On inkjet printers and the perils of generic ink…
Most people have some type of inkjet printer in their home. They are cheap, easy to use and can produce quite stunning results.
The Biro and the soldering iron
A clever person, not that long ago, was sitting working with a soldering iron and set it down a bit too close to his Biro. The ‘nib’ heated up and the ink shot out. This was the birth of the inkjet printer. Another interesting snippet: the ink itself used to be more expensive than Chanel No.5.
In simple terms – how they work
Inkjet printers work by shooting really tiny blobs of ink through teeny tiny holes. Think of a pointillism painting on a miniscule scale. You will be familiar with the cradle into which you insert your ink cartridges. This cradle also houses the teeny tiny holes through which your ink blobs are fired (known as the Print Head).
When you first turn on your printer it will chunter away for a short time before it is “Ready”. This is the printer cleaning those little holes, removing any dried on ink and making sure everything is ready to fire.
Why are they so cheap?
There are two reasons, firstly, they are now considered disposable items. There are no replaceable parts so when the print head fails the printer is kaput. Secondly ink is expensive and that’s where the manufacturer make their money.
A word of warning here. Don’t let the ink run out completely! If the ink cartridge is empty then the printer won’t be able to run its cleaning routine. If you turn it on with an empty cartridge inserted the printer will damage itself during this cleaning routing. This is the top reason inkjet printers are sent to the great recycling hub in the sky.
What you should be asking
Does the printer use four separate ink cartridges? If you mainly print text documents then you will use more black ink than anything else. This means you will save money by only having to replace the black cartridge. If your printer only takes 1 cartridge, containing all four colours then you will be throwing away coloured ink which you have not used. The same applies if you print a lot of photographs, you may use lots of blue or green, but very little magenta. Does the printer take high capacity cartridges? Initially a little more expensive, but can more than double your printed output per cartridge.
Think of printer ink as being like custard…
Remember those little holes we were talking about at the beginning? Those holes are a very specific size. When ink of a certain thickness is squirted through them the resulting dot on the page is the right size, shape and colour. When your printer cleans itself it allows a little of that ink to go through the newly cleaned holes.
Each manufacturers ink recipe is different, different thickness, different colour. Think of it like custard, if the custard is too thick it won’t pour properly, if it’s too thin it won’t stick to anything and spreads all over the plate.
Generic ink will never match the manufacturer’s recipe
It will either be too thick, too thin or a slightly different colour. As a result the printer may use more of it than it would normally or, you won’t get the results the printer is capable off. The extra stress on the printer means it can potentially damage the print head reducing its lifespan.
If you have been using generic ink in your printer for a while it’s worth lifting up the printer and checking underneath. We have seen several cases recently of the excess ink flow from generic cartridges pooling under the printer. This has destroyed the printer and the furniture it was sitting on.