End the Monopoly - we need Open Source Inkjet Printers

[free_electron]

i still use dot matrix ribbons...

humbug. nothing beats hammer and chisel in granite. Been around for millenia. There are thousand year old examples. Virtually indestructible ( barring any earthquakes)
rock solid.

[GreyWoolfe]

The manufacturers go where the market leads them. There used to be more expensive printers with cheaper consumables. They disappeared, because the market keeps going for the cheapest startup cost. Everyone says they want cheaper consumables, but when it comes to opening their wallets, the majority support the opposite approach.

Seems we are going round in circles here. As ogden pointed out on the first page of this thread, inkjet printers with a realistic, non-subsidized price tag and with reasonable prices for bottled ink are still being offered. Epson makes a whole range of "EcoTank" printers, and Canon has a similar range of "MegaTank" printers.

Still being offered? As far as I know they completely disappeared and have only emerged again in response to the broad availability of third party ink tank add ons for cheap printers.

A quick look says that Epson is still selling the Eco-Tank printers and you have a choice of OEM and 3rd party refill kits.  I have never not seen them in stores since they came out.  It is an attractive option but I use my Epson workforce all in one so little for printing, it isn't worth upgrading.  Everything is pretty much exclusively laser printed unless color is what is desired.

i still use dot matrix ribbons...

humbug. nothing beats hammer and chisel in granite. Been around for millenia. There are thousand year old examples. Virtually indestructible ( barring any earthquakes)
rock solid.

It's only an issue when you make a mistake.  Hopefully, it's not at the bottom of the slab, that would honk me off.

[wraper]

Recent models have CL-546 (2.5 mL per color) and PG-545 cartridges with print head. Printers:
PIXMA iP2850 PIXMA MG3052 PIXMA MG3053 PIXMA MG3051 PIXMA MG3050 PIXMA MG2550S PIXMA MG2950 PIXMA MX495 PIXMA MG2550 PIXMA MG2450 PIXMA TS3150 PIXMA TS3151 PIXMA TS 205 PIXMA TS305 PIXMA TR4550 PIXMA TR4551
There is also XL version of cartridges but not all of those models support them.

Interesting, those models are not sold in the US.  Conflict with HP patents?

There are different models with PG-245 and CL-246 cartridges. Seems they decided to make printers/cartridges bind to region.

[tooki]

  This. I gave up on inkjet printers. I print infrequently enough that I was just wasting cartridges as they dried up and clogged between prints. With a laser printer, it doesn't matter if I print 100 pages a day or one page every 100 days, I still get the full use of each and every toner cartridge. Without daily printing, the laser approach is MUCH better, and much more economical.

Yep, for infrequent use, inkjet is really not suitable. Just using it once a week is enough to keep things sensible, but (depending on the model) any less can result in using more ink to clean than ends up on the paper...

The new Epson designs is more or less a return to the way the first inkjet printers were - the head did not get replaces every time you refilled the ink, the ink was separate. Remember the original Canon BubbleJet? And the later color one - I remember Radio Shack used to sell one, not sure if it was a Canon or Epson OEM, but the color ink cartridges went in a compartment alongside the mechanism and there were flexible hoses. The ink was fairly cheap because it was just a plastic bottle with ink, not a complex high precision printhead. I don't recall a limited printhead life - I think HP only invented a solution to a problem that didn't exist simply to make more money on the ink.

Well, the first HP inkjet (which preceded the Canon by a year) was the ThinkJet, and it used a disposable print head. I can't find anything about Canon's first model (the Bubble Jet BJ-80) other than its name (Google searches get totally polluted by people who miswrote the much later BJC-80 model without the C). But the one you're probably thinking of was this one: https://www.thenimbus.co.uk/nimbus-parts-list/colourjet

It does indeed seem to use just tanks. Canon then released the BJ-10, which used a disposable head design. Ever since, Canon has always had both types available. (Integrated head in cheap models, separate head in more expensive ones.)

I suggest to you as well to read up in the HP Journal archives on the development of the inkjet. They had some damned good reasons for initially going with disposable heads. (And given their trivial cost, it wasn't a big deal.)

Only HP uses the printhead in the ink cartridge design.  Brother, Canon, Epson do not, but their OEM ink is not all that cheaper than HP.

HP's OfficeJet Pro line does have separate printheads (and seems to be prone to printhead clogging).

Nonsense. The only brand to never use disposable heads is Epson, because their piezo print heads are comparatively expensive to make. Every other brand either had, or still does have, have models with disposable heads. HP and Canon do both, with cheaper models using disposable heads. I don't think Lexmark ever made ones without disposable heads.

Recent models have CL-546 (2.5 mL per color) and PG-545 cartridges with print head. Printers:
PIXMA iP2850 PIXMA MG3052 PIXMA MG3053 PIXMA MG3051 PIXMA MG3050 PIXMA MG2550S PIXMA MG2950 PIXMA MX495 PIXMA MG2550 PIXMA MG2450 PIXMA TS3150 PIXMA TS3151 PIXMA TS 205 PIXMA TS305 PIXMA TR4550 PIXMA TR4551
There is also XL version of cartridges but not all of those models support them.

Interesting, those models are not sold in the US.  Conflict with HP patents?

Nope. Canon just uses different numbering for different regions. (Insanely pointless IMHO, but there it is...) The printers have the same fundamental model numbers, but the cartridges have the 2 or 5 prefix depending on region.

[Red Squirrel]

IMO there is no reason to use inkjet printers anymore they are archaic technology.  Dot matrix printers have their use where impact is required (ex: anything with carbon copy) and where you need continuous feed, while for ordinary printing, laserjet beats ink/bubble jet at everything.   They are faster, they are cheaper to operate, the ink (toner) does not go bad, the quality is better, and more crisp, etc...

Even color laserjet printers are super cheap now.  I remember when my high school got one and it was considered a huge deal, and it was a special privilege to get to print to it.   Now you can buy one for under a grand.  I'm not sure what the quality of consumer grade ones is like mind you.  The one we got at our school would have been a commercial grade unit but that was also close to 20 years ago. (I feel old now)  Even SOHO/semi professional ones arn't too bad, maybe a bit over a grand.

I kinda want to get one at some point, I like the idea of being able to make fancy color prints at home.  Maybe even print out face plates for projects and find a clean way to glue it on.  Or even safety signs for around the lab/server room for fun.  Lot of potentials being able to do high quality color prints at home.

Of course  the super high end photo printers are inkjet and will be better but I'm comparing SOHO stuff here.  In these cases laserjet always wins.

[tooki]

IMO there is no reason to use inkjet printers anymore they are archaic technology.

There are many words one could use to describe inkjet, but "archaic" is not one of them. It's in wider use than ever, having expanded well beyond the low-end home market, displacing essentially every other technology for large-format printing (like banners and huge photographs), and now encroaching on digital offset. It's displaced laser and dot matrix for mass custom mailings like utility bills. Some inkjets are displacing even office laser printers.

Dot matrix printers have their use where impact is required (ex: anything with carbon copy) and where you need continuous feed, while for ordinary printing, laserjet beats ink/bubble jet at everything.   They are faster, they are cheaper to operate, the ink (toner) does not go bad, the quality is better, and more crisp, etc...

No, actually inkjet can be faster than laser, and cheaper, too. As the cost of laser printers has come down, the cost of toner has gone up dramatically, to the point that the cheapest-to-operate office printers now are inkjet, not laser. They're office models that use large bottles of ink.

Even color laserjet printers are super cheap now.  I remember when my high school got one and it was considered a huge deal, and it was a special privilege to get to print to it.

Heheh I remember that, too!

Now you can buy one for under a grand.

A grand? Try $100. But of course the toner costs for those are at least as high as on a $100 inkjet.

I'm not sure what the quality of consumer grade ones is like mind you.

Like any laser: awesome for text, very good for color graphics, so-so for photos.

Maybe even print out face plates for projects and find a clean way to glue it on.  Or even safety signs for around the lab/server room for fun.  Lot of potentials being able to do high quality color prints at home.

Well, many of us have done that kind of thing with color printers (be they laser or inkjet) for years and years now... I've had a color printer at home since 1994-95 or so.

What I would LOVE to see move into the home market (from the industrial market to which it's currently limited) is UV-cure lacquer inkjet. Those things print tough lacquer onto nearly any surface, and would be AMAZING for doing front panels and the like.

Of course  the super high end photo printers are inkjet and will be better but I'm comparing SOHO stuff here.  In these cases laserjet always wins.

No, it doesn't. Inkjet will pretty much always beat laser in color. (Both require high quality paper for that.) Each type of printer has its pros and cons, so for some situations one will be better than the other. There's no one answer.

[ogden]

Of course  the super high end photo printers are inkjet and will be better but I'm comparing SOHO stuff here.  In these cases laserjet always wins.

No, it doesn't. Inkjet will pretty much always beat laser in color.

InkJet beats SOHO B&W as well. Epson *original* T664 70ml black ink for 7500 4500 page yield: 12.5$. I do not see how SOHO LaserJet *original* supplies can be any cheaper than that.

[rrinker]

Of course  the super high end photo printers are inkjet and will be better but I'm comparing SOHO stuff here.  In these cases laserjet always wins.

No, it doesn't. Inkjet will pretty much always beat laser in color.

InkJet beats SOHO B&W as well. Epson *original* T664 70ml black ink for 7500 page yield: 12.5$. I do not see how SOHO LaserJet *original* supplies can be any cheaper than that.

 Only IF you print in enough volume to actually get close to that yield. Inkjet always fails for occasional printing, more is wasted on cleaning cycles and you never get close to that kind of yield - if you are able to use the full ink capacity and it doesn't dry out in the cartridge before it's all used up. Print frequently, on a daily basis, and I may agree. Print occasionally, and the waste factor is insanely high.

 Actually - the BEST color printers were those good old Tek dye sublimation ones. Let's not talk about cost per page. We had one of those at the company I worked for over 25 years ago. Amazing photo quality output. They were touchy though, we were always fixing it. I think it was on the orders of dollars per page. And the best thing we had for making overheads - one of those wax printers, I think that was a Tek product as well. Very thoughtful design, not only was each stick a unique color, they also had unique shapes so even if you were colorblind you could put the 3 colors plus black int he correct slots when refilling it. It was weird on paper, and you could scratch the printing off, but for transparencies for the overhead project t the color was phenomenal. Very much a stained glass effect. They had a fairly high waste ratio as well, there was a waste wax drawer you had to empty periodically as it built up with the excess. And startup time for first page from power on seemed like forever as it had to melt the wax.

[tooki]

Of course  the super high end photo printers are inkjet and will be better but I'm comparing SOHO stuff here.  In these cases laserjet always wins.

No, it doesn't. Inkjet will pretty much always beat laser in color.

InkJet beats SOHO B&W as well. Epson *original* T664 70ml black ink for 7500 page yield: 12.5$. I do not see how SOHO LaserJet *original* supplies can be any cheaper than that.

Well, that's the 4500 page cartridge, but even so your point stands!!

The German computer magazien C't did an article (paywall, sorry!) about black and white office printers a few months ago, and the hands-down lowest page cost is an Epson inkjet.

Only IF you print in enough volume to actually get close to that yield. Inkjet always fails for occasional printing, more is wasted on cleaning cycles and you never get close to that kind of yield - if you are able to use the full ink capacity and it doesn't dry out in the cartridge before it's all used up. Print frequently, on a daily basis, and I may agree. Print occasionally, and the waste factor is insanely high.

It depends on how "occasional" it is, really. As I said in a prior comment, usually printing once a week is enough to prevent needing any wasteful deep cleaning.

Actually - the BEST color printers were those good old Tek dye sublimation ones. Let's not talk about cost per page. We had one of those at the company I worked for over 25 years ago. Amazing photo quality output. They were touchy though, we were always fixing it. I think it was on the orders of dollars per page.

Well, great for photos, but not so great for graphics. I think modern photo inkjets exceed the color quality of those dye-sub printers, while providing better sharpness.

And the best thing we had for making overheads - one of those wax printers, I think that was a Tek product as well. Very thoughtful design, not only was each stick a unique color, they also had unique shapes so even if you were colorblind you could put the 3 colors plus black int he correct slots when refilling it. It was weird on paper, and you could scratch the printing off, but for transparencies for the overhead project t the color was phenomenal. Very much a stained glass effect.

Those were the Tektronix, later Xerox, Phaser models, towards the end the 8000 series. (Other Phaser models are laser.) They were neat in many ways. And yeah, they were good for transparency, but (aqueous dye) inkjet is better, frankly. Transparencies are really the thing where color laser sucks, because the pigments in the toner block light without coloring it, so your lovely transparency that looks like color simply projects as black-and-white! Dye inkjet looks amazing.

They had a fairly high waste ratio as well, there was a waste wax drawer you had to empty periodically as it built up with the excess. And startup time for first page from power on seemed like forever as it had to melt the wax.

"Fairly high" is an understatement. The wax inkjets not only had to melt the wax, but the startup process used insane amounts of ink. A single power up would use 1/8 of a cube of ink of each color! So these printers only made sense for high-volume printing with little downtime, since you didn't ever want to shut them down, but their idle energy use is quite high due to needing to keep the wax molten. (Around 50W.) Of course, these were priced out of the home market anyway, so they were really office workgroup printers.

[mariush]

InkJet beats SOHO B&W as well. Epson *original* T664 70ml black ink for 7500 page yield: 12.5$. I do not see how SOHO LaserJet *original* supplies can be any cheaper than that.

Well, that's the 4500 page cartridge, but even so your point stands!!

The German computer magazien C't did ]an article (paywall, sorry!) about black and white office printers a few months ago, and the hands-down lowest page cost is an Epson inkjet.

I assume that's genuine refills and stuff... I bought a brother HL-2135w and "unlocked" refilling by buying a plastic gear and spring from eBay.

Paid 17 UK pounds (~$25) for reset gear and 400g of toner (i think that was good for around 4-5 refills, 10k+ pages).
Though I would probably have to pay ~100$ for new drum/toner assembly when i end up printing 10k+ pages, the original rated life is 10k pages.

[wraper]

InkJet beats SOHO B&W as well. Epson *original* T664 70ml black ink for 7500 page yield: 12.5$. I do not see how SOHO LaserJet *original* supplies can be any cheaper than that.

Well, that's the 4500 page cartridge, but even so your point stands!!

The German computer magazien C't did ]an article (paywall, sorry!) about black and white office printers a few months ago, and the hands-down lowest page cost is an Epson inkjet.

I assume that's genuine refills and stuff... I bought a brother HL-2135w and "unlocked" refilling by buying a plastic gear and spring from eBay.

Paid 17 UK pounds (~$25) for reset gear and 400g of toner (i think that was good for around 4-5 refills, 10k+ pages).
Though I would probably have to pay ~100$ for new drum/toner assembly when i end up printing 10k+ pages, the original rated life is 10k pages.

You can get crappy 3rd party ink for much less just as well.
BTW, to fill Ecotank printers, you just fill container from the bottle. You don't even remove anything from printer. In your case, you need to take cartridge apart every time, remove waste toner, clean everything, fill, reassemble and only then put it back. Even filling all 5 ink cartridges in my Canon printer takes less time.

[Red Squirrel]

IMO there is no reason to use inkjet printers anymore they are archaic technology.

There are many words one could use to describe inkjet, but "archaic" is not one of them. It's in wider use than ever, having expanded well beyond the low-end home market, displacing essentially every other technology for large-format printing (like banners and huge photographs), and now encroaching on digital offset. It's displaced laser and dot matrix for mass custom mailings like utility bills. Some inkjets are displacing even office laser printers.

Dot matrix printers have their use where impact is required (ex: anything with carbon copy) and where you need continuous feed, while for ordinary printing, laserjet beats ink/bubble jet at everything.   They are faster, they are cheaper to operate, the ink (toner) does not go bad, the quality is better, and more crisp, etc...

No, actually inkjet can be faster than laser, and cheaper, too. As the cost of laser printers has come down, the cost of toner has gone up dramatically, to the point that the cheapest-to-operate office printers now are inkjet, not laser. They're office models that use large bottles of ink.

Even color laserjet printers are super cheap now.  I remember when my high school got one and it was considered a huge deal, and it was a special privilege to get to print to it.

Heheh I remember that, too!

Now you can buy one for under a grand.

A grand? Try $100. But of course the toner costs for those are at least as high as on a $100 inkjet.

I'm not sure what the quality of consumer grade ones is like mind you.

Like any laser: awesome for text, very good for color graphics, so-so for photos.

Maybe even print out face plates for projects and find a clean way to glue it on.  Or even safety signs for around the lab/server room for fun.  Lot of potentials being able to do high quality color prints at home.

Well, many of us have done that kind of thing with color printers (be they laser or inkjet) for years and years now... I've had a color printer at home since 1994-95 or so.

What I would LOVE to see move into the home market (from the industrial market to which it's currently limited) is UV-cure lacquer inkjet. Those things print tough lacquer onto nearly any surface, and would be AMAZING for doing front panels and the like.

Of course  the super high end photo printers are inkjet and will be better but I'm comparing SOHO stuff here.  In these cases laserjet always wins.

No, it doesn't. Inkjet will pretty much always beat laser in color. (Both require high quality paper for that.) Each type of printer has its pros and cons, so for some situations one will be better than the other. There's no one answer.

Maybe they changed a lot since last time I used them then since that has been far from my experience with all the ones I've used or worked with in some way or the other.  Last time I used them, you did not get more than like 20 pages before the ink started to fade.    If you didn't use it every day it would dry up and the cartridge would need to be replaced.  Whether or not you used it, the heads would start to clog over time and the quality would be crap as it would start making lines and smears etc across as it printed.  You'd normally just end up buying the cartridge that comes with the head too since you'd end up changing the head anyway.  They were also super slow compared to laser.  Laser takes more time to warm up but once it starts printing it's way more pages per minute.   Overall I've always found inkjets a terrible experience and not just me personally but lot of people that have called me for help.  Toners will last for years and thousands of pages under home/small office use.    I remember when I lived with my parents and we originally had a bubblejet and we gave up using it as it was too expensive to run but when I went out to buy a laserjet then we used it a lot.  My dad loved to print stuff and just told him he can print as much as he wants since it's so cheap per page. 

Though now that I think of it... is bubblejet and inkjet the same thing?  I'm thinking more about bubblejet, they were crap mostly because of how the ink goes dry.  But I always thought they were the same.

[ebastler]

“Bubblejet” was Canon’s brand in the 1990s, wasn’t it? So, no, I don‘t think the name refers to a fundamentally different technology than „inkjet“. But technology has moved on, by about 25 years, in the meantime.

[wraper]

They were also super slow compared to laser.  Laser takes more time to warm up but once it starts printing it's way more pages per minute. 

https://youtu.be/RAJY-x7v-Oc

[wraper]

Toners will last for years and thousands of pages under home/small office use.

Nope, unless you buy quite expensive model. Cheap ones have the same funny business going with toner cartridges just as inkjet printers.

[Red Squirrel]

They were also super slow compared to laser.  Laser takes more time to warm up but once it starts printing it's way more pages per minute. 

https://youtu.be/RAJY-x7v-Oc

Is that seriously inkjet?  How is that even possible?  The entire cartridge/head has to move completely back and forth for each pixel line.  How is it not shaking itself apart?

All the ones I've seen work about as fast as dot matrix, as they are similar in how they have to operate.

[Red Squirrel]

Toners will last for years and thousands of pages under home/small office use.

Nope, unless you buy quite expensive model. Cheap ones have the same funny business going with toner cartridges just as inkjet printers.

The toner I have in my current Brother Printer is the same one as when I moved into my house and that was close to 10 years ago.   Of course you get what you pay for, this was no $100 printer, it was maybe a few hundred. Still cheap though.

[oPossum]

Is that seriously inkjet?  How is that even possible?  The entire cartridge/head has to move completely back and forth for each pixel line.  How is it not shaking itself apart?

Full width printhead or multiple staggered printheads. In either case they are fixed position.

[Red Squirrel]

Is that seriously inkjet?  How is that even possible?  The entire cartridge/head has to move completely back and forth for each pixel line.  How is it not shaking itself apart?

Full width printhead or multiple staggered printheads. In either case they are fixed position.

Interesting... this is no consumer printer though right?  I'm speaking about consumer printers here, like anything under a grand.   Either way this one seems more like an exception to the rule.  I'd also be curious how many prints you get and how long you can go without printing before it clogs.  That is really the biggest issue with inkjet is how long the ink lasts, which is not very long.

[oPossum]

Business targeted printers.

Epson's 329 mm page wide printhead.



https://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/616494/epson-launches-new-high-speed-enterprise-inkjet-printer/

[oPossum]

HP's page wide printhead.



https://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/slideshow/597780/hp-new-sme-enterprise-printers-move-paper-ink/

[wraper]

Is that seriously inkjet?  How is that even possible?  The entire cartridge/head has to move completely back and forth for each pixel line.  How is it not shaking itself apart?

Full width printhead or multiple staggered printheads. In either case they are fixed position.

FWIW even my $40 Canon ip2200 from more than 10 years ago years ago could do 19 pages per minute (B/W) at fast setting.

[wraper]

I'd also be curious how many prints you get and how long you can go without printing before it clogs.  That is really the biggest issue with inkjet is how long the ink lasts, which is not very long.

In intended use case it should never clog. Even in occasional home use inkjet printers usually clog because of crappy 3rd party ink. With original ink it most likely won't clog even if you don't print anything for half a year.

[Mechatrommer]

here in humid environment, clog usually is a misconception. the real issue is when air is introduced into the nozzle after prolonged idle, getting back ink into the nozzle (by "cleaning" or priming) need a bit of work and patient, but once the nozzles filled with ink, its good to go for continuous printing. even if its a true "clogged" there are ways in youtube how to fix that, people recovered inkjet heads after years of non-usage. if anyone swear by laser printer, try to operate one here. sitting here is a 4 years (iirc) brother laser B&W printer with spider (fungus?) marks on the drum since 3 weeks of purchase (during idle it developed those marks) try to clean that without damaging the drum is next to impossible.

[Red Squirrel]

Hmm yeah I can see humid environments being an issue for laser printers.  They pretty much need to be dry all the time.    And a humid environment would probably be good for inkjet. 

Maybe that's why I've always had issues with inkjet, it's not really humid here.   I run a humidifier so I can keep it at around 15%, anything higher and windows frost up.  In the summer months it goes higher, MAYBE 60 on a rainy day but generally it's not very humid.  My laser printer is actually in the corner of my basement and it's fine.