HP Canon & Epson Ink, Lexmark, Brother Toner cartridge Printer Ink Cartridges News

Canon to Build New Ink Factory

Canon Inc, have announced that they are investing 80 Billion Yen to build a new factory in Japan to produce printer ink cartridges for their printers and copiers market.

Canon, which expects an eighth year of record earnings, plans to slash costs by about ¥100 billion each year. Robots will allow Canon to operate the new factory with about 1,000 workers, half the workforce at an existing factory with the same production capacity, a spokesman said.

Canon is Japan’s most profitable office equipment maker. Sales of multifunction photocopiers and printers accounted for 63 percent of its total revenue in the second quarter ended June 30.

Every High street in the country seems to have two or three cartridge refilling shops, and I’m sure that like me you have peered inside and watched the process. I want to show you how our refilled cartridges are actually refilled and let you compare our processes with what you see on the high street.

 

We recently visited our refillers at Greentech and filmed their refilling process from start to finish and I hope that you find this interesting

 

Most people think that refilled cartridges are used, empty cartridges that are simply drilled and then refilled with ink. Unfortunately in some cases this proves to be true.

 

Using cartridges refilled in this why can lead to all kinds of issues such as, blocked nozzles, faulty print-heads, dry sponges and or leaking cartridges. All of which affect the quality of the cartridge you get.

 

At stinkyink we do things differently, we believe in supplying you, our valued customers with a high quality product, one which we use ourselves and are proud to be associated with. As the saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words, so instead of simply explaining to you the process let me show you the process.

 

The procedure used is quite lengthy and thorough, it begins with each cartridge being checked and then any excess dried ink wiped from the print-head.

 

The top of the cartridge is then removed allowing access to the interior of the cartridge.

 

Inside the cartridge is a sponge, which is controls the flow of ink to the print head and prevents it from leaking from the cartridge.

    

When a cartridge has been used, the sponge inside usually dries out, making it harder to refill and allowing dry particles to come loose and block the delicate print-head nozzles from the inside. This is why we remove the old, used sponges from the cartridge.

 

The next stage is to clean the cartridge, this is done thoroughly to ensure the removal of any dry ink residues from the cartridge and print-head. The cartridge then goes into a machine which sprays warm water onto the nozzles clearing them of any residue.

 

The cartridges are then dried in a special oven.

 

Once the cleaning and drying process is complete the cartridges are ready to be refilled.

 

Before being filled with ink, brand new clean sponges are placed inside the recently cleaned cartridges. A replacement lid is then glued onto the cartridge to ensure a tight seal

 

The cartridge is then professionally refilled, using an ink refilling machine, and using high quality OCP German ink. All of our refilled cartrides use the OCP inks and we won’t sell any cartridges that don’t as we believe the OCP ink gives results so close the the manufacturers that most people don’t notice the difference.

    

Once filled each cartridge is then tested on a smart printer to ensure that ink is flowing freely from the print-head.

 

Once the technician is satisfied that the cartridge is working, the print-head is protected firstly by covering with blue, low tack print-head tape and then covered by a travel clip.

 

A new label is placed over the old one to show that it has been refilled and is not an OEM product.

 

The remanufactured cartridge is then sealed inside an anti static plastic bag and boxed up ready to be sold.

 

After seeing the how these cartridges are remanufactured, its now up to you to choose.

 

What would you prefer to use in your printer, a cartridge that has been remanufactured through this thorough process by professional technicians or risk using a cartridge that has been simply drilled and refilled with ink.

 

I know which choice I would make.

 

Thank you for your time, that’s all for now, and remember Don’t think ink, think stinkyink.

An ink cartridge is the most obvious component of any ink jet printer. It actually contains the ink and is the part that most people will replace on a regular basis. Each cartridge will contain between one and five different colours of ink and certain manufacturers will also include a chip, print head and electronic contacts to communicate with the printer.

How Ink Cartridges Work

There are three basic types of inkjet printer all using different technologies. HP were the inventors of the technology and they along with Lexmark and Dell use a thermal inkjet technology. Inside the cartridge there is a heating element with a tiny metal plate or resistor. In response to a signal from the printer a tiny current is passed through the resistor which heats it up which vapourises the ink bubble surrounding the plate. As this process occurs the total volume of the ink exceeds that of the nozzle and an ink droplet is forced out of the nozzle onto the paper. This process takes a matter of milliseconds and in a colour cartridges happens for each individual colour.

Epson went down a different route and use a piezoelectric crystal. When the printer signals to the print head to print some ink, instead of heating up the area of ink, the Piezo Crystal expands which essentially squeezes the droplet of ink out of the cartridges. With Epsons latest print head technology the size of the ink droplet is measured in nanolitres (which is 10 to the minus 9 of a litre!).

And Finally Canon independently developed the Bubblejet technology. Canon’s proprietary “Bubble Jet” printing technology is a world renowned, using special heating elements (micro-heaters) to eject ink from microscopic print nozzles. It was an accidental discovery during the 1970’s at Canon’s Research Centre in Japan, when a soldering iron came into contact with the needle of a syringe that was filled with ink. A researcher noticed that ink suddenly spurted from the needle. This led to the development of Bubble Jet printing, a high-speed, high quality ink jet printing technology.

Thinking of buying a new inkjet printer?

Recently my trusty old Epson R300 started to play up, so I thought it was time for a new printer. Obviously I wanted a printer that did everything that my R300 did as I had got used to its functionality. I looked around and was a little bemused by the choice on offer. However, working in the ink industry I knew to steer clear of certain manufacturers due to the running costs, as my kids are quite happy to print anything and everything that appears on the screen without any thought for the cost of the ink!

This in mind, I whittled down the choice to Epson, Canon or Brother as I know the ink is fairly reasonable for these manufacturers, also that third party ink is readily available. From my knowledge I also decided to keep away from tri-colour cartridges. This is because once you have used up one of the colours, the other two are wasted.

Before the R300 I had an older Canon, the Pixma IP1500 and was always very pleased with the results it gave, in fact I had given it to my father and it is still printing superbly years later! My mind was made up then I was going with Canon, the only issue was which one?

The are many to choose from but the Pixma range is by far the best for home use, as they are reasonably priced, have lots of features and print superb colour photos quickly.

I settled on the Pixma IP4300, I wanted to get IP4200 but found out that it is now obsolete. I had heard a lot of good things about the IP4200, but the IP4300 is an upgraded version.

I am so impressed with the printer I wanted to share my findings.

The printer is neat looking and was slightly smaller than the Epson R300. The Canon Pixma IP4300 takes individual ink cartridges, CLI8-BK, CLI8-C, CLI8-M, CLI8-Y and PGI-5BK which is a pigmented ink cartridge, so when one colour runs out you can simply replace it. There are also alternative cartridges for this printer, the first require you to take out the chip from your old cartridge and put it in the replacement versions or if that puts you off, there is a new system from Armor. This system comprises of an adaptor which sits inside the print head and then you put in the replacement cartridges into the adaptor. Both these options can save you a considerable amount of money.

I picked it up for around £50.00 which I think is good value, especially when you see what it can do. I had not really read all the information on this printer but when I did I was surprised to see that it can print a 6×4 full colour photo in 36 seconds, my old R300 took 2 minutes for the same picture. The Canon can also print a full colour A4 picture in under 2minutes wow! On top of this it is whisper quiet and the output is superb, this is mainly down to the 1 picoltire droplet size (picolitre’s are basically the measurement used for the size of the droplets, the smaller the droplet size the sharper the image with no obvious dots when you look closely) as opposed to the R300 droplet size of 3 picolitre’s. There is clear difference in image clarity when put side by side. The smaller droplet size also means that the printer uses less ink when printing therefore being more economical to run

I then tried out the text quality, again I was very impressed. In draft mode the pages literally fly out of the printer at high speed but although it was in draft mode the text was still clear and sharp. In normal mode the quality was comparable to laser output and would be more than acceptable for office use.

The Canon also comes with two paper trays, which is very useful. I keep A4 plain paper in one and use the other for photo paper, the printer also has a built in duplex unit which basically prints on both side of the paper without the need to take the sheet out and reinsert, amazing! Duplexing is normally saved for much more expensive laser printers.

If all this was not enough the Canon Pixma IP4300 also prints onto printable CD’s and DVD’s by using the special tray, one good thing here is that when printing CD’s and DVD’s the tray does not come out of the back of the machine like the R300, meaning it needs less space.

One thing I can say is that I found that using the Canon software that comes with the printer produced better results when printing photos than using the windows default option as the output was not as vivid, this was also the case for the R300.

To summarise I cannot fault this printer, it was reasonably priced, it is fast, quiet, gives excellent quality prints on plain white paper, photo paper or disc, it is cheap to run, easy to use and there is the built in duplex function.

If you are thinking of buying a new multipurpose inkjet printer for home or small office, I recommend you consider the Canon Pixma IP4300 printer, you won’t be disappointed.

HP Launch Print 2.0

 

Yesterday HP announced their own Autumn line up of new printer hardware, but also revealed their thoughts on how the future of printing will be evolving. Printing for HP is the foundation of their whole business, and generates over 26% of HP’s total quaterly revenues, so what they do now all the others will strive to emulate. However printer demand has been shrinking fast in recent years across most sectors. The growth of MFPs (Multi Function Printers) has slowed from 35.3% in 2004 to 30.5% in 2005 and 19.2% in 2006 according to figures from IDC. Sales of laser MFPs and laser single function printers showed similar trends, while single funtion inkjet printes have suffered worst of all with annual global shipments shrinking by 8.4% in 2004, 9.6% in 2005 and a massive 21.6% in 2006 IDC reported. HP currently holds 55% worldwide share of the Laser Printer market which far surpasses second placed Samsung with 10%. In inkjet machines, HP’s share is 45% compared with second placed Canon with a 26% share.

After Brother, Canon and Epson have all recently announced new printers for the new season, HP have just unveiled a raft of new hardware, which will be available during the next few months here in the UK, but Print 2.0 underpins the whole corporate strategy for their future. Embracing change in the way that people use the internet and also changes in the way that we print HP are seeking to offer all of their users ways to enhance their print experience. Bearing in mind the broad customer base that HP enjoys, and the different demands from their customers they are trying to offer common solutions to everybodies unique printing demands with Print 2.0.

HP say that half of all consumer printing comes from the web, and I guess our own experience bears that out, but small business is also trending in that direction. With more and more content appearing on the internet in the form of Web-based applications such as Google Docs, Web pages and even blogs becoming more important the problem that I am sure we have all experienced is formatting them so that they appear OK when printed.

Print 2.0 is conceived to incorporate various services and solutions designed for their customers which range from the average consumer to small and medium sized business right through to the corporate enterprise. “With Print 2.0 we’re leveraging the power of the Web as a gateway for our customers to communicate, collaborate and publish their content in ways they could not before”, Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of HP’s imaging and printing group, said today in a written statement.

With colour printing playing an increasingly important role for small business’s enabling them to produce small runs of very professional documents in house, which in the past would have had to be put out to a printing house, HP have created an SMB community online site designed for small business’s. This is a Portal which will give small business’s a place to create their materials and then print them through the medium of their choice – in house, through a retail outlet or a local commercial print shop.

Probably the biggest change that people will notice over the coming months is the ‘Print It’ Button which will be embedded into web pages. You know the problem, you want to print some content, but when it is outputted there are adverts and big blocks obscuring your text and it runs over several pages. Utilising the ‘Print It’ button will automatically layout the page for best printed appearance and also allow you to edit the output so that you only see what you want. This technology is being actively supported by both Yahoo and Microsoft and here at Stinkyink we will be enabling it as we enhance our own website.