stopping auto cleaning cycle on printer

[Black Pearl]

Firstly - I never turn my Canon printer off. To be fair it's the houses 'jobbing' printer that we run on cheap ink from Amazon so it's inking costs are low but the best way to run any inkjet printer is to leave it on and print regularly. That way you minimis the cleaning cycles and waste less ink.

Secondly can I just add that I hate inkjet printers. They are noisy, slow, clatter and bang, run random cycles doing god only knows what, they don't give sufficient warning of ink capacities, spit out duff prints for no reason, cost too little only so the manufacturers can sting you for ink.......I could go on. I will say the Apple gear in the house deal with them better than the Windows gear in that a printer 'just works' without drivers or any installation but the actual equipment itself is still rubbish.

If walked up to your car and the chip thing in your pocket didn't open the door straight away but set the car of clunking and flashing lights at you for a minute you'd go mental. If when you did get in the start button didn't immediately start the car but initiated a warm-up sequence you would drive to the garage and run the salesman over.
If your TV was unresponsive for 30 seconds when you pressed the remote you'd scream at it then more likely than not chuck the remote , the dog, the kids or all of the above at the said tele then stomp off to the pub.

Why then do we accept this sort of behaviour from a printer. Something so simple that all it needs to do is spit a bit of ink onto a bit of paper......a bit of paper that you have to tell it the size, surface, quality, weight and for all I know sex off......I hate them!

And don't just think its home printers......don't get me started of the Fuji Frontier Mini Lab at work. That....that operates on Windows NT and has one insistent beep that will not stop until you figure out what the insane flashing code means and rectify it. One beep! One! All day long it's beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.....water, you want water. Right here's water......beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.......the film hasn't cut. I know the film hasn't cut because it was a loose film in a film carrier and it doesn't need cutting, yes I'll press your button to stop you beeping, yes I'll press it again because you still think I'm not paying attention and yes I'll give you more ruddy water.



Beep!

[Carl in Louisiana]

I got tired of buying replacement tanks and I did not seem to be printing that much. Well I got the genius thought what if I could just print black only and choose to print color only when needed. Checked out the printer set up page and found I could print gray scale only "WOW" how awesome, I thought. I seemed to run out of the yellow, magenta and cyan colors even faster when switching back and forth from color to gray scale. I am one of those that turn the printer on and off, until reading this thread I will now leave it on all the time. This has been a very helpful subject, Thanks.

[OldFrank]

Question: Where does all that ink go? I know there are pads to absorb it during clean cycles, but from the descriptions in this thread we are talking about a lot of ink. Anyone have ink running out the bottom of the printer>

[Colin Southern]

Question: Where does all that ink go? I know there are pads to absorb it during clean cycles, but from the descriptions in this thread we are talking about a lot of ink. Anyone have ink running out the bottom of the printer>

On my Epson 7800 it goes into a maintenance tank. Being water based ink a lot of it evaporates, but the maintenance tank must none-the-less be changed when the printers deems "the time is right".

[Mark von Kanel]

Robin, you brightened up my day and made me smile. Thanks bud!

[Black Pearl]

Glad to be of service mate.

[Boatman]

I had a Canon S9000 and it sucked up the ink pretty bad. The good news was that I learned to refill my own cartridges, which is a huge cost savings. Refillable cartridges and bulk ink works out to about 1/20th the cost of new printer-company cartridges and the quality is very nearly the same. The average viewer won't see any difference.

I now refill the cartridges of an Epson printer. The cost for printing is minimal and I'm getting good results.

Should I ever get so good that people are willing to pay me real money for my prints, I'll gladly cough up $20 a cartridge (times six) to be able to say that my prints are printed with genuine Epson Claria ink.

[Colin Southern]

Should I ever get so good that people are willing to pay me real money for my prints, I'll gladly cough up $20 a cartridge (times six) to be able to say that my prints are printed with genuine Epson Claria ink.

You're lucky - it costs around $2000 to stock my Epson 7800 with "genuine" inks. A couple of years ago I switched to Lyson inks - about 1/3 the cost - slightly better gamut - slightly less clogging.

[Boatman]

But look at the bright side - you are SAVING way more money than I am.

[KCBrecks]

We have a Canon Pixma iP4500, which I resurrected from having a blocked Cyan jet set, and a new MP550. This is as well as a couple of colour laser printers. My wife does loads of stuff, mainly text based, for the Bowls League and Wine Club she is secretary of. I use my iP4500 for picturesI fancy printing. I also have the job of keeping about a dozen other printers on the straight and narrow. We have, this year, done all of my wife's prints, several thousand double sided A4, using 3rd party cartridges in the Canon printers. We did try refilling, which was successful, but I went around with multi-coloured fingers for weeks. It also turned out more expensive than 3rd party filled cartridges and more trouble getting past the Canon software security police every time. The laser toner refills were costing almost twice the price of the printer every 1500 sheets so the inkjets were running out cheaper this way.

I reckon that if I want anything special printed I will go to a commercial printers but I ain't gonna be around to need to see perfect colours in 30 years time, and if I am I ain't gonna be seeing that well anyway, so for my own purposes and free gifts cheap inks will do.

Blocked up jets are a nuisance. I ditched and Epson Stylus R800 for that, complete with CISS. Cleaning the Canon jet block in the iP and MP is so easy, just remove the cartridges and then the jet block lifts out. Wash off with cold water, then put in a little inkjet cleaning fluid, you can buy this from any number of suppliers on the Internet. Dry it off, stuff the block back in and put a little cleaning fluid on the metal gauze pad where the cartridge seats and try a print. In no time all is running fine. One of these days I will try that with the Epson as it is still in the shed, but I will wait for some fine weather to do it on the yard. I have used this cleaning fluid on bunged up cartridges with inbuilt jets and it works just the same.

Leave the printer turned on though as the cleaning and charge cycle when you start up is more expensive than the tiny bit of juice they use on standby.

As a computer support guy for 20 years there are 2 things which really get me uptight - Internet Problems and B----y Printers. If only we could truly have the Paperless Office, then there would just be the Internet prolems left. You want to view your pictures, put 'em on a screen.