Digital BW, The Print

Hi Don,

But the problem does seem to persist with all brands of inks and
cartridges. It is entirely possible that a company can get a bad batch
of cartridges. It has happened with at least 3 of the sellers I know of.
I wish I could be certain that before I get cartridges that they were
NOT made in China, Taiwan, or Korea. I've had nothing but problems with
ANYthing made in these three countries. Their overall quality on most of
their products is abysmal. Especially Electronics. They don't last long,
and workmanship is not up to professional standards, in a lot of cases,
and they don't use the best quality parts during manufacture.

Trouble is, you don't have a choice anymore. Anything you might want to
get in small appliances, or electronics is made in one of those 3
countries. About 80 percent of KMart products, for instance. I'm sure
there are exceptions, but I'd still like the choice.

In my case, I know it is not the printer that is at fault, since it
prints perfect prints, and nozzle patterns with Epson in. (Also made in
China, of course, so there are exceptions). 

I've been using MIS VM inks since they came out, and haven't had any
real serious problems. Most of the time, a few head cleanings will do
it. But in the case of Eboni, thats when all the problems started, 
Right now, I have a current Set of MIS VM inks, and about half a set of
older VM inks, (in date). This afternoon, I'm going to try and draw
about 60 CCS of ink through the bottom of all the cartridges, so that
they get really saturated with ink. Then I'll let the unit sit
overnight, and will install it into the printer tomorrow. This will be
the last time I try a CIS, unless the dealer will offer a 100 percent
money back guarantee within 30 days if it doesn't work. I'm not going to
clean and refill a unit again. It takes WAY too much time and is
extremely frustrating.

Jerry

> I've been using the Eboni inks for about 2 weeks in the FSN inkset on
> my 1160 using the ConeTech plugin and MIS CFS carts. I've had no
> banding or clogs.

Thats with the FSN inkset. I have been using the VM, but it shouldn't
make any difference.

I had a couple of 1160 printers that worked very well with MIS VM. I had
about 6 months printing without a single problem a couple years ago,
using MIS VM inks.  Unless they have changed their formulation, I doubt
it is the inks.
That leaves the carts.  

But how can you tell for certain that a cartridge will not hold a
vacuum?  When I was pulling the vacuum and filling the last set of
nomorecarts, everything seemed to be going fine. The vacuum seemed to be
pulling fine, a little hard to get the pump all the way to 35 10 times,
If it weren't holding, you'd think the vacuum plunger would pull very
easily, but it didn't.

However, considering that 3 chambers have no ink in them, and the other
2 only have ink in the tubes, and it stops just before it gets into the
cartridges, it doesn't appear any ink is being withdrawn from the
bottles, which still are almost full. Only the black is down about an
inch in the K bottle.

Rant over :)

Jerry