use of centrifuge

The other day I sawed one of my old HP inkjet cartridges in two out of curiosity. I was somewhat surpeised to find that the ink was absorbed in sponges rather than just being free inside the cartridge. Although the cartrige had run dry a long time ago there seemed to still be quite a bit of ink in the sponges.I'm wondering if anyone has ever contrived some sort of centrifuge to settle the ink to the bottom and print several dozen more pages before buying a new cartridge? Engineman1

Reply to
Engineman1
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I don't know if the hp cartridges have an eeprom built in that counts pages as the Epson ones do. Once the page count is up the cartridge is empty regardless of ink left. This turns out to be a neat feature for the Epson ones because they almost never run out of ink and you don't have airlock troubles when you refill them. You have to get software that reflashes the eeprom This can be done right in the printer with your pc or with a stand alone programmer sold for the purpose. It all works well, I have refilled many times.

John.

Reply to
John Wilson

The problem is the inkjet printer. Scrap that and get a laser printer. My toner cartridge will print over a case of paper and then I can squeeze out a few more pages by shaking it a bit. An inkjet will fail suddenly and without warning.

Reply to
Roger Shoaf

I think colour laser printers are still a bit pricey.

I haven't killed off a crtridge yet on my Canon i850 but one or two are getting low enough that the Canon driver is alerting me to low ink. Examining the cartridges, I see a little molded pip sticking up from the bottoms of the cartridges. It appears that the low ink warning is triggered optically when the ink level drops below the top of the pip.

The cartridges have two regions, one filled with sponge and one not. Feed is from the sponge filled one. When no ink is visible in the fluid only compartment, it will still work for a while. I keep an extra set in my desk for when one or more goes dead. I'm told the new cartridges will keep for a year unopened.

Ted

Reply to
Ted Edwards

That's the old-style ones. Their newer style has a plastic bladder inside with a light flat spring to take up the slack, used to be sold as "high-capacity" cartridges. You used to be able to refill the foam-filled ones via a syringe, we did it many times with 500-series printers. Between 3 and 5 refills before the jets got clogged.

Those printers were rated 20 pages per day, much more than that and the local ink supply in the foam got exhausted and you got light print or skipped dots. It's always good practice to keep a spare set of cartridges around, inkjets tend to run out with not much warning.

Stan

Reply to
Stan Schaefer

I agree, but some of the new solid ink Xerox Phasers are quite a bit cheaper and produce totally awesome printout.

Reply to
Jim Levie

I have the Canon 9000. One neat feature is that when the ink does run out, the printer stops. I then open the top door, the shuttle moves to center to allow changing the ink cartridge. When the door closes, the printer picks up where it left off so I don't waste a sheet of 11x19 photo paper.

Earle Rich Mont Vernon, NH

Reply to
ERich10983

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