Posted on 10/12/2013 10:16:06 AM PDT by knarf
I bought new cartridges about two or three months ago .. both color and black and I printed a little back then ...
Most likely. But after cleaning, especially if it fails, the etoh can be put to other uses. ;^)
I never had much luck with inkjets.
My first was a Cannon for home use. Since I didn’t print much, the nozzles dried. Even putting in new cartridges didn’t help. It became a piece of junk.
My next piece of junk inkjet was a Lexmark. I printed about 20 sheets and it jammed up, wouldn’t feed paper at all. It only had a 60 day warranty and was just passed the warranty period. It went in the trash.
Next, I found a Minolta b/w laser. Never had a problem. Any time I wanted to print, it was ready in a few seconds. Regrettably, when I went to Win 7 64-bit, no one made a driver for it.
About 6 years ago, I ran across a Xerox color laser (Cyber Monday bargain) for $150 including shipping. It still runs and has never caused a problem. I am still on the original toner cartridges, althought I did recently purchase some new ones just to have them on hand.
I would recommend spending a bit more and getting a good color laser. They are not that expensive any more. I see several brands available in the $100-$200 range around Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
In almost all cases you can clear up dried up inkjet ink with 1/2 ammonia & 1/2 water solution.
Put the solution in a wide mouth small jelly jar, heat it in the microwave (without the lid on) for about 1 minute, immerse the inkjet head portion of the cartidge in the solution, then blot it on a paper towel.
The more sludged up it is, the longer you immerse the head. I have been doing this for many years and keep a pint of inkjet ink on hand for refilling cartridges. You can even get color ink this way. I have it for my HP color plotter too.
I have an HP printer, one of my cartridges dried up so I used my Oster steamer put a paper towel down where you’d put food and steamed the cartridge for about 15 minutes.
The ink started flowing again then took it out wiped off all the access ink off stuck it back in printer and bingo I was back in business.
I got tired of paying a fortune in ink costs for various HP printers and picked up a Brother mfc-5895CW. This printer has the printing heads internal to the printer. Ink cartridges are super cheap on ebay and they seem to last forever. I have four kids and they print a lot of stuff, so this printer has really saved us a ton of money. The printer is a bit old, but I think Amazon still sells them.
laser tech is better. Ink is a ripoff.
I don’t even bother with refilling or replacing ink cartridges on my printers. When the ink runs out on my printer, I just chuck the whole printer in the trash and hook up a new printer. They are cheap enough and I can usually get about a year out of ink that comes with new printers.
Kind of the same concept with razors.
Being a graphic designer, I used to get fancy schmancy top of the line pieces of junk. Not necessary in the digital age.
Anyone have any recommendations for a good, cheap color laser that won't be used a lot or beaten to death? Thanks.
No, man. Ya gotta bang on the side of it. Any tech knows that. {:0)
I had problems with ink drying up on a cheap printer (either Canon or Epson). According to customer service, there was a design flaw (oh they didn’t call it that...probably called it a “feature”) which meant that if I forgot to turn the printer off promptly after each use, the ink would be “uncovered” or something - and dry out. I found this to be true - the only way to keep ink flowing was to make sure never to leave the printer on overnight by mistake.
That visual is just hysterical !
I have done exactly that. I do own an older Epson ink jet which I use solely to print CD.DVD labels on ink jet compatible media but that is the only thing I use the ink jet for.
I recently purchased an all-in-one ink jet Multi function machine to use for it’s automatic feed duplex scanner but I don’t expect to use it as a printer. I already own an older Epson scanner but it refuses to work correctly under win 7.
The ink cartridges are always a problem with ink jets due to drying out, clogging up, and just being too highly priced.
For all of my printing other than the CD/DVDs I use my brother 224oD duplex printer. The toner cartridges are much more affordable than ink jet cartridges even though they cost more to purchase, they last much longer and avoid the problems that the ink jets have.
Mine is a Xerox Phaser 6125. It is about 6 years old. There are probably later models. It is kind of bulky, but doesn’t weigh much, compared to the smaller b/w desktop lasers.
Brother has some desktop color lasers.
Dell color lasers are in the $150-200 range at Bestbuy and Staples.
I print about 10,000 full page copies a week and I haven’t bought a new cartridge in a year. I print only black and use some very old Lexmark & Dell printers that don’t shut you down when the cartridge is empty. I have have a method of cleaning cartridges that works great. Buying ink by the gallon is much cheaper.
Thanks for the tips ... I’ll check them out. Appreciate it! :-)
They practically give the printers away to make money on selling you lots of cartridges in the future.
My mother’s machine won’t print unless all the colors are working, so you can’t print black if you run out of blue. Rip City. But there is an answer.
Don’t buy expensive cartridges when you run out of ink. Buy a new printer and get a new warranty.
If that happens a message will tell you to hold down the Stop button “for a while” — all kidding aside it says hold the stop button down for 5 or ? seconds, I don’t remember which exactly.
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