Homebrew PCBs

derekhawkins wrote:
>  All Epsons [clean the heads every time it's used] to a certain extent
>  IMO. There always seems to be a fuss and hubbub for sometime before
>  they actually print after switching on. I only use the black ink,
>  never printed anything in color using it, so I'm able to see how much
>  ink is wasted on cleaning. It's not as bad as you seem to imply if
>  I'm to trust the monitor.

I don't know for sure how much ink it uses to clean the heads relative 
to how much it uses printing (may depend on how much ink is used per 
page), but it sure wastes a large volume of ink.  My Epson has a small 
peristaltic pump below the cleaning sponge that delivers the ink used in 
cleaning into a receptacle at the bottom of the printer.  The printer 
died young after consuming less than 10 ink refills and upon disassembly 
for salvage I found that the receptacle had quite a large quantity of 
gooey black ink in it.  Easily 8cc's in total.  Given that this was 
mostly-dehydrated and tar-like in consistency, I hate to think what 
percentage of the original liquid ink ended up down there.

Dave K