Cheap inks have ruined my printer!

Ticklemouse

I have an Epson Stylus Photo 700 which is 4 or 5 years old. I have always used compatible cartridges and not really had much problem. However, I don't print lots of photos, so can't comment on what the difference would be. I have started getting my cartridges from Inkcycle - cheap and cheerful and work fine for me, thanks

Joe77

You can get cleaning cartridges for epson printers, I've used these before and it unblocks them. Epson ink for the printer I've got at the moment is about £42 compared to £15 for compatable, I can't afford to use the overpriced epson ink. To stop it getting blocked up just print out a full page picture every week even if you don't need to.

dellboy102

jockey wrote:

No m8 this wont damage the print head. Read below which is taken from the cartridge world website and gives a similar way of doing it.

" In extreme cases, if the above procedure does not work, then place the cartridge, print head down, in the bottom of a saucer. Boil water and pour it into the saucer so that the print head surface is completely covered and gently agitate the cartridge for approximately twenty seconds. Remove the cartridge and gently touch-dry the print head with a tissue.

• Make sure that there is no moisture on the electrical contact areas of the cartridge, if so, gently wipe clean with a soft tissue. Wet contacts can cause serious damage to the printer electrics.
• Do not use methylated spirits to clean print heads, the chemical composition is not compatible and can cause blockage problems.
• If in doubt and you still cannot rectify the problem, take your cartridge to your Cartridge World store."

I read somewhere something similar but when I asked a PC tech I got told never to do that, only use the cleaning cartridges.
However mine is working much better now so its cool.
Text prints out fine, images come out with lines, however when I print an image/photo using high quality there are no lines and the quality is pretty acceptable, so I'm going to stick to that for now.

doozeruk

After my last 2 printers faded away after using compatibles I have now decided to only use original cartridges with my new Canon ip4000. My trusty Epson 740 was a lovely printer (albeit slow), it did block occasionally, something which Epson's still do ,even with originals, annoying because otherwise great printers. Had been fine until I used compatibles 7 or 8 cartridges down the line I noticed lines appearing, they wouldn't clean up and eventually found out the head had disintergrated :eek: . Next printer Canon i550 another great printer, never blocked like the Epson and I can only remember cleaning the heads once to cure a banding problem. Started to use compatibles and within 2 or 3 my photos which had been excellent had all turned 'wishy washy', I plodded on for a while and then people started to noticed. I switched back to Canon originals but it was too late the compatibles had messed something well and truly up.


I know there will be replies 'I've never had a problem' and i used to believe this, but after wiping out over £250's worth of printers in 3 years I shall stick to the originals and see what happens this time.

Must say though for day to day printing both of the printers worked fine, it was only when i printed photos (which I do mostly) that these ugly problems arose.

dellboy102

doozeruk wrote:

After my last 2 printers faded away after using compatibles I have now decided to only use original cartridges with my new Canon ip4000. My trusty Epson 740 was a lovely printer (albeit slow), it did block occasionally, something which Epson's still do ,even with originals, annoying because otherwise great printers. Had been fine until I used compatibles 7 or 8 cartridges down the line I noticed lines appearing, they wouldn't clean up and eventually found out the head had disintergrated :eek: . Next printer Canon i550 another great printer, never blocked like the Epson and I can only remember cleaning the heads once to cure a banding problem. Started to use compatibles and within 2 or 3 my photos which had been excellent had all turned 'wishy washy', I plodded on for a while and then people started to noticed. I switched back to Canon originals but it was too late the compatibles had messed something well and truly up.


I know there will be replies 'I've never had a problem' and i used to believe this, but after wiping out over £250's worth of printers in 3 years I shall stick to the originals and see what happens this time.

Must say though for day to day printing both of the printers worked fine, it was only when i printed photos (which I do mostly) that these ugly problems arose.

Is it possible for you to to tell us which brand of compatible cartridges you were using?, just a bit worried because I was planning to print quite a bit of photos too using compat cartridges.

scattycat_3

dellboy102 wrote:

that is NOT a good idea, will probably damage the print head for good.
even water is too big for the tiny holes in the head,

I find that hard to believe as most inks are waterbased. jockeys methods work.

In the beginning we were told that you CANNOT refill, cos the holes only last one fill and become too large to print properly.
Then Canon, later Epson followed with FIXED printheads using ink only cartridges. So that laid that lie.

The fact that some people are unlucky with other inks is mostly due to where and how oftenthe printer is used. Ink very quickly dries in a heated house, sometimes on the print-head and cleaning electrically does not undo the blockage. Soaking tends to work.


Bamberbamboo,
I had the same problem with an Epson CX5400, it stopped printing in colour a couple of weeks after fitting Inkrite tanks. To my embarrasment there are paper strips covering air holes which I had not removed and the vacuum caused the flow to stop.

HTHs Scat;)

jockey

doozeruk wrote:

After my last 2 printers faded away after using compatibles I have now decided to only use original cartridges with my new Canon ip4000. My trusty Epson 740 was a lovely printer (albeit slow), it did block occasionally, something which Epson's still do ,even with originals, annoying because otherwise great printers. Had been fine until I used compatibles 7 or 8 cartridges down the line I noticed lines appearing, they wouldn't clean up and eventually found out the head had disintergrated :eek: . Next printer Canon i550 another great printer, never blocked like the Epson and I can only remember cleaning the heads once to cure a banding problem. Started to use compatibles and within 2 or 3 my photos which had been excellent had all turned 'wishy washy', I plodded on for a while and then people started to noticed. I switched back to Canon originals but it was too late the compatibles had messed something well and truly up.


I know there will be replies 'I've never had a problem' and i used to believe this, but after wiping out over £250's worth of printers in 3 years I shall stick to the originals and see what happens this time.

Must say though for day to day printing both of the printers worked fine, it was only when i printed photos (which I do mostly) that these ugly problems arose.

Give https://www.northdevoncomputers.com/shop a try m8 with there compatibles, they offer a guarantee that there inks wont mess up your printer. If it does then they will repair or replace the printer. Worth a go m8 instead of paying all that cash for originals.

hel8itch

i think this is a prob with alot of epsons..i have an epson photo stylus 830 and had it just 6 months.thought id try some of the compatible inks..then anything i printed came out in faint lines..thought must need heads cleaning..so run that..then tried nozzle cleaning made no difference atall..i tried doing these atleast 8 times and still no dif.so i rang epson<didnt tell em i used comptibles>just said printer doesnt work..they said someone would be out next day.so i made sure the proper epson ink carts were in it so they didnt blame them! they didnt really do much..just printed test page then gave me a brand new one.
i thought prob was solved till silly me thought id try them damn compatibles again..and exactly the same thing has happened with this one.
i think epson make them that way so we have to pay the £29 or how ever much for the expensive ones..grrr

Roger1247

try this solution:

http://www.InkRepublic.com

IMO the Ink Republic system is so much better. I switched because of having to do constant purge prints every day in order to avoid missing nozzles, and de-foaming the sponge based carts regularly to maintain correct ink flow.

The IR system doesn't use sponges and so doesn't suffer the same problems. Nozzle checks have been perfect since. Also, on the old system, when you switched off the printer the chips reset to full. This sounds good but in reality, when you switch the printer back on it thinks the carts have been changed and runs a purge cycle which wastes a staggering 10ml+ of ink every time (i've measured it).

The Ink Republic system doesn't do this (it resets the chips when they get low and not when you switch off) so you can switch the printer off without wasting ink. The clear carts also make it very easy to check ink levels etc.

Using OEM ink solves your profiling problems and is really easy to do.

Hope this helps.

bs7

anyone know where to get cleaning cartridges online?