NewtonTalk.net April 2009 archive: Re: [NTLK] [OT] StyleWriter 2

From: <Reilly001os_at_aol.com>
Date: Sun Apr 26 2009 - 19:02:46 EDT

I've only seen canons (and canon-made rebrands) with seperate ink tanks and print heads. But I've only had HP, lexmark, and canon printers. I personally don't like printers that have the ink tank and print head all in one. It's wasteful and I don't like paying for a new print head if I don't need one. The only reason inkjet print heads on the 'all in one' cartridges fail is because they are cheaply made, seperate print heads like in my canon bjc2000 are usually made better because they're expected to print more than one ink tank worth of ink. I've tossed tons of half full 'all in one' ink cartridges and wasted a lot of money with my HP and lexmark printers thanks to print head failures. I'll never buy another printer that has 'all in one' cartridges again. IMHO Ink tank/print head 'all in one' cartridges are the biggest rip off with inkjet printers. The next two biggest rip offs are: the inkjets that use the color ink to make black ink (they have no seperate black ink) and the ink tanks or 'all in one' cartr
idges that have all the colors and black in one tank/cartridge so you have to throw out the still full colored ink when you run out of black. Anyway my canons print head is about 10 years old now ( it has been revived from dried/gunked once too) and I've printed tons of manuals & CD labels with it and it's still going strong. A friend helped me twice to do custom cd productions (each batch had about 120 CDs and we used a 6x cd burner lol) and we had the canon printing labels nonstop both times (each label sheet only held 2 labels so it took awhile). Those jobs punished that poor printer so hard I thought it was going to die but it never gave us any problems and thanks to the cups drivers, a usb to parallel cable my brother gave me and a Newton serial to parallel cable I got on ebay I still us it with os x and my Newton today.
I've found the best way to dry out an ink tank and print head is to turn the printer off before it stops doing its little post print dance or to accidentally turn the printer on and then off while its doing the pre print dance. Usually before and after printing it cleans the head and then parks it back on a little rubber mat to stop the ink from drying out so if you cut the power using a switch bar or pull the plug (instead of using the printers power switch) your just asking for a dried out ink tank at the least or a dead print head at the worst. Don't laugh but it took me awhile to figure that out :-) The little dance my canon does drives me nuts sometimes, especially if I accidentally turn it on, but since I figured that out I've not had any problems with dried out ink tanks and I've let it sit for months at a time. If your having a lot of drying problems check that the rubber 'parking mat' is still there and clean, if its got gunk build up it will not let the head park right and it'll dry out faster.

With the still gunked print head try putting a few alcohol drops on the ink inlet at 10min intervals while trying to print about 5min after alcohol application, that's exactly how I did it with my bjc2000. It took about an hour but it worked.

And after all that is said, laser printers are still the best value per page, I just wish I could afford a color one :-) all though my old b/w HP laser that can duplex pages is nice when its not jamming, it was trash salvage so its got wounds lol.

Joe Reilly
-----Original Message-----
From: John Broughton <jdbroughton@yahoo.com>

Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 19:59:43
To: <newtontalk@newtontalk.net>
Subject: Re: [NTLK] [OT] StyleWriter 2200 giving up the ghost?

Scott,
There's just one more thing..... Most consumer grade printers have print heads separate from the ink tanks, just as is the case with your 2200. One of the biggest causes of printer failures in these printers, most of the models made by Brother, Epson, Canon, Lexmark, and Xerox, is letting them sit for a long period without use. What's a long period? I'd say from experience that you don't want to let them set for more than a few days without running something through them. Letting them sit without use allows any residual ink in the print heads to dry and thus clog the tiny print holes in the head causing a failure. These holes are extremely small and difficult to clean. Most, if not all, of HPs printers have integrated print heads in their ink tanks which means that every time you change a cart, you're also getting a fresh print head. I'm not pushing HP printers over any other brand and I don't work for HP. My wife uses a Canon Photo Printer with her iMac
and I've had a time keeping it clean and working. Just my $.02.

Glad you got your printer working again and good luck cleaning the old print head. Let us know how that works out for future reference.

R
J

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