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