S40600 ink cart NOT empty

[Reaction GFX]

So I just purchased a new S40 back in October. Love the machine so far. Today was actually the first time I needed to replace an ink cartridge. For the heck of it, I cracked the "empty" cartridge open just to see what's going on in there. To my surprise, the ink bag inside the cartridge still has a fair amount of ink in it. For a 700ml cartridge, I'd say it has AT LEAST a good 100ml (if not more) left in the bag. At $155 for a single cart, that's like $22 or more going right in the trash! I understand that cart volume is probably mostly determined by the chip, but this is still somewhat frustrating. Anybody know how I can maximize the ink usage so I'm not throwing money in the trash? Is this by design? Maybe they assume the last 100ml has a higher potential for contamination/sediment/etc? I do shake my carts usually about once a week. Any input on this is appreciated.

 

[a77]

Every time I take an ink cart out, I shake it, and curse Epson. They are definitely screwing us on that one. Usually it says that it wants to do a cleaning and there is not enough in the cartridge to safely do it. So I take it out, and then after cleaning put it in. About half the time I forget to do that.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

Interesting... our 80600 feels like it sucks every last mL out of it, certainly not 100mL being left in there. We're ordering another 6 carts tomorrow and I have about 20 empties on the shelf so I'll weigh them and check the difference. Be interesting to see.

 

[Reaction GFX]

Interesting... our 80600 feels like it sucks every last mL out of it, certainly not 100mL being left in there. We're ordering another 6 carts tomorrow and I have about 20 empties on the shelf so I'll weigh them and check the difference. Be interesting to see.

Feels like? Hmmm...unless you're cracking them open to feel the actual bag inside, how can you really tell? Apparently, I'm not the first person to notice this. This is a 9900, but the cartridges look very similar and it is still Epson. I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit about this yet.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

Intriguing... I just pulled apart a cartridge. It didn't feel like there was much ink in it... the bulk of the weight felt like it was the plastic casing as there wasn't much internal movement when shaken.
I emptied out the remainder of the ink and it totalled 70mL so you're not wrong, and I'm quite surprised.
I'd love to see if a 700mL cartridge actually holds 700mL of ink or closer to 800mL with a bit of leeway for this discrepancy. Not willing to throw $150 in the bin for the test though lol

 

[jfiscus]

You don't want to deal with it sucking dry and getting ink in the lines every time it "runs out", so this is what you have to deal with as opposed to that.
We don't like it much either, we have 2 and run the MCS (higher priced inks) in ours, and change out multiple carts daily with our volume. It's just another cost you have to factor in.

 

[Reaction GFX]

You don't want to deal with it sucking dry and getting ink in the lines every time it "runs out", so this is what you have to deal with as opposed to that.
We don't like it much either, we have 2 and run the MCS (higher priced inks) in ours, and change out multiple carts daily with our volume. It's just another cost you have to factor in.

I've seen this explanation tossed around in my research, and likely this is the explanation Epson would give. It makes sense as air in the lines would be bad, but I just feel like 100ml+ is a bit excessive (unless, of course, the carts are more like 800ml when purchased, but I seriously doubt that). Wish there was some way to use this ink. Not only am I losing money, but I can't imagine this ink going in the trash is very good for the environment, even if it's Eco-Solvent.

I can only imagine this was the same with my old GS6000, so I've probably tossed a few thousand dollars worth of ink in the trash over the last 10 years. Ugh.

 

[CanuckSigns]

if someone has a very accurate scale it should be easy to figure out without busting open a full cart. take a spent cartridge, drain all the ink into a jar that you know the empty weight of, figure out the weight of say 50 ml of ink, then weigh a full cartridge and subtract the weight of the plastic and bladder, that should be pretty straight forward, i would try it but i don't have a scale.

I've also noticed that spent carts coming out of our S80600 feel very empty, when I shake them I can't hear or feel and ink sploshing around like I could with my previous Roland cartridges.

 

[Reaction GFX]

if someone has a very accurate scale it should be easy to figure out without busting open a full cart. take a spent cartridge, drain all the ink into a jar that you know the empty weight of, figure out the weight of say 50 ml of ink, then weigh a full cartridge and subtract the weight of the plastic and bladder, that should be pretty straight forward, i would try it but i don't have a scale.

I've also noticed that spent carts coming out of our S80600 feel very empty, when I shake them I can't hear or feel and ink sploshing around like I could with my previous Roland cartridges.

If you watch the video I linked to above, they give the formula to figure out how much ink is in a cart without cracking it open. All you would need is a digital scale that weighs grams. In the video he says one ml of ink weighs about 1.08 grams. You'd just need to get a weight of the cartridge itself to figure out how much ink is actually in there (would probably have to crack one open to get the extra ink out for that initial weight measurement). It's really impossible to tell if the cart is truly empty without cracking it open. The cart I cracked open yesterday sure felt "empty" to me. I could not discern anything sloshing around inside, but there sure was a bunch of ink left in there once I cracked it open!

I just talked to my sales rep where I bought my S40 and he agreed with the not wanting to run the printer dry explanation. He also said that he's quite certain there is more than 700ml of ink in there to start with. I know Epson isn't ever going to change this, so I guess I just have to chalk it up as an overfilled cart, so no money lost, really. Still just seems awful wasteful!

 

[unclebun]

It was more wasteful when cartridges were 400 ml...

 

[Reaction GFX]

So I just did some of my own super-official, totally scientific testing. Dumped out the "empty" ink cart and sure enough, 150ml left in the bag.

In the video I posted above they mention the weight of ink is 1.08g/ml, but they're using water-based ink. In a document I found online from Onyx about ink calculation they mention the weight of solvent ink being 0.7-0.9g/ml, so I went with the average of 0.8g/ml. That means 700ml of ink would weigh roughly 560g. A full ink cart weighs in at 894g, and my empty cart (AFTER dumping the left over ink out) weighs in at 217g. 849g - 271g = 677g. So, by my calculations, there is approximately 145ml of extra ink in the cartridge when new.

Whew! I feel a whole lot better knowing Epson isn't intentionally trying to screw me (at least not with the ink!). Still seems awfully wasteful, and that's a lot of ink ending up in landfills...lord knows I already send a buttload of plastic (in the form of vinyl and substrate scraps) to the landfill.

 

[jfiscus]

I don't recommend this for a sign shop, but I do have a friend who saves all his empties and also collects the empties from other local shops running the same printers and dumps the colors into the bulk cartridges (shake vigorously, lol) and runs those in his JV3 solvent printers for years now; even way expired inks. Hasn't lost a head yet due to it, FWIW.

I was keeping our "empties" for a while when we first got our last model printer (70675) but I never got around to doing anything besides hoarding them. the stack got too big so we've just been pitching them the last couple years.

 

[jpescobar]

Maybe Epson should switch the ink system on their SureColor by the ink refill system of their EcoTank printers. A 1000ml bottle instead of the classic 700ml cartridges. I also hope they get rid of the waste ink bottle seen the volume of waste inks which is money thrown by the window !

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

We've had our 80600 for 18 months. We've emptied the waste bottle... once. It's only half way full at the moment. It's not a wasteful machine in any regard.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Large amounts of ink left in cartridges is usually a sign that your maintenance station isn't working at full capacity. The way the system works is for every print, cleaning, and ink fill you do the printer expects a certain amount of ink to flow through the head. If your cap top isn't sealing properly or the pump is old and damaged it won't pull as hard as it should. But the printer doesn't know this and keeps on subtracting the same amount of ink that should be flowing. When the chip reads empty, depending on the model, the chip is either made unusable or the printer saves the lot number from the chip and blacklists it forever.

Another common issue is that you get a defective cartridge or your ink level sensor is broken and flags the printer too soon that the cartridge is empty. Once the ink level sensor is tripped it marks the chip as empty also. The ink level sensor only measures 3 things, not-empty, near empty, and empty. It doesn't actually measure the amount of ink left in the cartridge. It's literally a little plastic lever that sits there and waits for a little piece of plastic to pop out of the cartridge.So you can see how that type of system would eventually fail to accurately report ink levels.

 

[unclebun]

It's wasteful if you don't do much printing. Even if you didn't print anything at all, you'd have to empty the waste tank just as often. But compared to replacing printheads every month due to drying up, it's not wasteful of money.

 

[Tatonka]

We've had our 80600 for 18 months. We've emptied the waste bottle... once. It's only half way full at the moment. It's not a wasteful machine in any regard.

The 80600 recirculates ink very well it seems, especially compared to our Rolands. It doesn't dump ink during a circulation, it re-cycles it. I've emptied ours a couple times in about 8 months, but I've swapped between metallic and white a few times as well, which dumps a bunch.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

We've kept the W/M channel stocked with a cleaning cart and have never tried using it. Would certainly lead to a lot less waste as I think it uses nearly half a cartridge just to prime/purge the lines.
Sounds about right to me.

 

[coastguy111]

I have the Epson surecolor s40600 printer and would appreciate any incit on how much the ink costs are per square foot?
Originally had Onyx but we made the switch to flexi 12 cloud. Unfortunately Epson and HP are not able to use the ink calculations function.
Also the profiles I'm using are generic as it will not let me import my media profiles from the epson dashboard. We do about 95% adhesive backed vinyl for vehicle wraps.
Any help with an idea of what it costs per square foot based on the different profiles from 720×720 2 pass up to 1440×1440 12 pass?
Thanks

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

I posted a small spreadsheet a while back with our averages. Not in the office for a while, but will try look it up later and repost, or will just generate new figures from the Epson accounting software.