Thread: Cheaper Printer Ink System

Great Idea for your average printer, I can't risk the warrenty as my printers cost in the region of $700, plus I need top quality ink, a friend has the system in his office he says it is one of the best investments he's made

Hi Jigsaw, the availability of cheaper inks have been canvassed on this forum previously and believe me, you just cannot convince some users that the cheap inks are a way to go. I have used the generic ink cartridges available for my printer,which takes 6 ink tanks for the last 5 years and the printer is still going strong. I have 3 other printers and they all use generic inks and have a cannon hooked up to a system similar to the one you are talking about at a cost of around $100.

Comments from other members have been similar to the remark made by China, who doesn't want to void his warranty because the printer cost $700. overlooking the fact that just one fill up on a system, like the one you have, will save more than the $700 and in the in the event of the printer running its full life span of a few years, would actually be ahead by literally thousands of dollars.

Others will say, "the quality of the print in pictures is not as good" I have printed pictures with both the generic and genuine inks and have found the quality of the paper you are printing on influences the quality of the picture more than the ink.
You will find that most of the inks are made in USA and the generic inks probably come from the same supply. but like I said, some people don't want to hear that.
The printer manufacturers must be laughing their heads off all the way to the bank.
They could actually give the printers away for free if they were sure the customer was going to buy the inks from them for the life of the printer.

My cartridges cost me under $2 per cartridge. That's $12 for a new set of cartridges against the manufacturers price or around $15 per cartridge so total around $90 to replace all cartridges. The printer cost me around the $200 mark 5 years ago and still going strong. I use a lot of ink and have saved lots of money using these inks. But you will still get folks who don't believe the inks are worth the risk. Good luck with your system. Way to go.

One must definitely be careful with generic inks and cartridges. My Hewlett-Packard is designed to pop-up very annoying messages on the monitor if generic or refilled cartridges are used. So, of course, I stick with HP products.
HOWEVER!! When this printer goes, it will be my last HP product. I don't appreciate their method of doing business.

For black and white, I use laser, heaps cheaper, better quality.....what else is there? Keep the bubble jets for occasional colour printing.
TM

Originally Posted by Rifleman1776

One must definitely be careful with generic inks and cartridges. My Hewlett-Packard is designed to pop-up very annoying messages on the monitor if generic or refilled cartridges are used. So, of course, I stick with HP products.
HOWEVER!! When this printer goes, it will be my last HP product. I don't appreciate their method of doing business.

My printer is a HP

been tempted may times

have seen remanufactured filled hp cartridges , available from Crazysales , $8 for coloured , $10 for black but still a bit worried

munruben , are you using a HP

When we had a HP I found the "copy/imitation" cartridges were rubbish. Colours were not even close, did comparisons of some flower photos onto the same paper, and not as bright, grainy, some of the purples were more on the brown side, and reds were more pink. Ink cartridge setup used a "fused" design of three or was it four colours, joined together so if you ran out of blue but still had plenty of red and yellow, tough luck you had to replace the whole thing at about $80. This along with issues of mechanical marks being embossed on my higher gsm papers, it had a paper path where you loaded in the front and paper went through a 180 degree turn over some rollers and then back out the front. Caused it to get tossed, the crunching shattering sound as it landed in the dumper was so satisfying.

Bought an EPSON, with 6 separate ink cartridges, and love it. Join club Epson, it's free, and every now they email you with specials, when they have ink bundles for sale, buy 1 get 1 half price, and the like. Works out to about $13 a cartridge,

Depending on what you are printing it works out cheaper to do all your photo manipulation and save to a CD or DVD and then take advantage of some of the print offers that places like Harvey Norman, some camera shops and pharmacies have where you can print everything on an electronic media for 9c a print. It does take a week or so but for the price can't complain.


Ron

Ok but so far you are all failing to recognise the catch in every system. As an Electronics tech I have pulled a couple of dead printers apart to find out why. And the reason is simple.
There is a self cleaning cycle . This pumps ink through the heads and up a tube to a trough full of blotting material. When that trough is saturated the tube blocks and your printer is stuffed.
Now you can get the gear with the tubes etc, but if you dont get the cleaning tube to feed out to something you can clean, you waste your time. From memory the Lexmart printer has a method of doing that. Brother and HP use heat and these are unsuitable for external ink systems, so enjoy them while they last. Rob

munruben, I here what you say and have used generic inks in the past, have had two printers destroyed by generic cartridges also, the company involved did not wan't know and pointed out the "at your own risk" fine print. I give a warrenty based on the ink and paper warrenty I can't do that with generic inks as there is no true manufacturer back up

Originally Posted by ratchet

munruben , are you using a HP

Not any more, I used HP printer about 15 years ago and their ink cartridges carried their own chip and the only way at that time to use generic inks was to fill the cartridges yourself which could be a bit messy. I did this for a while but I wanted a printer that printed to disc so switched to Epson. I have looked at HPs since but find their ink cartridges are not cheap by any means and generic cartridges are not that easy to come by for the HP. so I gave them a miss. Epson and Canon cartridges are easily available and work fine.

Originally Posted by China

, the company involved did not wan't know and pointed out the "at your own risk" fine print.

Of course, it goes without saying, the printer manufacturer is not going to stand by their warranty if they find you have been using a generic ink in their printer, they are going to jump on that straight away to get out of any obligation they may have.. It's a great "out" for them to blame the generic ink and not have to honour their guarantee. I guess this is fair enough and par for the course. As for the printer manufacturers warranty, how many of us can spare our printer for a few weeks while it is repaired. I would rather replace the printer with a new one if I have had a fair run from it.
Having said that, in all fairness to Lexmark, The terms of their warranty was if they cannot solve your problem over the phone and after you have tried the things they suggest to you and your printer still does not work, they will send you a new printer by courier and take the old one back.. This actually happened with one of my friends last year and they replaced the printer after no success on the telephone help. I don't know if they still offer this warranty but I thought at the time it was pretty good service. I don't use Lexmark myself.

Another woody referred the system to me. She had been using the system for ages with no problems. She has an IT role and has referred other people to it as well.
If my ink system were to fail after the equivalent of 5 refills (half the ink), I will have saved $415 in ink purchases, enough to buy several new printers.

With regard to people with the smart chips in their cartridges, the instructions tell you how to remove the chips from your original cartridges and install them on the new ink ststem. If you are not happy with this, Rihac will sell you the chips. For a very reasonable price they will do the install for you.

My buddy with the Cannon expects to save between $1500 and $1600 on ink before the new cheap ink is required.

With respect to Laser printer, I had thought of buying one for black printing but did not think it was worth it now.
The laser cost about $120 for a new cartridge to print 3000 sheets. The normal inkjet cartridges only print about 500 sheets per cartridge. My new system is $13 for the blank ink which is equivalent to 10 cartridges, which equates to $10 for 5000 sheets.

Originally Posted by Jigsaw

Another woody referred the system to me. She had been using the system for ages with no problems. She has an IT role and has referred other people to it as well.
If my ink system were to fail after the equivalent of 5 refills (half the ink), I will have saved $415 in ink purchases, enough to buy several new printers.

With regard to people with the smart chips in their cartridges, the instructions tell you how to remove the chips from your original cartridges and install them on the new ink ststem. If you are not happy with this, Rihac will sell you the chips. For a very reasonable price they will do the install for you.

My buddy with the Cannon expects to save between $1500 and $1600 on ink before the new cheap ink is required.

With respect to Laser printer, I had thought of buying one for black printing but did not think it was worth it now.
The laser cost about $120 for a new cartridge to print 3000 sheets. The normal inkjet cartridges only print about 500 sheets per cartridge. My new system is $13 for the blank ink which is equivalent to 10 cartridges, which equates to $10 for 5000 sheets.

Will see you at the club shortly Dave. Have to find out about the "blank ink"
which is shown in your final paragraph - sounds like a bargain to me

Allan