My old Epson printer is running out of ink. Now what?

I have an Epson RX620 printer/scanner/copier that has served me well for years (we don’t print much). Some of the inks are running low, and the prices for genuine Epson inks start at about GBP70 for a set of 6. It’s a lot. So what do I do?

Do I just swallow hard and buy some genuine Epson ink?

Do I buy some much cheaper “compatible” ink? Does anyone have good experience of compatible inks and can recommend a reliable one? Should I make sure to print a bit more often so as to make the print heads less likely to clog, or doesn’t it make any difference?

Is there a newer printer that is supported by RISC OS? Gutenprint seems to have died the death, as far as I can see.

I’m not tied to Epson in any way, so any make is in consideration if a new printer is the best route forward. We also print from Linux. Windows is out of consideration though.

My mother got an Epson EcoTank 3in1 recently which has an ink system based on comparatively cheap ink bottles. It seems to have good build quality and print quality and is quite fast. She previously had an Oki laser printer, which was OK, but toner got really expensive, so I had to look for alternatives.

No PostScript though, so you’d need to go via Linux.

Do I buy some much cheaper “compatible” ink?

I bought cheap compatible ink for a lot of cheap printers where original ink is prohibitively expensive, and sooner or later they broke down. You can never be sure if that was due to the ink or the lousy build quality of course. So I cannot recommend anything to be honest.

Tested on several hundreds of printers (a long time ago, when I was working in a big IT team).

Original ink: repair printers around every year.
Compatible ink: repair printers around every month.

what do I do?

If you’re a light printer, throw the printer away and buy a newer model – it’s cheaper than replacing the ink!

I might be wrong, but I could have sworn the EU were investigating the price of OEM printer ink.

I have a similar Epson that takes 6 ink and I just buy compatible from Amazon, I think the last lot were two sets for £9 or something silly. I can’t say I’ve notice any increase in print head maintenance over OEM. Every couple of years I need to do a manual head clean, or soak the head in alcohol if colours aren’t printing, but I’ve had to do that with OEM as well.

Should I make sure to print a bit more often so as to make the print heads less likely to clog, or doesn’t it make any difference?

The head drying out will be the issue.

When the printer is turned on it will most likely do a rapid head clean, so just turn it on once a month. This uses ink, so if you’re printing regularity you shouldn’t need to do this.

I might be wrong, but I could have sworn the EU were investigating the price of OEM printer ink.

I seem to recall the news story back in the late ’90s, or thereabouts, that HP ink was, weight for weight, the most expensive item on the planet. So, nothing new on that front.

I have a similar Epson that takes 6 ink and I just buy compatible from Amazon, I think the last lot were two sets for £9 or something silly. I can’t say I’ve notice any increase in print head maintenance over OEM.

Much the same as my experience when I was still repairing such things.
Probably the most farcical was the warning from HP about re-fill inkjet cartridges. Since the head is built into the cartridge the absolute worst that could happen is the head fails and you have to use a new cartridge.

When the printer is turned on it will most likely do a rapid head clean, so just turn it on once a month. This uses ink, so if you’re printing regularity you shouldn’t need to do this

IIRC HP force a clean at switch on, and a clean at intervals if you leave it on.

You can never be sure if that was due to the ink or the lousy build quality of course.

I ran my Brother for years on cheap clone inks. Sometimes a nozzle would clong, but a clean cycle or two would usually fix that. I assume the Brother print head is prone to clogging as it would automatically run a short cleaning cycle itself every 2-3 days when left in standby.
When the printer finally failed, it was the entire magenta not working. My money is on an electrical failure (blown transistor? damaged ribbon cable?) rather than anything to do with the inks.

I also used to run an old Lexmark (parallel port days) on clone inks. These were a little less successful, I could only refill two or three times before the print heads would fail, but being cartridge-mounted, they were replaceable.

I also used to refill my old HP Deskjet 500, but that was prone to failure because HP used some weirdo gravity-vacuum suspension mechanism, the usual result being a puddle of ink at the bottom of the printer.

My current printer is an HP 3630 (I think). I’ve signed up to the Instant Ink programme as it gives me 100 pages a month for a fiver (plus I can roll over up to 100 pages from before). I don’t print that much, and anybody who is following my blog might be interested to know that I’ve printed pictures and stuff onto plain paper (mostly) and I’ve not had to replace the inks yet. They sent me a replacement colour, but the first one hasn’t run out yet.

I just wonder how many “standard” ink cartridges I’d have had to buy to print the same. A year at a fiver a month is sixty euros. The carts are about 25 each (~35 for XL). So I think I’m coming out ahead.
It goes to show how stupidly expensive these coloured unicorn tears are, though. I could probably fill the carts with an equivalent amount of designer perfume for less. :-/

It’s worth noting that from time to time the cartridges refuse to be recognised by the printer. No idea why, maybe some hiccup in their over-paranoid DRM bull. Don’t panic. Open the printer, take them out, shake them, then reinsert them. That works.

Since the head is built into the cartridge the absolute worst that could happen is the head fails and you have to use a new cartridge.

It’s a question of desired print quality. I prefer to have the head built into the machine because it uses a different (more expensive) technology in order to precisely control the amount of ink released per head. Also the heads are perfectly aligned with respect to each other, you only need to run a quick test to tell the printer the alignment of the main head itself.
In-cartridge heads are much simpler devices and are generally incapable of controlling the amount of ink released, or can only control it in the context of “loads” and “little”. My HP, in test print, outputs two patches of each colour. A light and a heavy. I think that’s all the heads can manage. This means dithering patterns are more visible (especially skin tones tending towards white-out from over-exposure, a very hard thing for a printer based upon CYMK to get right). There is also the fact that size you not only have to account for alignment of the heads, but also the alignment of the heads with respect to each other, it’s damned near impossible to get rid on banding on all but the highest quality print (where the printer tends to use the lighter shades in multiple passes to mask its technical deficiencies). My Brother gave good results in normal quality on plain paper. My HP has visible banding except in high quality, usually.

This being said, I do not expect miracles from it. It’s a large lump of plastic with a scanner (middling quality, though not helped that it is technically capable of 1200dpi but the app only permits up to 300dpi), an embedded computer (it has a webserver hanging off it’s IP address), and the entire print mechanism. It cost ~35 euros. Yup, the same as an XL size cartridge.

While I’m complaining about crappy apps, my laser printer can – when hooked to a PC – produce excellent results. I think the mechanism (cheap’n’cheerful and using a clone toner/drum, I note!) can go up to 1200dpi.
Using the mobile app is fast and friendly, however the output is like reading a book while looking through fishnet tights (not that I’ve ever tried that). I don’t know what sort of rubbish resolution it is using (150dpi?!?) but it does the printer no favours.
Unfortunately there’s little hope of Samsung releasing a better driver that might work properly on Samsung phones (fast processor and lots of memory, it has more of each than my desktop PC!) because HP owns it all now.

The head drying out will be the issue.

This is a very important issue with inkjet printers.

If you don’t need colour and you only envisage printing stuff once in a while, you’d be much better off with a laser printer. They can sit around and wait patiently until they’re needed. Plus they have the benefit of printing in a way that isn’t liable to run or smudge with water. Want to print out some designs for your children to colour in with felt tips? Has to be a laser, an inkjet won’t cut it.

Inkjet, on the other hand, needs to be used more frequently. Perhaps even more often than turning it on once a month (though this will vary from printer to printer and also depending on whether it’s a built-in head or a cart-mounted one – the built-in heads tend to be better protected, but since they cannot be changed that stands to reason).

IIRC HP force a clean at switch on, and a clean at intervals if you leave it on.

The cheap little printers (such as mine) tend to turn themselves off after a period of non-use. Probably some EU directive regarding power consumption. Mine is kept plugged in, but it hasn’t ever – to my knowledge – turned itself back on.
The cleaning most be invoked manually. It’ll do a quick routine at switch-on, but that doesn’t sound like more than squirting out some ink and passing the heads over the wiper. I note with amusement that the printer still slams the heads into the end stop – something the DJ500 used to do with quite a lot of force. So much for head alignment…

Since the head is built into the cartridge the absolute worst that could happen is the head fails and you have to use a new cartridge.

Didn’t they try pulling some crap with printers disabling themselves until proper carts were inserted? (until consumer law pointed out that a customer is not obliged to always use HP ink any more than a person buying a car is forced to always use the recommended (most expensive) petrol).

IIRC HP force a clean at switch on, and a clean at intervals if you leave it on.

Pretty sure all inkjet printers do the same, otherwise the heads dry up. My Epson switches itself on randomly and cleans the head.

I could have sworn the EU were investigating the price of OEM printer ink.

The investigation was dropped in 2009 (can’t find the actual press release).

Going by this Which article however, the printer manufacturers signed up to a volunteer agreement to not block 3rd party ink. On this front the EU banned chipped ink cartridges in 2006 as part of the electronic equipment disposal laws.

It goes to show how stupidly expensive these coloured unicorn tears are, though. I could probably fill the carts with an equivalent amount of designer perfume for less.

I have this mental image of someone “reading” the document output in a cafe and getting arrested when they moved off the edge of the page and “read” some sugar. :^)

Dave: Do you need colour? If not I’d strongly suggest a laser printer! Running costs should be a fraction of an inkjet even if using compatible inks. Also the quality on cheap photocopier paper should generally be better than an inkjet and much better than on a humid day!

Dave: Do you need colour? If not I’d strongly suggest a laser printer! Running costs should be a fraction of an inkjet even if using compatible inks.

I am genuinely interested in any laser printer whose running costs are below the Epson EcoTank inkjet printers. Last time I looked, I couldn’t find anything at all. If you add colour to the picture, it gets much worse.

It is also very dangerous to rely on the toner prices at the time of purchase of the printer. For the last laser printer I bought, toner prices tripled two years later.

How well do the ecotank printers cope with long periods of inactivity? This has always been my problem with inkjets. I’ve always ended up with a lot more ink in the absorber pads in the base of the printer than on any paper.

Dave: Do you need colour?

Yes. We sometimes print out photos or other things that benefit from colour (rather than being reduced to monochrome).

If you’re a light printer, throw the printer away and buy a newer model – it’s cheaper than replacing the ink!

Yes, but can you name a currently available colour printer that’s supported by Gutenprint, or in any other way by RISC OS?

Uniprint doesn’t count as a “way” since it requires Windows.

I’d consider going via something that runs on Linux, if such a path exists.

How well do the ecotank printers cope with long periods of inactivity?

My mother bought the printer in May this year, so there is no long term experience yet. There were only relatively short periods of inactivity (two weeks at most).

However, the ink is so cheap that you could just switch it on with a timer once a week and let your RPi print a page :-)

The other advantage of the cheap ink is that you can afford to put quite a lot of ink through the nozzles to clean them up. With small, expensive ink cartridges, every cleanup just breaks the heart of every true Swabian (the Scots of Germany when it comes to saving money)..

I’ve had an Eco-Tank 4-in-1 printer (ET-4550) for around 12 months now. It gets used (mostly from Windows/Linux) at least once a week and it seems to be very economical with ink, I’m not even halfway through the original set of inks, and it came with two full sets in the box. So far I’ve not had much reason to try it from RISC OS, but I think there’s a fair chance of finding a general Epson driver from GPrint to handle it. I’ll give it a try later and report back.

I’m unlikely to use a printer from RISCOS at all, but a nice colour printer attached to the Mac would be good. I’ve got a good workhorse monochrome laser printer. I’ve had various colour printers I’ve got freecycle in the past, but they’ve all been too stupidly expensive to run & I’ve freecycled them on. Or tried to – I’m always upfront about why, and several have ended up being therapeutic dismantling jobs, a few odd bits of which have been cannibalized for one project or another.

The b&w laser gets used once a week more or less, but a colour printer would get less use than that – a few sheets at a time, at intervals of a month or more. It’s probably as cheap or cheaper to pop into the print shop, but having a printer at home would be convenient.

I used to use refill kits from supermarkets, then switched to reusing them with larger bottles of ink from Jetplay, who appear to have gone bust.
“100ml Universal Bulk Ink Refill” appears to be the best search phrase.
Go Inkjet make both types.

I’ve also found it’s easier to refill cartridges without taking them out of the printer, which also results in less mess as the cartridges were not designed to be re-used, and their seals wear out!

I keep my printer on a drip tray – never trust anything.

Inkjets can clog up if left unused. The ink is its own cleaning fluid, so printing something at least every month should keep it reliable.

@ Dave, I have a Brother MFC-9330CDW laser printer, cable Internet, WIFI and USB connections.
Runs on Windows or Linux. (Ubuntu 18.04 here.)

I got mine from John Lewis for about £270.

Not photo real but the colours are quite good on the PDFs I have printed out.

Not run out of any toner yet, so can’t say what my substitute toners are like.

Interesting, Ron, thank you. My web search suggests that the supplied toner cartridges are reckoned at 1000 pages, which makes in initially 27p per page. Subsequent Brother toners were about GBP250 for 2500 pages (black) and 1400 pages (CMY), and, since colour is only part of what we use it for, that suggests 2500 pages overall, or about 10p per page. It has BR-Script 3 emulation, supposedly equivalent to PostScript 3, so I assume that you use the PostScript 3 driver when printing from RISC OS?

If you don’t need the multifunction & double-sided printing there’s a printer-only, single-sided version for ~£119 – Brother HL-3140CW

@ Dave, I haven’t tried to print from RISC OS yet. The reason I gave up on my old Epson RX560 was because of jet blockage due to infrequent usage. Coupled with the fact that if one cartridge needed changing the printer would charge all of the print heads regardless. A C.I.S. system helped with that but not with the time spent unblocking the ink jets.

As for replacement toner I am toying with getting some compatibles from ‘Stinkyink.com’. About £100 for a complete replacement pack that will do about 2200 pages ;-).

Richard Darby may be able to help with his printer drivers for Postscript/PDF duplex printers.

Lots of good stuff on his site.

Oh, and V4Ink do compatible toners for both the MFC-9330CDW and the HL-3140CW (they take the same cartridges) for £36 – https://tinyurl.com/y8jpkggp – same capacity, well, they say 2,500 pages but of course it depends how much colour your particular images use. That’s probably about right for some line drawings, anything with large areas of solid colour will use the toner relatively quickly.

I think that this was something missed by the inkjet printer providers!

If they were switchable – by their drivers or a hard switch – to print true B&W – the market would be different!

This clinging to their “Replace the … cartridge” despite us printing only 2-bit B&W is their downfall!

I’m looking at a monochrome laser!

I think that this was something missed by the inkjet printer providers!

Depends upon the printer. That old HP that I took apart for my blog had a mode that if the black ink ran out, it would fake it using colours. I think it may also have done the same in reverse (only colours in shades of grey).
Possibly the driver also has options for true monochrome? I don’t know, never installed it.

to print true B&W – the market would be different!

Don’t be ridiculous. Inkjet printers mix colour inks into monochrome printing to give a greater range of shades use more ink.

I’m looking at a monochrome laser!

I can tell you from experience, both have their places and both are useful.

The inkjet is used for printing out stuff from the internet (get your mind out of the gutter!) and sometimes sodding iOS even manages to do it correctly. :-/ I also use it for printing pictures, both to plain paper (where quality isn’t important) and to photo paper (when it is). Results are generally “acceptable” in normal quality print to plain paper (obvious banding) and “surprisingly better than I expected” in high quality print to photo paper. I mean, the thing cost peanuts so it’s hardly fair to expect the sort of prints you’d get on a machine three times the price…
I pay a fiver a month to HP for Instant Ink with an allocation of 100 pages a month (with a roll-over of up to 100). They’re fair about it too, I used 25 pages last month and it has rolled over to 100 (rather than 75) because it counts all available, not the ones remaining from the primary amount.
I use it for “stuff that needs colour” or “stuff where I’m too lazy to set up the laser”, but I could equally (for the same cost) make 100 A4 photo prints per month…

The laser, on the other hand, is quick and simple and gets the job done. Being a budget laser with toner and drum in a little slot in cartridge, it isn’t so hot at printing solid areas of black (some apparent banding) however the resolution is impressive if you use a PC (mediocre with the Android app) and, did I mention it’s bloody quick? I wanted to print out some info on the 8052 processor to try to familiarise myself with some of it. Thirty pages to the printer, it basically wanged ‘em out the top as fast as the PC could send it the data.
Indeed, the only gripe I have about this particular printer (Samsung MW-… I forget, it’s on my blog somewhere) is that if there’s a problem sucking in the paper, a jam, or I just run out of sheets, the printer will abandon the entire print job. I mean, how hard would it have been to have the printer simply freeze what it is doing, and after closing the lid and prodding a button, to resume by printing the page that failed again?

Both machines work via WiFi, so there’s no farting around with cables and they can be used from every device except RISC OS.

and they can be used from every device except RISC OS.

Actually, this is a trick that RISC OS is absolutely missing.

IPP, and its related cousin “AirPrint” are supported widely on WiFi enabled printers. At its most basic level (if you ignore the Bonjour protocol and the manufacturer specific enhancements), you ought to be able to portscan devices on the LAN to see what’s listening on port 631 (IPP) and then extract info on the printer’s capabilities from that.
Then, construct a bitmap image in URF format and hand it to the printer. I’m not sure if one needs to use the complex IPP protocol (it’s sort of like HTTP only with binary data) or if it would suffice to punt the raw data to port 9100. Both of my printers appear to support both.

The fly in the ointment is URF. It looks like a sort of RLE, however there is no official documentation, only somebody who tried to reverse engineer it. Apple… don’t tend to document stuff like that publicly.

If RISC OS could create the right sort of bitmaps and send them to a port at an IP address in the appropriate way, then printing ought to “just work” on a wide range of contemporary machines.