InkJetOffice.com Official Blog

Inkjet Types (At Least From Xerox Perspective)

admin — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:32:11 +0000

(From: Peter (hedgieus@yahoo.com).)

Here are history/trivia. (I used to work at Xerox marking technology group, working on ink-jets and daisy printers.)

>> Shop for Xerox Printer Ink Toner Cartridges

* Type 1 (or “push”) ejects continuous stream (under pressure). The discovery goes back to Hertz (one who has the unit named after him) and theory is described in the book: The Theory of Sound, by John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh.

Type 1 was commercialized first for printing postal labels and other similar applications. It was a big machine - 5×5x5 meters! Clumsy but fast. This was before laser printers. IBM published detailed (and definitive) research paper on this - circa 1985.

* Type 2 (or pull) uses electrostatic field to extract the drop. It was never commercialized.

* Type 3 (push-pull) or DOD is what we use in small printers now. Xerox put lot of money into developing this in the seventies, than (just when it achieved some 10 kHz (drops/second/nozzle) in the lab, (considered necessary minimum for viable printer) Japanese companies introduced first machines on the market. (I think first was NEC or Ricoh) and Xerox dropped the project. (Manufacturing people in Webster estimated that they can never produce it at profit, facing this competition.) Later, Xerox was using Sharp inkjet heads and printers, under Xerox label. Some research was then revived, (I suppose in cooperation with OEM supplier (Sharp).

>> Shop for Xerox Printer Ink Toner Cartridges

Printer and Photocopier Troubleshooting and Repair Collection
Version 2.48
Copyright © 1996-2001
Samuel M. Goldwasser
— All Rights Reserved —
For corrections/comments/suggestions, please contact me via the Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ Email Links Page.
Reproduction of this document in whole or in part is permitted if both of the following conditions are satisfied:
1. This notice is included in its entirety at the beginning.
2. There is no charge except to cover the costs of copying.

Epson Stylus 800 Print Quality

admin — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:14:44 +0000

Epson Stylus 800 print quality

>> Shop for Epson Printer Ink Toner Cartridges

“I have an Epson Stylus 800 printer which is only used infrequently. I seem to have a problem with some of the jets clogging up after a while producing a banding effect and/or a blurring of text. The built in cleaning cycle does not clear the problem. Running the head over a pad soaked in Isopropyl Alcohol clears the problem, but after a week or so things start getting bad again. The user manual does not mention the need to change any cleaning pads. How does the cleaning cycle work and are there any checks or adjustments which might improve things?”

(From: Paul Grohe (grohe@galaxy.nsc.com).)

Inkjet printers do not like ‘infrequent’ use. They need to be ‘exercised’ every once and a while. Use ‘em or loose ‘em! I’m not familiar with the Epson products, but on the HP DeskJets, there is a little rubber “seat” that the cartridge sits on when it is ‘parked’. If it is gummed-up or damaged, it can cause the cartridge to slowly dry out.

The HP’s have a little oval-shaped rubber ‘do-hikey’ that seals the area around the ink jets. It generally gets gummed up with dry ink, and does not seal completely anymore.

>> Shop for HP Printer Ink Toner Cartridges

Check and see if there is something similar that covers the print head when it is not in use. The “banding” can also occur as the cartridge starts getting towards the end of it’s life. Also try cleaning the contact areas with a soft cloth. Poor contacts can cause similar problems.

If large ink droplets are forming on the head during printing, this is a sign of poor contacts or a physically damaged head.

However, most of the time it is caused by “clots” in the areas supplying the jets, or in the jets themselves. Sometimes soaking the jets in a tray of alcohol or water for a while can dissolve these “clots”, but the success rate is not that great. Better to fix the root of the problem.

BTW: Avoid turning the cartridge upside-down. Always hold it so gravity pulls the ink down to the jets and keeps them primed. Turning it upside-down can allow air to be drawn back into the jets. Then again, it may be time for a new cartridge!

Epson Error Light Problems

admin — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:58:27 +0000

Epson Stylus Color IIS error light problems

“The error light on the Epson Stylus color IIs keeps blinking. The color cartridge is new. The black and white prints perfect.”

>> Shop for Epson Printer Ink Toner Cartridge

(From: Robert J. Brancatelli (bronco@mkol2.dseg.ti.com).)

Most likely, the new color cartridge is not seating all the way. Move the print head to where you normally do to swap the heads. Now, without removing the color print head, lift the most forward lever up as far as it will go, then bring it down to reseat the ink cartridge.

Cleaning Epson Color Print Head

admin — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 02:32:39 +0000

Cleaning totally clogged colour head in Epson Stylus Color 500
(From: Colin Guillas (rguillas@nrn1.nrcan.gc.ca).)

>> Shop for Epson Printer Ink & Toner Cartridges

I have an Epson Stylus Colour II printer which had similar problems- this time, which the magenta head.

After running about 50 cleaning cycles, and having no improvement, I disassembled the unit (I am WAY out of warranty already and manually mopped out the cleaning apparatus- the rubber heads were VERY gummed up, so I wipe them off… the suction tubes were clogged, so I squeezed them out, the sponges were full, so I mopped them up with a kleenex. I then put on a pair of elbow length kleenex gloves, and pulled the cotton cleaning tray/absorbent reservoir out of the base of the unit, and rung it out into the toilet. There was a three year accumulation of wasted ink in there- this printer gets extremely heavy use, but it was amazing at the amount of ink that gets wasted, compared to what goes on paper! I would guess that it’s about 30/70, 70% ending up on paper. Incredible wastage. I just don’t buy cheap refills. I buy better ones with guarantees on them. I also replace the cartridges that I am refilling every four to six refills. There will be an accumulation of ‘junk’ if you don’t.

The cure to my problem? Pay the price for the genuine epson cartridge and do another fifty cleaning cycles. It worked for me. I had to wring out that @#$%liner again….

(BTW, If anyone else has an epson inkjet, I recommend that they get the liner replaced or at least wrung out. It’s a horrible mess which can overflow if you use an awful lot of ink… mine was saturated… you may have a nasty surprise next time you decide to move the printer- all down the front of your shirt.

Canon Bubble Jet Problems

admin — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:22:38 +0000

Canon BubbleJet printers not printing after cleaning
(From: Handy (handy@redshift.com).)

Take out the cartridge that you want cleaned. Find that hole that ink comes out of, squeeze the cartridge until ink comes out of that

hole - actually drips. Put it back in the machine, clean it at least FOUR times. Usually on the fourth time for some reason, it works.

Just clean the one that you think needs cleaning.

Canon BJC 600 problems
(From: Rob Connelly (connelly@ix.netcom.com).)

I have found that sometimes the BJC 600 series gets confused and needs to be reinitialized. If you haven’t already done so, unplug it

from the wall, wait 60 seconds for the internal supply capacitors to completely discharge, then plug it back in and try again. When you

remove it from the AC line it goes through a complete warm up cycle and resets itself.

Also, the contacts that mate with the print head are notorious for oxidizing. You might want to carefully clean them (lightly) with a

pencil eraser and some isopropyl.

If these remedies don’t work, the Canon 1-800 number will put you in touch with their tech department, and they are really quite good at

determining what the problem is over the phone.

(From: Al Savage (asavage@iname.com).)

When I was working on printers, we’d see a few of the 600s in with corrosion on the ribbon cable end under the printhead. NewKote

apparently had a venting problem with their copykat ink cartridges, where in some situations ink would spurt (leak? drip?) and somehow

corrode the ribbon cable.

I never tried to replace one and see if it could actually be repaired with just the cable, but I did try vigorously cleaning the cable

end: no conclusive repair.

BJC 600 print head error - lights flashing

“Upon powering up the printer the two lights flash indicating a print head error. However by cleaning the electrical contacts (with

alcohol) on both the print head and the printer the printer works temporarily. Within a day or two the problem resurfaces. When the

printer does print it prints excellent quality. The nozzles seem to be is good working order.”

(From: Al Savage (asavage@iname.com).)

Although printhead failures are common on the 600 series, so is failure of the ribbon cable to the printhead. This is an acknowledged

problem from Canon, when aftermarket ink reservoirs are used (i.e. Pirana or NewKote). Somehow the ink gets up to the cable/printhead

interface and corrodes it. When I was working on them (about 18 months ago) Canon and NewKote were pointing fingers at each other. It

appeared to be a reservoir venting problem.

How many colors can an inkjet printer produce?

admin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 01:23:06 +0000

“I use a HP680C in the office, and it have two cartridges, one for black and one for color (yellow/cian/magenta?). If the printer fire one drop of each ink at a given point, we can have only 6 different colors (ignoring white and black). If it can fire two or more drops at a given point, maybe we can have more colors, but I suspect that the printer use this to control quality of the presentation, not the number of colors. Anybody knows for sure? With dithering it can make more colors, with reduced resolution.”

>> Shop for HP Printer Cartridges | Shop for Canon Printer Cartridges

Like most print processes you only have a limited selection of inks to use. Full colour can be derived from three primary colors, just like a monitor. For monitors, these are Red, Green, and Blue because monitors emit light resulting in an additive color process. Inks, on the other hand, absorb light so printing is a subtractive process. The resulting inks should then be cyan (blue+green or -red), magenta (red+blue or -green), and yellow (red+green or -blue).

Therefore, the colors used in common inkjet printers are not really capable of producing true full spectrum photorealistic quality results since they are red (not magenta), blue (not cyan), and yellow. These are optimized for nice saturated primary colors when used independently. Also see the section: Why are red, blue, and yellow inkjet primaries?.

>> Shop for Dell Printer Cartridges | Shop for Epson Printer Cartridges

In addition, the combination of the three primary colors should be capable of being combined to produce black but due to misregistration and the pigments used, this black would be somewhat muddy and brown. Therefore, a separate black ink cartridge is normally used for black printing.

(From: Tony Hardman (AHED_CIJ@f54×19.demon.co.uk).)

With printing there are more problems than solutions and I do not know which method HP use in their printing.

If you can vary the drop size, you can change the drop spread on the paper. This can be done by firing bigger slugs of ink, or multiples of the drop at the same position. As you can figure the ink will either spread and make a bigger drop, or stay the same size and become denser. Depending on the resolution you want these could both improve colour density. This depends on two key components.. The ink, and the paper.

>> Shop for LexMark Printer Cartridges | Shop for Samsung Printer Cartridges

The problems with laying down multiple drops on paper is that if you do a large block the paper will curl up and the overall image becomes worse. This is why you can pay 1 a sheet for ‘quality’ paper.

Another problem with this is speed. Firing two drops in the exact same place is difficult… Unless the head is stationary but that is not good either. You may notice that most DOD printers in high resolution mode do a number of passes over the same place. This does allow dithering and other techniques for resolution / colour enhancement. They usually only print while going in one direction for improved mechanical control.

In the 1600 printer there is a heater to assist with the drying times and reduce the curling problem.

>> Shop for Xerox Printer Cartridges | Shop for Konia-Minolta Printer Cartridge

Inks are a problem too. They can dry at different times because of the different dyes used, or they may not mix how you expect if you place two colours on top of each other. Its only ink … but to get the best balance of surface tension, drying time, viscosity, colour, stability…. and more is not as straight forward as it might seam. I have noticed that the water based inks are improving, and there are some that do not run if they get wet (after drying on the paper).

I think the spec in your manual may suggest what method they use.. The printer resolution (best) is 600dpi (I guess), and I recon the best full colour resolution is lower. Also the print head is only 300dpi so you must do two passes to get 600dpi black (single black ink cartridge). This suggests a partial step of 1/600 inch between the passes. What happens when you print black using the colour head? How many passes, how much slower? The resolutions quoted may also be 600 * 300, or what ever. If they make blocks of colour from a potential 600dpi machine, the resultant image is probably only 75dpi (possibly less). This still might be called 600dpi, because the drop placement uses this resolution, but it is not 600dpi at full colour. The resolution of quality picturers / poster is several thousand dpi, but not a variable image (not ink jet).

>> Shop for Cleaning Cartridges | Shop for Refill Kits

In the Lyra publications they did publish the real print head specifications for the machines they review. They also include some of the methods of colour printing.

After all this I have noticed that I have not answered the question of how do HP et al get their colour resolutions. All I have mentioned is a few of the parameters that the designers have to deal with.

8 Reasons Why your Prints are Cheap and Getting Cheaper

admin — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:07:54 +0000

By: Carla San Gaspar

Mention discount printing and a person may think twice about quality, especially with something as critical as working on your marketing materials. Rest assured though that most of these fears are baseless, and larger printing companies with more professional machinery provide prints cheaper.

In printing, a change in the way prints are done can spell the difference of as much as 50% of the price cost. Just compare the printing cost of online printing as against a small local printing company to get a clear picture of the price difference. There are several factors that affect the price of your printing.

Here are a few tidbits about how big companies can afford to sell cheap:

• Economies of Scale:

In simple terms, an increase in the scale of production brings down the cost to produce individual units. There are several reasons why the overall cost per print goes down as the output of a printer increases.

1) Printing companies order their supplies like paper and ink from third party suppliers. The large volume can be used as leverage to get bigger wholesale discounts from these third party suppliers.

2) Large businesses have to maintain an efficient work flow to keep up with the printing demands. They have to train their employees, and with repetitive work, they gain more experience and skill in their specialized area. This minimizes wastage and maximizes productivity.

3) Fixed overhead costs are spread over a larger volume of print jobs. Overhead costs are sometimes unrelated to the print job itself, but should nonetheless be recovered by the business. The rent of the factory for instance, or the cost to hire management is spread over more print jobs.

• New Technology:

4) Investing in new equipment allows printing companies to automate many tedious and laborious processes that cut additional costs. The computer to plate technology for instance cuts a big portion of the prepress process that used to involve manually developing plates, stripping the negative to plate, etc.

Inkjet Printer Type and Reliability

admin — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 01:29:10 +0000

Inkjet Printer Cartridge Type and Reliability
Here are a couple of opinions. (From: Al Savage (asavage@iname.com).)

Having worked at Epson, Canon, and HP warranty service centers, I tell anyone who asks me for advice about buying an ink jet printer to always choose one where getting more ink also gets you a fresh printhead. The number one service problem with all inkjets is printhead clogging failures. On the Stylus 800 series, for example, the printhead retail cost was $170, and the labor was about half an hour. On the Canon BJC-600, the P/H cost was $250, but the head could be changed by the owner. And with so many folks using third party ink that works like it was brewed up in someone’s bathtub (NuKote, Piranha (sp?), etc.), printhead failures scrapped more inkjets than any other three causes combined.

Cheap, owner-replaceable printheads help keep cheap inkjet printers out of the landfill.

>> Shop for HP Printer Cartridges | Shop for Brother Printer Cartridges
(From: Roger Hamlett (roger@ttelmah.demon.co.uk).)

I disagree with the comments about choosing one where getting ink gets you a printhead. I have a bin full of ‘dead’ HP cartridges, that have resisted various attempts to get them printing again, yet also have an Epson here, that is four years old, and has never given any problems. The bill for cartridges on the HP, (allowing for the part use), would have paid to replace the printer a couple of times over.

>> Shop for Canon Printer Cartridges | Shop for Epson Printer Cartridge

Inkjet Primaries

admin — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:22:09 +0000

Why are red, blue, and yellow inkjet primaries?

For a subtractive printing process, the ‘optimum’ primary colors for a 3-ink system would be closer to magenta, cyan, and yellow. However, these are not generally used. Why?

I don’t know the precise answer but it is no doubt a tradeoff between cost and which colors are used most often. For non-photo printing, the straight red, blue, and yellow are far more useful since they can be use by themselves or in simple combination to produce a wide range of vibrant, if not realistic colors. For example, pure red is far more likely to be used for simple graphics than magenta. To make something that looks like pure red using magenta and yellow requires a precise combination - not easy to do with an inkjet printer!

>> Buy Cheap Printer Cartridges - CLICK HERE

Printer and Photocopier Troubleshooting and Repair Collection
Version 2.48
Copyright © 1996-2001
Samuel M. Goldwasser
— All Rights Reserved —
For corrections/comments/suggestions, please contact me via the Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ Email Links Page.
Reproduction of this document in whole or in part is permitted if both of the following conditions are satisfied:
1. This notice is included in its entirety at the beginning.
2. There is no charge except to cover the costs of copying.

Why Learning a Second Language?

admin — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 03:50:58 +0000

Last Monday when I was on my car to work like any other weekday early in the morning, I was listening to my favor radio station AM860. One of the topics discussed was what foreign language would you pick if you want to learn a second language. Of course, English is your first language. There were many people called in and gave their answers. The top ones were Spanish, French, Chinese…etc. At the end of the talk show, the host stated that if he would have learned a second language, that would be Chinese.

I was not suprised at all by his statement and I totally agreed with him. Here are some of the reasons I could come up to support his statement:

1. Language is a major tool in communication among people. If you don’t understand the same language regardless English, Spanish, or Chinese, then you can’t communicate effectively.
2. As you may know, there are 2/3 of the populations speak Chinese on the earth. If you want communicate to the 2/3 of populations on the earth, you need to learn Chinese.
3. As the global econimic grows so rapidly, many companies and businesses have expanded or planned to expand their business to Asia counties especially China. They need to hire people who speak both English and one foreign language, Chinese or other Asia languages, to help their business. If you know Chinese, then you’re ahead of others who don’t know a foreign language, Chinese or other Asia languages.
4. This one may not be a reason, but an advantage. Now a day, there are many schools (high school, college… etc) offer foreign langauge class and many of them offer Chinese class. You can pick a foreign language as one of your selective course.

To conclude, learning a foreign language as your second language regardless Chinese, French, Spanish…etc has many advantages.