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Page count ratings aside, the issue I've always had with Inkjet printers is that I print rarely - so nearly every time I go to print, I need to buy new cartridg

Page count ratings aside, the issue I've always had with Inkjet printers is that I print rarely - so nearly every time I go to print, I need to buy new cartridges! It isn't very fun to spend $60 on ink so I can print 3 pages because my last cartridges dried/clogged up in the last 3 months. My laser printer will sit there quietly out of the way indefinitely. Then I surprise it with a print job and it just does what I asked before getting out of the way again. Repeat in 3 months, same story.

AshamedCaptain 4y ago
> so nearly every time I go to print, I need to buy new cartridges! It isn't very fun to spend $60 on ink so I can print 3 pages because my last cartridges dried/clogged up in the last 3 months. Wait, do you know that most printers have the ability to clean these clogs (by wasting a large chunk of the ink)? You don't really need to throw the cartridge away. This is why I say that printing the rated amount of pages is difficult, since these cleanup operations waste a large chunk of the ink. In my experience, an installed cartridge does not become unusably dry even after 1 year of total lack of use. That's because I've had all 4 colors installed for almost a year and they're still printing, and they were open & already close to the expiration date by the time I bought them (amazon warehouse stuff)...
- to11mtm 4y ago
  > Wait, do you know that most printers have the ability to clean these clogs (by wasting a large chunk of the ink)? You don't really need to throw the cartridge away. This is why I say that printing the rated amount of pages is difficult, since these cleanup operations waste a large chunk of the ink. That sometimes works. The last HP I bought, cartridges would easily start choking after a few months of non-use, and no amount of cleaning would stop prints from having soft lines/etc. Unfortunately my printing was so infrequent that I'd be lucky to get 50 pages out of a cartridge. The only environment where I've seen Inkjet cartridges actually 'get fully used' in the last 15 years or so has been in CAD. [0] Compare and contrast to my Father, who goes through ebbs and flows of printing. Since switching to Brother, his overall 'ink/toner' costs have gone down since there's less waste, also Brother drivers are a bit less offensive than HP. [0] - I'll add that while the quality of HP Plotters went down substantially between the era of the OG DesignJet 750C and the DesignJet 4000. Sure, the latter was faster, had a way nicer spittoon setup[1] and separate nozzle/ink cartridges, but had a number of design issues that prevented any real use of batch plotting. Any time we did a large series of prints unsupervised it would wind up feeding output back in and jamming the whole thing. [2] [1] - Tl;dr- where excess ink went between jobs. Part of me wonders if the lack of such bits in consumer printers leads to more clogged nozzles. [2] - Nothing like telling your boss your print job broke a 2 week old printer that cost almost as much as the compact sedan you bought a couple years prior...
- somehnguy 4y ago
  I’ve never once had that cleaning process work. I’ve even tried a number of convoluted multi-step processes involving iso alcohol and a freezer to fix the cartridges. Always left with streaky prints. But I’ve only tried it with 2 inkjet models before throwing those pieces of junk away and getting a laser. Printing bliss ever since.

AshamedCaptain 4y ago

> so nearly every time I go to print, I need to buy new cartridges! It isn't very fun to spend $60 on ink so I can print 3 pages because my last cartridges dried/clogged up in the last 3 months. Wait, do you know that most printers have the ability to clean these clogs (by wasting a large chunk of the ink)? You don't really need to throw the cartridge away. This is why I say that printing the rated amount of pages is difficult, since these cleanup operations waste a large chunk of the ink. In my experience, an installed cartridge does not become unusably dry even after 1 year of total lack of use. That's because I've had all 4 colors installed for almost a year and they're still printing, and they were open & already close to the expiration date by the time I bought them (amazon warehouse stuff)...

to11mtm 4y ago
> Wait, do you know that most printers have the ability to clean these clogs (by wasting a large chunk of the ink)? You don't really need to throw the cartridge away. This is why I say that printing the rated amount of pages is difficult, since these cleanup operations waste a large chunk of the ink. That sometimes works. The last HP I bought, cartridges would easily start choking after a few months of non-use, and no amount of cleaning would stop prints from having soft lines/etc. Unfortunately my printing was so infrequent that I'd be lucky to get 50 pages out of a cartridge. The only environment where I've seen Inkjet cartridges actually 'get fully used' in the last 15 years or so has been in CAD. [0] Compare and contrast to my Father, who goes through ebbs and flows of printing. Since switching to Brother, his overall 'ink/toner' costs have gone down since there's less waste, also Brother drivers are a bit less offensive than HP. [0] - I'll add that while the quality of HP Plotters went down substantially between the era of the OG DesignJet 750C and the DesignJet 4000. Sure, the latter was faster, had a way nicer spittoon setup[1] and separate nozzle/ink cartridges, but had a number of design issues that prevented any real use of batch plotting. Any time we did a large series of prints unsupervised it would wind up feeding output back in and jamming the whole thing. [2] [1] - Tl;dr- where excess ink went between jobs. Part of me wonders if the lack of such bits in consumer printers leads to more clogged nozzles. [2] - Nothing like telling your boss your print job broke a 2 week old printer that cost almost as much as the compact sedan you bought a couple years prior...
somehnguy 4y ago
I’ve never once had that cleaning process work. I’ve even tried a number of convoluted multi-step processes involving iso alcohol and a freezer to fix the cartridges. Always left with streaky prints. But I’ve only tried it with 2 inkjet models before throwing those pieces of junk away and getting a laser. Printing bliss ever since.