Digital BW, The Print

Manuel,

Some background information on the Epson ink monitor that may help 
reduce confusion.

If you pop the chip off an Epson ink cartridge you'll only see a 
little blob of epoxy. There are no wires or no sensors into the ink 
well. The chip is used as a scratch pad by the Epson driver to 
subtract the amount of ink that it estimates has been used, picoliter 
by picoliter. You'll also notice that for the multi-color cartridges 
the ink wells all drop uniformly. I believe the Epson driver is 
subtracting the worst case amount. [I have an epson 2200 and I find 
it amazing how vastly different the color consumption is for the 
different colors. I was surprised to see that Lite Magenta and Lite 
Cyan are most heavily used with Yellow being the slowest.]

There's a device which will reset the ink chips back to full to fool 
the ink monitor so it will continue to work. There are also chips 
that reset themselves when the power is turned off the printer.

Bottom line: You have to take with a grain of salt what the ink 
monitor is estimating as the ink level. It does not necessarily 
reflect reality.

I recently bought an Epson 1280 dedicated to black only printing. 
Following Paul Roark's recommendation, I started off with the UT inks 
in Epson-replacement cartridges to try it out. I liked them so I 
ordered the CIS cartridges and UT ink bottles.

[I encountered a problem: the chips on the CIS cartridge were not 
resetting on power down. MIS sent me new chips (pink substrate) that 
worked fine. The non-resetting chips were on a green substrate.]

Your note does not state which printer and MIS cartridges you are 
using. 

When I spoke to Bob Zeiger at MIS, he said that the two cartridges 
are different. The CIS cartridges are simpler and depend on creating 
an air bubble at the top to regulate ink flow. 

The Epson-replacement cartridges have a more convoluted path to 
regulate flow and deter people from refilling them. It's more 
difficult to force ink back into these, since the air vent is used to 
limit air intake.

There's a guy in Hong Kong, Kui, that's analyzed Epson cartridges:

http://www.digital4to.com/

click on Introduction. This gave me a better way to visualize what's 
going on.

It also helped me to conclude that I was better off using cartridges 
that were engineered for continuos refilling. It's just easier to go 
with the flow.

Hope this is useful.

Lincoln Fajardo





--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Johnny Eades" 
<jeades1@s...> wrote:
> Hello Manuel,
> 
> It may not be the ink getting low, but the cartridge could have a 
> buildup of foam so that when you filled the first refill and the 
ink 
> flowed out the vent hole appearing to be full, it was really not 
> full. The overflow was foam buildup. Every other refill I always 
use 
> a large syringe and tape over the vent holes and draw out all the 
> foam and ink inside the chamber before refilling.
> 
> Your friend in Photography,
> 
> Johnny Eades
> 
> 
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Manuel Toledo 
> <mtoledo@e...> wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I have a problem with a MIS cartridge that I am using with the UT 
> > inkset. The ink monitor tells me that the inks are 80% full, but 
a 
> > nozzle check shows no lines in the yellow position. I replaced 
the 
> > cardritge with an Epson original and noticed that the MIS 
cartridge 
> is 
> > very light. All colors are fine with the Epson cartridge. I think 
> that 
> > in the MIS cartridge the yellow-position is empty and the others 
> are 
> > running low!
> > 
> > I refilled the cardridge a couple of weeks ago. Prior to that, 
when 
> it 
> > was in the printer, the ink monitor was showing about 10%-20% ink 
> for 
> > all colors, but I started to get bad nozzle checks that were 
> getting 
> > worse (fast) with cleaning.  Originally I thought that it was 
> clocking. 
> > However, before refilling I extracted the remaining ink from the 
> > cartridge. There was very little of it. So I thought that it was 
> just 
> > that the sensors where not reliable and that my bad nozzle checks 
> were 
> > due to insufficent ink in the cartridge.
> > 
> > However, now the cartridge seems to be empty again! Only about 
two 
> weeks 
> > after reffiling the! During this time I think I have printed the 
> > equivalent of perhaps  four 13x19in. pages only.
> > 
> > Can someone tell me if the capacity of these cartridges is this 
> low? Or 
> > perhaps the one I have is defective and should be replaced? I 
> refilled 
> > it once after filling it the first time.
> > 
> > Thanks in advance!
> > 
> > Your friend in photography,
> > Manuel Toledo