Digital BW, The Print

I've given this digital black and white printing a shot but so far have failed dismally.

I have an Epson 2000P, which was quite nice in its day and even now produces good colour prints.
I decided to convert it to black and white. I purchased the 6 bottles of ink, a couple of spongeless empty cartridges, filling accessories etc. I filled the carts according to the instructions and fitted them into the printer.

There were only a few nozzles printing, and unreliably at that. There was a lot of ink on the cleaning sponge, and ink was pooling under the head and leaving big blobs along the print head path and soiling the paper. I abandoned that attempt and cleaned up the printer up and refitted the colour carts.

A cleaning cycle later and all was working properly in colour. I repeated the whole procedure again and when I fitted the colour carts back it worked fine again after a couple of cleaning cycles.

After comparing the two carts it appeared that the refillable cart was 1mm or so shorter than the original. Maybe the carts were not seating properly. I removed the close down lids, fitted the black carts, pushing them down firmly and secured them with a cable tie and some foam. The results were much better, the 4 lighter greys were printing ok, but not the black and not the medium black. Thats a bit odd as the black is a single cartridge and the medium black is one compartment in the 5 colour cart.

The end result was much better, but I couldn't get the black and med black to print without banding. There was still a lot of ink on the cleaning sponge and still pooling under the print head and dropping ink onto the printhead path.

What do I do now? If it was the print head then it wouldn't print properly in colour. Are these empty and refilled carts prone to failure.
I ordered carts for an Epson 2000P but recieved carts for a 1280/1290. Does anyone know if they are interchangeable.

Any help and advice would be welcome.

Cheers
Greg

I sounds like  you may have received bad carts.  I'd talk to the seller about them.

When you load empty carts, be sure to prime  them.  If you don't pull a little ink out the outlet there will be a lot  of  air  in there that is hard to remove  with cleaning cycles.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com 

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Greg" <gregnixon@...> wrote:

>
> I've given this digital black and white printing a shot but so far have failed dismally.
> 
> I have an Epson 2000P, which was quite nice in its day and even now produces good colour prints.
> I decided to convert it to black and white. I purchased the 6 bottles of ink, a couple of spongeless empty cartridges, filling accessories etc. I filled the carts according to the instructions and fitted them into the printer.
> 
> There were only a few nozzles printing, and unreliably at that. There was a lot of ink on the cleaning sponge, and ink was pooling under the head and leaving big blobs along the print head path and soiling the paper. I abandoned that attempt and cleaned up the printer up and refitted the colour carts.
> 
> A cleaning cycle later and all was working properly in colour. I repeated the whole procedure again and when I fitted the colour carts back it worked fine again after a couple of cleaning cycles.
> 
> After comparing the two carts it appeared that the refillable cart was 1mm or so shorter than the original. Maybe the carts were not seating properly. I removed the close down lids, fitted the black carts, pushing them down firmly and secured them with a cable tie and some foam. The results were much better, the 4 lighter greys were printing ok, but not the black and not the medium black. Thats a bit odd as the black is a single cartridge and the medium black is one compartment in the 5 colour cart.
> 
> The end result was much better, but I couldn't get the black and med black to print without banding. There was still a lot of ink on the cleaning sponge and still pooling under the print head and dropping ink onto the printhead path.
> 
> What do I do now? If it was the print head then it wouldn't print properly in colour. Are these empty and refilled carts prone to failure.
> I ordered carts for an Epson 2000P but recieved carts for a 1280/1290. Does anyone know if they are interchangeable.
> 
> Any help and advice would be welcome.
> 
> Cheers
> Greg
>

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your reply. 
I did pull a ml or so from the outlet ports, as instructed. I think you are right about the carts. I have been in touch with the suppliers and they will get back to me.

I now think the working Epson colour cart is empty. Is there a procedure to purge the remnants of colour ink from it, so I can use it with black ink?

Cheers
Greg



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul" <roark.paul@...> wrote:

>
> I sounds like  you may have received bad carts.  I'd talk to the seller about them.
> 
> When you load empty carts, be sure to prime  them.  If you don't pull a little ink out the outlet there will be a lot  of  air  in there that is hard to remove  with cleaning cycles.
> 
> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com 
>

"Greg" <gregnixon@...> wrote:

> ... Is there a procedure to purge the remnants of colour ink from it, so I can use it with black ink?


I don't know, but I doubt it.  Even with spongeless carts it takes a lot  of rinsing to get all the previous ink out.  I'd guess you'll never succeed with Epson color carts.  I don't know if the black is compatible enough to risk mixing inks in even that one.  

Good, new, empty, spongeless carts are what you need.  Long ago I used some MIS units in a 2000P and had no problems, but whether they have the same carts today is unknown.  I might add that the real job of these retailers is to find carts that work -- a minority of those  that are offered by the Chinese suppliers.  Inkjetcarts and InkRepublic are two other outfits that I think have a reasonably good reputation.  If the same owner is there as 5 years ago, Zeiss, former owner of MIS and the guy who really facilitated a more open-source, inexpensive B&W approach, thought the owner of InkRepublic was the best -- about the only one of his competitors he had much respect for.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

This sorry saga just get worse and worse. I think I will have to get used to the fact that printers and me just don't get along.

It appears as if the check valves on the black cart and the cyan section of the colour cart supplied with the black inkset were faulty. This allowed a large amount of ink to leak past the valves and into the printer.
I had an empty genuine colour and black cart. I did manage to clean nearly all of the old ink out of the colour and black cartridge. It required a lot of rinsing with clean water and pulling the remnants of ink & rinse water out through the sponge. Eventually the water was only slightly tinted and judged that it would be "good enough".
Then I dismantled the printer and cleaned up as much of the ink as I could.
Loaded the black ink into the 2 carts, reset the chips, ran some cleaning cycles and had a look at the nozzle test, not too bad so I started to print a purge page, the one that prints a stripe of each colour down the page.
About halfway down it stopped printing. The head still goes back and forth but no ink on any colour. It just stopped printing suddenly, not like it ran out of ink.
I had a look around at the circuit, checked the 42v supply fuse, but that checks ok. The cleaning cycle works ok as the head cleaning sponge gets saturated and then the ink is pulled away down to the overflow sponge. So there is ink being drawn through the heads, but the head doesn't appear to firing on any nozzles.

That looks like the end of that printer. If anyone has any clues about a fix, then please let me know.

Now, I have this ink and cartridges and invested a lot of time as well, can I use these inks in an Epson 1270 printer? There are a few around and are pretty well the same cartridge/colour configuration as the 2000P. Except they used dye based colour printing.
I guess the chips will be different, but it would be nice if I could get some return on the ink and cartridges.

Any comments welcome.

Cheers
Greg Nixon







--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul" <roark.paul@...> wrote:

>
> "Greg" <gregnixon@> wrote:
> 
> > ... Is there a procedure to purge the remnants of colour ink from it, so I can use it with black ink?
> 
> 
> I don't know, but I doubt it.  Even with spongeless carts it takes a lot  of rinsing to get all the previous ink out.  I'd guess you'll never succeed with Epson color carts.  I don't know if the black is compatible enough to risk mixing inks in even that one.  
> 
> Good, new, empty, spongeless carts are what you need.  Long ago I used some MIS units in a 2000P and had no problems, but whether they have the same carts today is unknown.  I might add that the real job of these retailers is to find carts that work -- a minority of those  that are offered by the Chinese suppliers.  Inkjetcarts and InkRepublic are two other outfits that I think have a reasonably good reputation.  If the same owner is there as 5 years ago, Zeiss, former owner of MIS and the guy who really facilitated a more open-source, inexpensive B&W approach, thought the owner of InkRepublic was the best -- about the only one of his competitors he had much respect for.
> 
> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com
>

Greg,


> ... Now, I have this ink and cartridges and invested a lot of time as well, can I use these inks in an Epson 1270 printer? ...

The UT FS inkset will run in a 1270.  See http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/1270-FS-Readme.htm

That said, the 1270-80 were not noted for their reliability with pigment inks. Some had good luck.  Mine ran for a while, but they were not close to the reliability of modern printers.  So, if you can get one for free or close to it that runs and if you can get good carts, then the inks should work.

Overall, I'm not sure it's worth messing with printers this old. The new ones are so much better, and some that work well are also rather inexpensive.  

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

I did take your advice and have aquired another 2 Epson Printers. I would like to keep one as a colour printer and one as a B&W printer.
I have an Epson 2100/2200, and an Epson 1400/1410.

I would lean towards keeping the 2100 as the colour printer and using the 1410 as a B&W printer. Does anyone have any opinions either way about that choice?

Is there any reason why I cannot use the UT-FSN inks in a 1410 printer. I still have 7 almost full bottles of this ink that was supplied for my now defunct 2000P.
I have read Pauls extensive notes on the new inksets and realise that the newer variable tone sets offer more flexibility than the UT-FSN inks.
I believe that the inks that I have are around the same densities as the  Eboni6 inkset. If that is the case then Pauls article on "Eboni 6 including the 1400" gives me some hope.

Any and all comments would be appreciated.

Cheers
Greg


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul" <roark.paul@...> wrote:

>
> Greg,
> 
> 
> > ... Now, I have this ink and cartridges and invested a lot of time as well, can I use these inks in an Epson 1270 printer? ...
> 
> The UT FS inkset will run in a 1270.  See http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/1270-FS-Readme.htm
> 
> That said, the 1270-80 were not noted for their reliability with pigment inks. Some had good luck.  Mine ran for a while, but they were not close to the reliability of modern printers.  So, if you can get one for free or close to it that runs and if you can get good carts, then the inks should work.
> 
> Overall, I'm not sure it's worth messing with printers this old. The new ones are so much better, and some that work well are also rather inexpensive.  
> 
> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com
>

"Greg" <gregnixon@...> wrote:
> ...
> Is there any reason why I cannot use the UT-FSN inks in a 1410 printer. ...

It should work fine, with the caveat that you will need to linearize the rersults.  That is, the results with the Epson driver alone will probably be less than ideal.  I would also expect that the dmax will be reached before the full 1400 ink load.  That too can be cured with profiling.  Whether you want to get into this amount of work at this point is another issue.

So, while the UT-FSN inkset will probably work, it will take some work by you to make it work well.

As far as I know, there are no QTR profiles made for the combination. 

 Paul
 www.PaulRoark.com