a high-end printer… wasting high-end ink… how shameful…
Here’s your “The Outrageous Behavior of Art Equipment Makers” episode for the week!
Below you’ll find a video from a professional printer, Bellevue Fine Art, that shows just how much ink is left in Epson’s pouches when it’s warning that there’s only 1% left in the pouch…
“on average when we throw away a cartridge of ink from our Epson 9900 printer we throw away well over 100ml of ink, many times 150ml or more…”
That anybody is throwing away that much ink is downright shameful… it is so wasteful the only word I can think of is gross.
As an artist and a photographer… I do not waste a damn thing and I highly doubt you other artists and photographers out there do either. Frankly art and photography supplies are so expensive that you scrape out every bit of paint you can get, you run your camera body into the ground, you use your expensive Zeiss lens until that sucker craps out on you.
“…we’ve escalated this as high as we possibly could and have always been ignored or told we were just wrong”
Did you know, an 11 700ml ink cartridge set for the Epson 9900 costs $2300 (Source: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/840904-REG/Epson_Ink_Cartridge_Set_For.html)
That a printer would be wasting so much expensive ink is either a purposeful act by Epson or shows a total lack of care… Either way that’s pretty offensive to me personally as an artist.
And you know what… Epson then sent a bullshit response to PetaPixel.com over their article on the matter…
Bellevue Fine Art took those “empty” cartridges, took them apart, and poured out the ink to see how much was left.
They found that, on average, a 700 ml cartridge still contains about 100ml of ink when you’re forced to replace it. Many times they contain 150 ml or more. For a 350 ml cartridge, 60-80 ml of ink was left.
That’s about 15-20% of the ink remaining — definitely not 1%.
Source: http://petapixel.com/2015/09/11/this-is-how-much-ink-the-epson-9900-printer-wastes/
Here’s the bullshit response from Epson…
Update: Here’s what Epson tells PetaPixel regarding this issue/video:
The ink reporting and ink cartridges used in Epson’s Stylus Pro 9900-series large format printer reports on ink levels and simultaneously protect the health of the printhead. During printhead maintenance or cleanings, if a cartridge doesn’t have enough ink to complete the cleaning, a fuller cartridge must be used. However, users have the choice to swap out a cartridge that is reporting low levels for a fuller cartridge for the cleaning maintenance as needed, and then replace it with the original cartridge to use the remaining ink. The original cartridge does not need to be discarded.
Notice how that response does not actually address the issue. It does not talk about the level of ink we’re talking about here. Here Bellevue Fine Art is showing us huge beakers of ink and Epson’s response is to say ‘oh that’s fine it’s for the optimal health of the printhead :)))‘
Yeah okay then.
Epson has some serious need for improvement when it comes to its printers and with how it deals with customers.
About Epson the Company
Seiko Epson Corporation, commonly known as Epson, is a Japanese electronics company and one of the world’s largest manufacturers of computer printers, and information and imaging related equipment.
I must say though… despite Epson’s customer care needing to up its game… Epson sure does have an amazing number of positive reviews across almost all of it’s professional printer line…