I purchased a relatively expensive Epson Stylus Photo 950 printer many years ago, seduced by the extraordinary number of  features (most of which of course turned out to be superfluous). So what if I've never used the continuous roll photopaper with the automatic cutter and catching basket, or the direct onto CD printing ? - I just might have had a desperate need for them one day...

That aside the real problem has been, as usual with wet printers, the ink cartridges. If I used the printer regularly a lot of ink was wasted on each startup cleaning cycle. If I used the printer less often the heads dried up and a lot of ink was wasted flushing them through.  To summarise: almost all of the ink went to waste.

This printer uses individual cartridges (actually just tanks - the heads are part of the printer). This of course is good because no ink is lost by replacing partially used combined ones. On the other hand, because it's a fairly 'fancy' printer it uses 7 of them - 5 colours plus 2 black - and I've never seen credibly genuine ones advertised at much less than £10 each.... (Recommended retail is ~£19 but asking prices of £25+ each are not unheard of...)

The first set of cartridges were consumed for very little useful output, so the second set was treated more carefully. Unsurprisingly the printer was soon relegated to very occasional use only, and lingered on for a couple of years before the next set of 'cartridge low' warnings.

Faced with spending another £70 odd to print possibly only a handful more pages I looked at cheaper 'fake' consumables, but how best to choose which ones ?  Whilst researching, by chance I came across a very positive article about continuous ink feed systems and so had a quick look around for one. I didn't hold out much hope because the printer was now many years old.

Well, my luck was in... CISS  (www.continuous-ink-systems.co.uk)  were having a clearance sale of obsolete systems and I picked one up for only £10.95 - which included 100ml of each ink !  I also purchased some extra inks which were also end of line at £9.95 for 6 x 100ml. As genuine Epson inks cost in the order of £1 per ml  (yes - really!)  it seemed all too good to be true, but there was little to lose and it would be instructive at the very least.

The kit arrived and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. Everything seemed fairly well made, even if the installation instructions were shall we say less than ideal. The kit also included a couple of re-filling needles - but no syringe...

A block of seven 100ml tanks feed ink via silicone tubes (combined into a ribbon) into modified cartridges, refilling them continuously as ink is consumed. The tank filling holes are under the side covers and are visible below with the 'transport' plugs in place.

The ink is drawn by suction, the only requirement being that the tanks are at approximately the same level as the heads. The silicone tubing has to be positioned to allow the head carriage to move back and forth without restriction, and self adhesive clips are provided to hold the tubing in place.

Epson fits chips in their cartridges which record ink consumption to prevent them draining dry and damaging the heads, but also of course in a futile attempt to prevent the use of alternative sources, and prevent refilling. To get around this, the modified cartridges have rather clever chips in them which still record that ink is being consumed, but which upon 'emptying' magically appear to refill of their own accord.

I fitted the cartridges and did a quick mock-up, routing the tubing different ways and using the self adhesive clips, but being rather too fussy I didn't really like the way the tubing had to come through a partially open printer lid.  Here's a random picture from the web of a typical installation (on a different model):-

Also, to fit it like that would be far too quick and easy, so how could I turn it it into a 'project'?  It seemed that routing the tubing inside the printer and through the rear would qualify as such but would also make the modification rather tidier.

With the simple arrangement in the picture above the loop of tubing was rather uncontrolled when the carriage moved to the left, and rubbed badly against the lip of the top cover at the extreme. After some experimentation I arrived at the solution pictured below. The tubing is anchored using a modified clip to the underside of a painted aluminium plate which in turn is secured to the chassis using a couple of existing tapped holes. 

The loop of tubing 'rolls' along the underside of the plate, guided by the slight downward lip at the front edge. The anchor point is positioned such that there is just enough slack at the rightmost extreme,...

... clearance is maintained as the carriage passes under the anchor point, ...

 

... and the loop folds back sharply enough with the carriage at the leftmost extreme.

The apparently awkward way the tubing is folded was the only way that worked to keep it out of the path of the carriage. (There is very little clearance between the plate and the carriage, even though the plate is as high as it can be, and touches the upper case when assembled.) Three clamps secure the tubing on its way to the rear of the case, each of which is spaced off to ensure the tubing isn't constricted and sleeved with rubber to provide grip.

These are the additional fabricated parts used in the modification:-

The tubing is routed through a convenient unused feature, clamped to provide strain relief and taped to prevent wear at the point it passes through the slot filed into the lower casing.

A small section of reinforcing rib had to be cut away inside the upper casing where the tubing passes over the chassis.

With the cover back on it doesn't look too shabby...

...and the tanks sit quite neatly by the side of the printer.

Conclusion:-

Three months on now and a few hundred pages have been printed with no problems. For my purposes this system has been a great success - so much so that I would no longer consider purchasing any inkjet printer for which there was no continuous ink system available.

Although the cheap inks provide perfectly good results, I presume that they will probably fade years before the genuine Epson inks. However, that doesn't worry me as I don't print anything in colour to keep long term. As for photo printing, online services produce much better prints than any inkjet ever could, and at remarkably low prices. I now use the printer regularly with no thought for ink consumption and consequently rarely get a blocked nozzle.

I was very lucky to pick up the clearance items, but in view of the potential savings new ones are not overly expensive - typically around £50. Even though that may be as much as, or even more than, the cost of a low end printer itself, the payback time may be relatively short for many users - and there's certainly no need to go as far overboard on the installation as I did...

I was so taken with the results that I even purchased another kit for spare parts 'just in case' (also filled with 7 x 100ml ink) and a further 6 x 100ml of ink (just because the first ink set only included one black and individual blacks were sold out !).  If valued at Epson prices,  I now have well over £2000 worth of ink...!


February 2012