How Low Do You Let Your Inks Get?

[balstestrat]

I tend to kick them out of the HP after they hit below 50ml. Had a couple instances like others have mentioned, letting it go to 0, and having a quality print issue or the head totally dies prematurely. I do keep some of the cartridges and will swap them back in for short runs to use up as much as possible. But no matter what, there is going to be solid debris in the last bits of any ink cartridge. Why test their quality control and risk your own production schedule for just a few pennies?

I have to ask, how much do you print? If you keep fresh ink supply and change the cartridge every few weeks I really see no reason to waste that much ink. Completely different thing if you print so little that you maybe replace the cartridge every 6 months or so but then you should also shake it every once in a while. It will not get it 100.00% empty anyways.

I would expect some billion $ spend on ink development to have a standard. Meanwhile some people run who knows what it has aftermarket inks that I would never even touch with a long stick.

 

[MMPFred]

We've had our HP 365 around 2-1/2 years and pretty much always swap out the ink when the printer stops in the middle of a job. Someone is always within 15 feet of the printer just because of the way the shop is laid out so we hear the tone it emits and swap the cartridge out immediately. It picks up where it left off and I've never been able to see anything in the output quality that indicates anything happened during the run.

I've only replaced a couple of print heads in that time and that was due to a nasty head strike, up until a couple months ago when we were troubleshooting a color issue and swapped out all the print heads. It didn't resolve the problem so I've been hanging on to the old print heads to test in the future.

 

[Joseph44708]

Question for you... Very rarely has it happened, but I can think of twice now when I let it run to 0, and it ends up killing the head. Usually on the light heads, or magenta... I just had a head that was just swapped and working fine... It had about 130 ML through it, the ink ran out...I put a new one in and the head was completely dead, no ink running through it at all. I tried a few cleanings and nothing... I did a nozzle drop test and all nozzles were gone. I put a new head in and it worked perfectly fine.

I just had it happen a week ago actually, it's been sitting on my machine waiting for me to RMA it... Just been too busy. Just wondering if this was a common thing, or if theres some other option I can do to recover the heads? 9.9/10 times its not an issue, just the odd occurrence that it kills a head.... which isnt a big deal since as long as its under warranty, it just means I get a new free head

I replaced a print head on one of my printers, two weeks later it was dropping color, tech serviced it and within one week it was dropping color again. We inquired about the warranty and five months later they said it was not covered by the warranty because it could be from other problems with the printer. We will NEVER purchase anything from DS again.

 

[PortlandPrint]

I have a Roland VS300 and run it until it is out of ink and the printer tells me to replace. I like to keep a full set on hand.

 

[Dukenukem117]

I usually replace them at zero. The only HP latex that needs to be changed is the 570 where the intermediate cartridge cannot be used up or you have to replace the cartridge.