Re: Least expensive printer

I will agree that people have differing experiences with refilling, and even reliability based upon the ink used and the environmental conditions.

I'm not sure that HP's cleaning system is necessarily superior to others, although I will agree that should the head clog beyond repair, one can simply replace the cartridge and start over, which cannot be accomplished easily with the Epson models.

The lifespan one gets from an HP inkjet cartridge seems variable, from one or two to a dozen or so, but it is variable. The heads aren't designed for refilling, although people do so. Some models had airfilled bladders, or require popping out a ballbearing/check valves, and other processes. HP has been very rigorous in pursuing 3rd party cartridge production, and due to this head design which is part of the cartridge, many 3rd party companies won't try to copy it. Refills are out there but tend to be more costly, and, of course, since HP is the only source for empty units, as older printers get even older, there will be less and less used cartridges out there to be refilled.

Certain vintages of Canon printer have easy to refill cartridge which do not contain the head. However, the heads do eventually fail on these models and that can get costly. The vintage of Epson printers I referred to in my reply to the OP are all without chips, and the cartridges can be refilled many times since the head is permanently in the machine. The cartridge is just an ink container. The refill process is very simple, and low cost, and many of these printers are still being provided with cheap new cartridges from China which I personally haven't had problems with. They are all dye ink printers, making the cleaning process should they clog, relatively easy.

My concern is just that the HP used cartridge supply will dry up (not the ink in them ;-)) after time. Since the head in part of those cartridges, no cartridge means no printer.

Art

Richard Steinfeld wrote:

Arthur Entlich wrote:
...

The reason I suggest Epson is the head is permanent, and although it may clog, it is clearable with a bit of time and under $1 in cleaning stuff yo find in your grocery store.

...


I can't suggest older HP product in the color inkjet printers because the heads are part of the cartridge and can only be refilled by skilled people and the head still fails after several fill ups. New cartridges are darn costly and you won't typically find 3rd party product, as you will with Epson.


Arthur, let me be not the first to thank you. You are a superb and generous resource here, and when I get the gumption to attempt un-clogging my Epson CX4600, I'm going to review-again your cleaning procedures. I don't anticipate having much fun because of the disemboweling of the all-in-one's layers to get to the print heads.

But I've been reviewing various posts on this NG for a while, as well as gaining some experience with my own HPs, so I'd like to clarify your words a little. Here goes:

1. Each brand of inkjet seems to have its strengths and weaknesses. I don't sense that any one is "better" or "worse" than any other. I'm not certain that this is true of Lexmark, however, but not too many people have experience with this brand.

2. I need some reassurance that Epson's printers are reliable enough to invest in one, since I've heard that Epson heads are difficult to replace and that replacement heads cost a fortune.

3. I have already refilled a few HP cartridges, color and black, successfully. I'm pretty new at this, so I've gone slowly. Even with improper dye "universal" (Universal tm) ink, the black's actually been OK for my use, but I won't buy anything like this again -- I just wanted to see what would happen and it was staring me in the face in the store.
I've just done my refilling relying on my common sense and mechanical knowledge and skill.

I've decided to concentrate on HP inkjets simply because I came into four of them: three from a thrift shop for $5 each, and one as a gift. An advantage, as pointed out by Bob Headrick, a generous former HP employee, is that HP uses not only the usual pre-print costly ink-dumping to clear the nozzles, but also has some sort of proprietary print head wiping. The result is that the printer and its cartridges can sit unused for quite a long time, a number of months, in fact, and then perform flawlessly. It's been said by a few people here that Lexmark printers, which use essentially the same technology as HP, must be used once per week before the cartridges clog.

I can buy refilled HP cartridges easily because they're so common. And people here have refilled HP cartridges quite a number of times without having to replace them. I assume that this experience varies, however.

I'm going to scrap an older HP printer (an 850c) because it's got one or two damaged parts, and I have the other reliable, newer machines already. However, I actually liked this model. I believe that its ink is identical to that used in my other machines. I especially like the fact that it's a little slower, and I appreciate slowness in machinery, since it's less likely to rip itself apart.

Richard
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