[filmscanners] Re: OT - Epson 1280 ink "monitor"...

["Bob Frost" <bob@frost.name>]

Hi Austin,

Every time you switch the printer on or off it does cleaning cycles which
consume all the inks, plus it cleans after so many pages and so much time
(according to its page and time counters). So after a lot of black-only
printing, you will have consumed quite a bit of color inks. And if you
change a black cartridge, you will do a heavier purging cycle which also
applies to the color cartridge.

The other point is that I seem to remember reading that the standard black
ink cartridge (T007) is a double capacity cartridge - it has more ink in it
than a single color chamber of the color cartridge. There is a separate low
capacity black cartridge (T010). So the fact that your black and color
cartridges are reading 1/4 probably means that twice as much black ink has
been used as the most used color ink.

Another point that confuses some people is that the level of the color inks
shown on the Status Monitor is the level of the lowest ink - it doesn't show
individual ink usage. But the internal ink counter does monitor each color
ink separately. So if you have printed a lot of prints with large areas of
one color, the Status Monitor may show little or no color inks left, and the
light may start flashing, but if you switch to printing images with large
areas of the other inks, you can go on and on because the internal counter
knows you have plenty of those inks left.

Bob Frost.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Austin Franklin" <austin@darkroom.com>
To: <bob@frost.name>
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2003 9:06 PM
Subject: [filmscanners] OT - Epson 1280 ink "monitor"...


Perhaps someone here can explain this...  I have an Epson 1280.  I have been
using it to print documents that require only black ink, and selecting in
the driver for it to print black only...and the documents are word
documents, that have black text only.

Well, the color ink has been steadily going down, according to the ink
monitor!  Again, I haven't printed a THING that doesn't use black ink
only...and in fact, I can keep printing, even though it claim the color inks
are out, because the documents I am printing only use black ink.

So, where did this ink go?  I see three options:

1) the ink "monitor" has a bug.
2) the printer still uses color inks even though black only is selected.
3) since it decides on its own to do cleaning cycles every now and then,
it's basically
using the colored inks running cleaning cycles.
4) it takes evaporation into consideration ;-)

I'm skeptical of #2, as I can still print black only documents.  I'd guess
#3, but really, that's a LOT of ink to just piss away on cleaning cycles,
literally 1/4 of the cartridges and the black has gone down 1/4th, which is
being used.

Hum.  Anyone else notice this type of thing, or have any other theories?

Austin

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