner powder to anything other than the black cartridge!! Still prints every bit as well as the day I bought it. Ink-jet printers suck.
It's important to note that the toner cartridge is meant to be a wear item and does have functional parts in it. It's why some of the cheaper Brother monochrome lasers don't have high capacity toner cartridges available... It's not that there's no room for extra toner, it's that the cartridge wears out too fast.
But outside of the fusor wearing, refurbishing it to 'like new' will just consist of cleaning all the rollers and gears, greasing them, and replacing the drum head/cartridges and you can go back to refilling.
My mom needed a printer when she started working from home and I spent more than I should have on a Brothers all in one. Well we are still on the original cartridges years later and we use the scanner and extra features all the time. She didn't like how much I spent at first but it was well worth it over say HP. Also Louis R just had a video talking about HP and their practices and I believe he recommends Brothers so that really makes me feel good about my purchase lol.
There are all in one printers that will refuse to scan when one of the ink cartridges is empty.
There's a much worse problem, I have a portable WF110W epson printer, that one is a great example of a printer that I only buy the genuine cartridges for it, simply because they're very small and the ink quality on compatibles can be dodgy and you might end up with dry ink over time if you don't use it for a long time (can also happen to genuine cartridges but more often to cheaper ink).
The right type of ink will always be used in the genuine cartridges despite paying a ridiculous amount for it, with that being said it's a portable printer that hardly gets any use if you need something you use a lot i would certainly go for the eco tanks or toner it's a lot easier to refill even the genuine ink is cheaper per ml than using cartridges. And to be clear here a compatible ink that's made to the same standards (specific colour if you care about colour accuracy during prints, viscosity, chemistry) as the genuine ink will be just as good but that's hard to know for certain.
There is a bigger problem however that most people don't realise, sometimes you'll get a compatible cartridge you install it and the printer either refuses to work or everything is off misaligned or not printing anything correctly, so you have to run the cleaning cycle which dumps a lot of precious ink so you just replaced say your cyan the printer will dump ink from every colour regardless if you only have a bad cyan print, it doesn't have to be this way of course but they make it so you waste as much ink as possible on cleaning cycles and after x amounts of pages printed why not another automatic cleaning cycle? The worst problem with inkjet printers is and has been for a while is how much ink they waste to function.
Even the ecotank ones, a friend of mine had one which also had a bad cyan print (coincidence) in fact none it wasn't printing out of the cyan head, required a special deep clean that even the printer itself says it will use a lot of ink, but then again you can't ask it to only do that to the cyan so it spent about 5min dumping ink and cleaning the heads and the cyan came back afterwards, it used about 10% of the tank which is insane considering how much ink and yes 10% of each colour despite all others being just fine, per ml it's about as much as a set of normal inkjet cartridges just to clean up and get it back to work.
I "took to bits" a HP Inkjet printer and it was a hellatious mess inside. All the overflow and cartridge cleaning had made a big mess and the sponge was saturated.
At the college where I worked the instructors would buy an Epson printer and after being gone for 3 months during the summer the heads would dry up and get plugged and the printer was useless. At least with the HP the inkjets get replaced when the cartridge is replaced and it's working again. But epson prints some beautiful pictures.
All inkjets have a waste ink collection mat to absorb the ink from cleaning cycles.
Yes, but the waste ink pad can become oversaturated and start leaking out the bottom of the unit. This probably only happens if running a large amount of cleaning cycles or if there’s a malfunction and the ink siphons out.
The latter is why you should always keep your tanks level with the printer. Don’t ask me how I know. 😵💫
For your few investigations that do not contain fire, have you ever considered puppy pads or similar things to protect your desk? As an aside, when I used to do photography and print the pictures myself, I was amazed at the difference the paper made. Sadly it did seem to be a "you get what you pay for" when buying the paper. The most expensive was the best (at least back then).
I'd be concerned about the white surface flaring out in the image or making the video itself look dark. I'm happy to just let the bench gain its scars.
Pig Mats are gray.
I thank Epson for making me change to laser. Worst gat dang ink jet I ever had the inconvenience of forcing to do its basic one job. Wasted so much ink on cleaning pages than actual bonafide printing. It ended up getting smashed into a thousand pieces out in the patio. I'm still happy with my 10+-year-old Color LaserJet *_that still works!_* Thank you, Epson! 🙃
I had one that used the T048x cartridges. I dumped the printer when the light magenta went out and it would not let me print straight black without it. I could no longer by individuals couldn't find refills at the time.
Bet the kitchen looks like a Smurf was brutally murdered.
The sink is still cyan.
I did away with my printers in fury in February 2017. Bought an Epson Ecotank printer then and it’s still going brilliantly now. For £30 a year roughly it’s given me virtually unlimited printing. I would never go back to the cartridge system. I well remember buying entire printers from Argos as they came with the ink included- it was as cheap as buying the ink alone. Cartridges are just a total racket.
Had to laugh at the refillable cartridge "Air Hole" 🤣🤣🤣
Leaving the printer permanently connected to the power socket, even with it switched off at the printer, passes a tiny amount of power to the print heads to prevent them from drying. Advice from the printer engineer that serviced a couple of my Epson printers a time or two. They used to be set to stop at 8,000 pages and require service, which is why I'm on Canon now.
I can get behind this, with my printer coming from the latter brand. Not only no software locks on what cartridges you use and whether or not you can refill them (Print quality being at users risk of course) but the output mastering software included with mine - Bought at a time when „Print preview“ was an uncommon feature and seldom used - Is absolutely fantastic, and has saved me $$$s on inefficient and wasted output! 👍
I don't know what model Epson printer you have but I have not heard of any that can prevent the ink from drying in the print head by leaving it conected to the power.
I worked for Epson as one of the lead repair techs and corrected any faults found on printers as they came down the assembly line. Given how the print heads work on Epson printers I don't even see how this would work to be honest.
I have a modern Epson printer that is always conected to power but if it is not used in a while the print heads will clog up.
@@nemesis2264 Agree. As far as I know the printer should remain connected to power because these devices do not have a battery-backed real-time clock. So they can't 'know' how long they have been fully disconnected from power - it could have been for weeks, months or years! Therefore the printer will do a full head cleaning cyclus before printing again. And that will use up a lot of ink.
At one point I was buying NEW printers to use the cartridges they came with as it was cheaper than purchasing a full set of refills. I ended up owning FOUR new printers that did nothing - just to get some cheap ink. Shortly afterwards the manufacturers stopped selling the printers with 'full' cartridges. Tw@ts.
I used to do that. A new Lexmark color inkjet printer was $25 at Walmart, their cartridges were $37 each. 🤣
I was absolutely amazed at how cleanly you got that out, I make more of a mess than that just trying to put them in the printer! Was almost disappointed when you mentioned you made a mess off camera! 😆
The sink is still stained blue.
Looking forward to follow ups on these products.
Thank you.
Would be interesting to see how much ink comes out of an "empty' cartridge
The diaphragm/membrane is typically a die cut piece of PTFE/Teflon. It's hydrophobic, so rejects moisture in the air, but still allows the cartridge to breathe. Personally saw the line that does all the die cutting for HP toner cartridges, same principal and process for everything else...
the messy experiments are always the best ones
That thumbnail alone made this one worth clicking. You're a real hoot, Clive!
It would be interesting too see how the chips work as some printers with refillable inks also require a seperate chip resetter such as the 405, and you have to match the pins up to the chip and if done correctly it resets the cartridge
No idea about Epson, but most HP LaserJets use a 1Kb 3-Wire Microwire EEPROM, with a "HP" Serial.
In the original HP bubble printer patent, the chip itself is a single use printer head where brief resistor heating behind a tiny hole causes a drop of ink to boil and squirt onto the paper (there's multiple such holes precisely placed by the chip production) . If they integrate the usage counter in the same chip they save a component and get a direct way to disable the cartridge when they think you have printed enough pixels .
@@johndododoe1411 They do that by having an extra resistor on the silicon chip, and then when the printer decides it has printed enough the resistor is heated up till it fails. There are some around that used this, and there were methods to incorporate a resistor on the main board to cheat the system, so it would print forever, even with no ink. Now they incorporate a small section with some copyrighted information, mostly a small snippet of music, to get DMCA protection, and use that instead, and when it is determined by the built in counter it simply sets a bit. Copyright music so they can shut down clones using DMCA, and the cloners simply reverse engineered the printer ROM to figure out just what hash they needed, and put in noise to get a hash collision. Then firmware updated to detect that in a cat and mouse fashion. Now you need to be online to print or scan a page.
Hp make you use genuine cartridges in their printers or apparently it voids the warranty (it detects the cartridge used) and they make you sign up to a subscription service for refill cartridges before you can use their App so I got a Canon this time
Louis Rossmann made a video about that I also went for EPSON because of that I had a lot of HP printers in the past, I always liked the fact that HP would also give you fresh print heads if something was dry on your epson replacing the cartridges may not fix the problem but nowadays HP is just a scam but there's enough legacy from their printers from the past that many people will fall for it anyway due to blind brand loyalty.
0:21 I have nothing but love for my Epson Ecotank printer. It's designed for printing lots of pages, rather than robbing you at every opportunity.
I always somehow made a mess with ink jet printers, I finally went to a laser printer and then finally a good color laser machine. And me refilling ink cartridges did not turn out well either. You on the other hand were incredibly neat sucking the ink out and without turning your bench, hands, arms, tools and camera lens blue.
I subsequently tore a cartridge down and the sink is still blue.
I used to refill my Epson cartridges, the ones with a chip on the bottom. It was a right faff t do but saved so much. I had a thing that flashed the chip into thinking it was new. But I dont really use my printer now. Interesting video 2x 👍
I had that too . ended up drilling holes in the thing and attaching tubes from ink tanks.....
thankfully we have auto-reset chips on custom refillable cartridges you can get that makes it far less tedious now a days.
Epson do Ecotank printers, you pour the ink into a container out of a bottle. Very affordable and no chips.
@@n1jrm good idea 👍👍
@@HerbaMachina yes this was the early days of home colour printing.
That was fun. Thanks Big Clive. I hope you have a SS sink.
It's resin and now a shade of cyan to go with all the other chemical colours it's absorbed.
It's amazing how you can waste my time which is completely worthless unless I'm watching your videos.
Of my half dozen printers Epson was my favorite.
As far as RUclipsrs go
You're the best deal around.
Love you big guy! .x.
It's strange how the most technical people, and the most useful to society (like you). Value themselves the least. It's a common thing.
I long ago changed to laser printers (or similar tech like LED printers) because I was tired of wasting ink cleaning print heads because I printed infrequently, and usually documents and not photos. Yes, toner cartridges are also expensive, and some have non-resettable counters in them so you can't refill them. But the cost per page is way lower than ink (at least it was back when I switched), and you don't have to worry about toner drying out if you don't print that often. But if you are really into photo quality color prints, ink jets have "always" been much better quality (especially on specialized paper) than toner based printers.
Gave up on inkjet printers when colour laser printers came way down in price. Better printouts that don’t bleed when they get the slightest bit damp.
I convinced my dad to get a color laser. However, he switched back to ink because while the laser is cheaper per page, the toner cartridge is more expensive than a smaller ink cartridge and he didn't like paying that much money all at once.
Fstoppers made a very interesting video on ink cartridges. It made me mad what printer companies do to waste ink. I was surprised how much ink was in your cartridge.
Dave Gorman in "Modern Life is Goodish" in one episode looked at printer inks and their cost - it is a great laugh.
It is available on youtube.
I would have phrased it as "how little ink is in your cartridge". The sad truth is that printer companies have fought tooth and nail to preserve their outrageous profit margins on ink cartridges for decades. There are now some reasonable options available (the Ecotank printers are a good example) but even today there are too many cheap and nasty printers being sold that are just going to become landfill.
Thanks Clive, iv been using the re filable cartridges in my px820fwd for around 13 years had a couple of problems, but over all been good
I lost my account several years ago and my prenumeration on your channel, but today was my lucky day. I found you on TikTok and now I subbed again 😊😊😊😊
Sadly, the TikTok videos are a fake channel.
This is why I print stuff off at work. It comes off the department budget and... well... controlling said budget has its perks.
Isn't that stealing?
@@g7mks383 Stealing. Or as the Russians call it, a "Special Military Operation".
@@g7mks383 I prefer the term 'creative accountancy'.
Oh wow, 15 full ml of ink?!? Can you do a series where you suck out ink out of HP cartridges too? I'm under the impression they have much less, they end so fast
I believe HP at least in some models uses an ink saturated sponge system so the ink may be harder to be extracted from their cartridges.
The Eco-Tank line also has the advantage that you can change the ink you use to, for instance, archival ink.
As an occasional user of a printer I found inkjets incredibly frustrating. Long startup time while the machine does its ablutions which inevitably exhausts at least one of the colours - it then refuses to print a black and white document because it’s run out of yellow.
I found cartridge replacement to be horribly messy and expensive and tried refilling to cut down on the expense - that was even messier and then I discovered I needed a chip resetter. The resetter lasted for two cartridges and then stopped working.
Bought a £200 Brother colour laser instead. It probably has enough toner for the rest of my life and warms up in a fraction of the time that the inkjet needed.
If I need a higher quality print of a photo then I’ll simply order from a professional online.
Imagine all those schmucks going through all this trouble to smuggle drugs when EPSON can just package some colored liquid into a plastic box and get the same kind of profit margins legally.
AND you can snort it. (But it makes a bit of a mess.)
Razor blade model. The printer itself is sold at cost or a loss. The cheaper the printer, the more expensive the consumables. That's why I always buy enterprise printers. Far lower cost per page, far better built.
The problem with EcoTank is that when the print head clogs and you need to run 10 cleaning cycles to get color X to print again the waste ink sponge fill up and the printer is basically useless.
You can replace the waste ink container and reprogram it so the warning goes away
Yeah, my dad had an EcoTank printer and it was great... until it decided to only print cyan stripes. A cleaning cycle only fixed it temporarily. Now he's got a laser printer :P
@@lolman123401 There should be no need to reprogram it. And yes, the waste ink pad is a consumable item. I think they call the replacement something like a maintenance tank or maintenance kit. Different than with most printers, on those it is an actual tank, and not just some kind of felt pad that should adsorb the ink. At least on the newer models.
I recommend leaving the printer active and using it regularly. Unplugging it while it's not parked properly can cause issues.
@@Fuzy2KI've got a HP laser doing the same with some of its colors, and then HP silently stopped making cartridges for it, so now I use a different brand .
Well i have to congratulate you on just how clean you kept everything 👍👍
That ended when I took a cartridge apart. My sink is still blue.
I have a Canon Pixma G3260, replaced an old Epson Artisan 810 when the printhead failed. It is a tank system, and the bottles it came with were enormous. It even included two extra bottles of black ink I haven't touched. Printer was less than $200 USD (far less than equivalent Epson models) and that includes a very color-accurate flatbed scanner, so it's not like they are overpricing the printer either.
I do have a Brother color laser MFC for most print/scan/fax tasks, but the Canon is outstanding when I need photo quality.
I used to work at an Epson Express centre, which was basically just for servicing Epson printers. Epson used to tell us all sorts of stuff like how the cartridges contained head cleaning substances whereas 3rd party ones did not etc etc.
What's neat about Epson printers, especially the Ecotank, is that they, in contrast to other manufacturers, often use piezoelectric printheads where each nozzle works like a teeny tiny miniature piezoelectric pump. Other manufacturers typically use a thermal system whereby, when a droplet is to be projected out the nozzle, a heating element instantaneously boils the liquid, increasing the pressure momentarily. The piezoelectric system seems to be quite tolerant to running liquids that the printer was not designed for (:
Their Ecotank printers lend themselves quite well for dye sublimation ink (which is actually quite viscous) that can then be transferred to other materials like plastic or fabric. They even sell blank ceramic mugs that have been coated with polyester to receive an image through this process, it's really neat.
Working in a computer store in the early 2000's where every customer wanted a printer and scanner, I used to explain with examples that more or less the more you spend on the printer, the cheaper it is in the long term with ink/toner costs and also higher page count reliability. Most customers acted like I was trying to scam them and upsell from the cheapest possible model. Oh well. :)
I have the Epson Eco Tank ET-8550. It is a "wide format" printer, can print up to 13" × 19" (B+). This particular printer has 6 ink tanks, the typical 4 plus gray and photo black. It also has an easy to change maintenance box. The maintenance box being user serviceable is what sold me on the ET-8500 series.
So far, I've been very happy with it.
Great Video and I have been looking at new printers for my color photos and Epson with the tank sounds like the smart way to go my old Hp color printer is getting hard to find cartridges!
Thank You for all your awesome videos, Clive!! 😜🥰🤩😉
Two Equations -- Two Unknowns
Many otherwise identical print cartridges are available in both "standard" and "XL" configurations.
The only difference being the price and the extra ink. Using math we can solve!
(Unfortunately HP is sketchy on the volume of ink, but often give the page count instead.)
Walmart:
#63 black ink
#63-reg $22.89 / 170 pgs
#63-XL $45.89 / 430 pgs
diff / diff: $23.00 / 260 pgs
ink cost: $0.08846 / pg (~9-cents/pg)
#63-reg ink: $15.04
#63-XL ink: $38.04
all else cost : $7.85 (package, cardboard, plastic cartridge shell, flex circuits, print head chip)
So a $22.89 ink cartridge is $15.04 of ink, but all the rest (printhead, cartridge, packaging) is $7.85
BTW, the MSDS indicates the ink is roughly 70% ~ 85% water.
As somebody who has used the cartridge or a very similar version of the cartridge on the left the more square one. There is usually a tab that gets pulled off that allows air in and then when put into the printer it punctures the ink outlet. Sometimes the air inlet is a one-way valve and will not need to be uncovered.
I was getting frustrated with the cost of ink for an Epson 1430. Best thing I ever did was purchase a Continuous Ink system for it. I was then able to buy bulk ink and considerably lower printing costs and the inconvienence of an empty cartridge.
Oh boy. That takes me back. Epson cartridges were a pita to refill successfully at the place i worked back in the 00s. So bad was it that we stopped doing them except for a couple ancient designs and sold MIPOs and OEMs instead.
Canon, brother and lexmark were the easiest to deal with. HP were easy to fill but we got a lot come back because customers barely used them and the nozzles would clog. There's a special button sequence on many HP printers that resets the cartridges back to "full".
Good idea on the gloves. I never used them as they'd often end up hot glued to cartridges we refilled. I found nothing gets the ink out apart from time.
We always recommended Brother printers (cheap to run) and Canon printers (easiest to refill). Epsons were always a big no unless you needed professional/a3+ printers. That's despite the huge markup we had on MIPO cartridges for epsons we sold.
I personally had an Epson CIS, then went to Canon, then went to laser. I leave colour prints for the shop or work.
Brilliant Clive thanks always wondered about the ink in them,😊
Ecotank is actually only twice the price of the cheap one, but comes with more than a half litre of ink in it, while the cheap ones come with anything from 10ml to 80ml of ink in them. The one printer that I like is continuous ink jet printers, used for marking products, where you use a litre of ink in it, and then only replace solvent used to carry the ink, and it generally will never need ink added between services, as 1 litre of ink is good for 10 000km of full coverage printing, at 0.5mm spacing per dot.
Got one to tear down as well. Really interesting unit, though going to be messy removing the ink tanks and piping, will have to power it up and do a few purge cycles on it, before starting the job. Working printer, traded in for a faster one. Ink low, and solvent was low, so filled up with non genuine solvent, actually meths, as it is compatible with the piping and pump, all ptfe, as the solvent for use with the edible ink option is actually ethanol in pure form. Just used cheap one. The old solvent is good for cleaning PCB's, and the ink is great for refilling permanent markers, because it really is permanent. Have used it as black paint as well, it sticks to anything, even HDPE, well, except for PTFE.
Congratulations on the new blue kitchen, hehe. Quite an interesting video. I'm glad I don't need to print a lot anymore these days. And when I do, I just use my laserprinter.
My feeling is if you're printing for sale or you like to print your photo's it's probably a good idea to use the proper stuff in your printer of choice, but for most of us we use ours to print random stuff, make templates or just other things that don't really matter, I think for those of us in that camp we should be allowed to to use what ever ink we want, but we accept that it may not be perfect, with the cost of OEM inks/toner being about the same cost as a printer these days I feel we should have the choice to do what we want and not be dictated to by the maker of the printer.
Many of those cartridges have a filament wire that burns out when ink no longer covers it to stop you from refilling it. If you want to refill the cartridge, you need to run a thin bodge wire between the 2 external pins that lead to the filament. The ink is easy to order online in large bottles and makes printers a lot cheaper to operate. Here in Thailand, there are shops that will do it for you. I've never used Epson, but Brother and Cannon cartridges are quite easy to refill with a small drill and a piece of duck tape to seal it if you can solder the bodge wire. (By bodge wire, I mean that thin insulated wire you use to bridge gaps on a damaged printed circuit board.) Use an ohm meter on a new cartridge to see what pins the filament goes to, once you know that you're good to go. Thanks for another good video. Beating these people who charge ridiculous prices for ink cartridges is emotionally rewarding.
interesting, so the filament wire has no actual function for printing, just to burn up once the original ink is used up?
The only system like that I've come across is a laser printer cartridge that deliberately blows a fuse when it's empty to stop it being reused. The cartridge can be refilled with toner and the fuse changed.
@@alnicospeaker Yes, so it won't work if you refill it.
@@bigclivedotcom These are Cannon and Brother inkjets.
That's very nice, putting that orange clippie thing around the cartridge. I usually just get a rubber bung/plug in the brand I used. Keeps the manufacturing cost down, I guess.
I used to refill the T032x and 42x series cartridges back in the day. They will take about about 15-20ml.
There is a little physical "pressure relief" valve to the left of the "cyan" text and another is the little dot on the bottom of the cartridge near the chip, the dot closer to the ink port is the fill chamber. The older OEM chips can be flashed with a resetter, many don't need to be replaced.
It is quite a nice colour when in the little plastic container. A lot more opaque than I anticipated, compared to the ink bottles I use for my EcoTank printer.
Would love to see the chip rewrite on laser printer. We Ditched expensive & messy inkjet for a HP Laser printer. Because you can get the complete all colors 500 dollar HP laser cartridges for less than 100 dollars and they provide the tools to swap the HP chips on the empty cartridges to the cheap no brand refill and you can keep reusing the same chip. Only downside is that HP chip is usually reading low - and didn’t realize you can reset it!
I bought an Epson Workforce 3520 dwf in 2014 for my studies. It's capable of double sided printing and scanning which is really convenient.
But the main reason was that, by many reports online, this model would happily take basically any 3rd party cartridge.
And it does! Sometimes it complains the cartridge is not genuine but you can simply click that away. At the moment 6 black and 3 sets of color cartridges costs me ~8€ but with a resetter I can use them twice until they are empty.
Also the tank in which the printhead cleans is replaceable and therefore won't kill the printer as it happens on many cheap ones.
Printed over 8000 pages and going strong.
It was entertaining, thanks, also don’t have to think about that part anymore, thumbs up!
I was wondering how you got such good pictures of the boards. Now I know some of the lore.
The ET-5000 series of printers are the better buy long term. These are aimed at the "real" office user, and are far more solidly built than the lesser models (with an according price increase). Many seem put off by the paper eject path, however unlike the very flimsy plastic paper trays (even on "real" A3 multifunction floorstanding lasers such as the Canon ImageRunner series), you'll never have a large document fall on the floor. They are fast, economical, and have a decent (250 sheet) paper capacity. For comparison I also own a Brother MFC laser (mono), and the Epson runs rings round this, especially in time to first page printed.
That looked surprisingly clean
I once worked with a manufacturer of industrial inkjet inks. The guy I was working with told me about one of their inks:'wow, this is really expensive - I mean, the materials in there cost 30€ per liter!'
It was a longish time ago, so the production cost and pricing on industrial scale is probably significantly higher now, but your typical inkjet cartridge is incredibly overpriced.
The Epson Eco tank thingies seem to be relatively ok. You can also use a normal Epson printer, refillable cartridges and the eco tank ink. At least for me this works quite well.
Hey Big Clive, after around 18 years, I gave up on expensive inkjet printing, and bought a £25 mono laser printer. Superb quality printing, toner cart never dries up, and after 10 years it's still using the original supplied starter cart! ... Inkjet? Never again! 👎🤣
"One moment please" never gets old!
I am on my 3rd Canon printer and each has had a slightly different set of cartridges. I still have some of the old cartridges and wonder if they have the same ink so that I could decant the ink out of the old cartridges into the new resettable/compatible ones…..
You could award a pink inkjet cartridge to your 1 million subscriber
For my simple needs a cheap b&w dell laser printer has lasted for a decade and still going strong. Only maintenance has been to clean the contacts on the external chip of the laser printer's cartridge with alcohol/q-tip. and its mating connecting contacts on the printer also with alcohol, although last time I also had to wire brush those contacts. Generic double capacity cartridges are dirt cheap and last forever. Paper jams can be greatly reduced by cleaning the paper pick-up rubber rollers with alcohol.
Big Clive experimenting with how many instances of "suck" are required for demonitization 😂
I’ve recently upgraded from a Canon Pixma cartridge type inkjet to an Epson Ecotank ET-8500. The Epson is a revelation. Faster starts. Faster printing. Less time and ink wasted on automatic maintenance cycles. The genuine ink is a fraction of the cost of genuine ink for Canon and there’s always cheaper generic ink if wanting dirt cheap printing. It has six ink colours in separate tanks and prints great colour photos up to A4 as well as flatbed scanning and copying. I do print a fair amount, so after the first 18 months use I shall be saving big time after writing off the purchase price over that time. No nonsense with ‘security’ chips and the 70ml bottles last a very long time. If it lasts six years trouble free as my Canon did, it will end up saving many hundreds of Pounds in running costs.
My ecotank is now about 6 years old and still going strong. I recommend leaving it plugged in, as it may have to do a cleaning cycle each time it is powered up.
Nice to see a new video, another day of happynes
Im surprised they how this much nowadays, I bought an Epson printer like 4 years ago and cartridges of this size only held like 3 or 4 ml of ink and were still just as expensive as today.
Bought an afternarket refillable kit with 500ml of ink for 30 bucks and that got me sorted.
I love my Epson ecotank. Bought it 8yrs ago and have only had to buy one set of refill bottles (it came with 2 full sets of refill bottles in the box), printing thousands of pages for my son through school.
It's very liberating being able to print without guilt.
Well I can't even believe that much inc came out Good demonstration Showing how much inc is in one I have the Epson equal tank too .. I would like to take apart and find the flash memory chip And back it up In case an update does us dirty One day So it can be Re flashed Haven't updated mind yet