cheap printer cartridges

[owas]

The link is to a continuous ink system, whereby dummy cartridges are fed by capilliary tubes to much bigger (150ml or something) reservoirs which sit behind the printer which is similar to the big A2 and larger printers. The printer complains the cartridges aren't genuine but you just hit 'okay' and carry on. No fiddling around with the little ink cartridges on the print head.

You do eventually run into a full waste ink reservoir, as when you clean the heads it just flushes new ink through the heads. The ink drains into a small (50ml?) reservoir in the printer and when it's full, the printer says a service call is needed. Google waste ink reset and you'll find various bits of software to reset the printer, but you also need a printer potty, which is a external tupperware box and tube to replace the tiny one in the printer.

I'm tempted by a colour laser but then the price of the toner is huge. Having said that, ink jets need to be used several times a week or the heads gum up, wasting ink cleaning them.

I don’t think the toner price is too bad with them lasting as long as they do.

I need to replace the fuser on mine, somehow managed to mess it up and now it has a tyre tread sort of pattern on anything I print

 

[bigegg]

what printer?
I only ask because the HP 4100 I have has a VERY good service manual (freely available at a tinternet near you!), which (amongst other things) actually diagnoses which part of the feed mechanism is "messed up" by the distance between repeats of pattern, and the shape of the pattern itself.
Maybe something similar available for yours

 

[owas]

I have a HP 5500 something,
The pattern is imprinted into the filmy stuff on the fuser, so I'm sure I just have to switch that out, all happened after a page somehow got jammed and stuck to it and I picked it all off.
They're not too pricey, just not got round to doing it

 

[bigegg]

http://ploteri.com/data/HP DeskJet 5000-5500 service manual.pdf

?

 

[owas]

http://ploteri.com/data/HP DeskJet 5000-5500 service manual.pdf

?

I got it wrong, its 5550dn,
Was told a while ago by some computer techy to just switch out the fuser, its just one of those things I haven't a got around to doing

 

[bigegg]

http://www.s-manuals.com/pdf/printer/hp/hp_color_laserjet_5500,_5550_service_manual.pdf

 

[Ed.]

I am not a big fan of inkjet printers if you mainly use them for B/W printing. In the past, I have bought almost new, big network Lexmark printers such as the T620/T630, I can pick them up on E-Bay used for about $50-100 with a low page count of less than 7K printed pages, (a new 20000 page toner OEM cartridge is about $130), so by the time I get even close to to using up the cartridge, I just go out and buy a newer and faster printer and start again. (2 of them even came with a 20K cartridge already installled). Incidently these printers are designed to print up to 200K pages each and every month so not likely to wear out any time soon. Very cheap printing if you are doing just black and white copies. Inkjet printer cartridges are quite expensive for the volume they print out.

Two days ago I bought a new 30p/min Lexmark CS510DN colour laser with manufacturers warranty for just under $300 delivered on E-Bay, (it actually just arrived 5 minutes ago as I was typing this), I thought that I would try a colour laser for a change as I haven't been real happy with the inkjet printers I have had, because the majority of pages printed by me are B/W so the laser got those and the injet heads dry out if not used consistantly, which is why I bought it, as my Epson Artisan 725 printhead recently dried up and the T630 needed a new cartridge, so this one will replace both. This one comes with a 6K b/w toner and 3 x 4K colour toners. These network printers are something to consider if you are up for a new printer rather than the small home use printers available. Unless you are printing photo's then you will need a good inkjet.

So off now to setup up my new toy.

Cheers

Ed.

 

[Farside]

I would strenuously recommend you get a decent b&w laser printer for your business use -
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-4100N-...hoto_Printers_Printers_JN&hash=item2a2591eb38
as an example - HP 4100 laserjet

refills cost c.60 quid, and you'll get 100,000+ invoices out of that - I used one for my business (2nd hand books on amazon), and was printing 1000+ invoices+picking lists + other paperwork a week, and it took TWO YEARS (and some months) to use up a toner cartridge!
A "maintenance kit" (new rollers) costs about 60 quid, and lasts about a million impressions - likewise a fuser unit.

then, if you need photos printing, go to Asda, or Staples, and have them printed at 35p each

do the maths - £52 for a printer as above, which will do 3 years worth of business printing (do you NEED colour?) or 60 quid a month in colour cartridges>?

This ^^^^^^^... every word is true.
Even for personal use, I ditched the colour printer as it's just not cost-effective to keep it while the ink slowly clogs up. I eventually learned the hard way after sinking too much money into Epsons, and even my HP inkjet went the same way (but HP aren't of the same horrible order as Epsons). My personal printing is done on an ancient OKI laser which has fallen off the cliff for current OS support but has plenty of spares available at dirt-cheap prices now as a result.
For printing colour pics I just get them done on-line and delivered to me - works out far cheaper than paying the cost of keeping a colour printer.

 

[T0rnado69]

ive got an epson r300 with a Ciss kit on it and its been great, not having to keep refilling cartridges or replacing them as they only hold about 7ml of ink. the ciss kit bottles hold 100ml and you just top them up when needed.
but ive got fed up with having to keep doing head cleaning and test prints to get all the inks working everytime you want to print something.
my friend has had a laser printer since 2008 and said he would never go back to an inkjet and only just had to buy a colour toner for it since 2008
so i decided to buy one and its been great. no head cleaning and fast prints. and dry too.
no need to worry about wet pages.
it even wireless and network connection too.

 

[Ed.]

I personally don't like HP products anymore, I ended up with a small graveyard of HP printers and a couple of laptops. Which is why I prefer the Lexmark brand better and they have very good OS driver updates even on old network machines, not sure about the home use printers as I have never bought them. Epson OS driver support in my opinion is woeful. Before I bought the colour laser I was tossing up between it and a new Lexmark T652, which is purely a mono printer, for just slightly more than the colour laser I bought but it does 48PPM. I am still trying to talk myself out of buying it as well but truly can't justify having two large lasers at home for what I do now. Originally this printer cost several thousand dollars. It's great value when these sort of printers get cleared out by distributors and such.

As for doing online inkjet printing, I did something similar when my twin girls reached 21, my wife and I wanted to give them a Photo album with their pics in it, we ended up with several hundred of photo's each, so put them on a usb stick and went to a K'Mart photo lab and ended up paying 10C each, no hassle, no using up my cartridges or photo paper and fiddling around for many hours waiting to print them out at home, simple. It also would have cost more to do them at home! but having a colour printer at home is convenient when you just want to print off something quickly.

Cheers

Ed.

 

[CompoSimmonite]

Printing photo's can be done on-line - Aldi & Lidl for example offer the service. http://www.aldiphotos.co.uk/ http://www.lidl-photos.co.uk/
After seeing the quality of results a mate recently got printing out photos at Tesco I wouldn't waste my time trying at home with an inkjet.

Paul H