Frank’s ink cartridge, toner cartridge, printer & photo paper news!

The time taken for a print to dry depends on several factors:

• The amount of ink printed which in turn depends on the density of the image.
• The type of photo paper used.
• The humidity and temperature of the surrounding air.
• The brand of ink and printer.
• The air circulation in the room.

For best results:

• Use the same brand of paper as the printer.
• If you use other brands of paper such as Ilford or Celcast, make sure it is suitable for your printer.
• If you use generic or other brands of paper you may need to test several different types with your printer.
• If using refilled or generic cartridges and the photos dry too slowly, try using genuine cartridges
• Carefully remove the print from the printer once it has finished printing and place it flat in a warm dry environment with good air circulation.

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Epson has announced a new lawsuit against another 24 companies which manufacture Epson compatible ink cartridges. Epson alleges copyright infringement of their cartridge design. Epson has for several years been adamant that they are not against aftermarket cartridges for their printers per se, only aftermarket cartridges which infringe copyright. The newest batch of companies targetted by Epson includes companies that manufacture in China, Germany, Korea and Mexico, as well as some U.S. companies that import cartridges.

Manufacturers include Butterfly Print Image, Ink Lab, Mipo International, Nine Star Image, Zhuhai Gree Magneto-Electric, Tully Imaging Supplies, Wellink Trading Co., Ribbon Tree (Macao), Artech GmbH, Ink Tec (Korea) and Master Ink Co.

Importers include some very well known companies - Glory South Software, Nectron International, Mipo America, Nine Star Technology, Town Sky Inc., MMC Consumables, Inkjetwarehouse.com, Ribbon Tree (USA) Apex, Inc Tec (America), Dataproducts USA, Rhinotek and Acujet.

If Epson is successful these companies may be liable for large damages payouts to Epson, as well as lost sales in the millions of dollars. It is unlikely that end users will be involved any sort of litigation for using these cartridges, however consumers that use these cartridges and are happy with them will need to use different brands which don’t infringe copyright.

As can be seen from the list of importers and manufacturers, if Epson is successful they will effectively remove some of the best performing compatibles from the market, making the remaining non-infringing aftermarket cartridges the only substitute to genuine. Of course the non-infringing designs are vastly inferior to the genuine Epson ink cartridges , making the genuine product much more attractive.

Whether we see Epson taking action against Australian importers of non-genuine cartridges remains to be seen.

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One of our regular very happy customers called today for some advice. Her colour ink cartridge was empty in her Epson printer, but she didn’t need to print for a while so she had taken the empty cartridge out of the machine and thrown it in the bin. She was asking if it was OK to leave the printer without the cartridge for a couple of weeks. Our advice is pretty well standard on this every time…

This is a no-no on Epson printers!

Removing your old empty cartridge and not replacing it with a new cartridge immediatly runs the risk of nozzle blockage. Because inks dry with contact with air, any remaining ink in the print head area may dry out and cause a blockage. This will result in one or more colours not printing out when you do finally replace the cartridge, a banding or streaking effect may appear on the printed page. The common mistake is to think the new cartridge is faulty. 9 times out 10 a simple print head clean will fix the problem, however your printhead may be permanentely blocked.

Always have a new cartridge to hand ready to put into your Epson printer when the old one runs out. This will keep your printhead from drying out or clogging.

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Canon has announced plans to build it’s biggest ever bubblejet printer factory. It will be built in Vietnam at a cost of $70 million dollars and will produce a staggering 700,000 printers per year with a 3,500 strong workforce.

The factory will be situated in the Tien Son Industrial Park, Bac Ninh Province. It will be Canon’s fourth factory in Vietnam.

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Today we had the opportunity to look at the new Samsung SP-2040 Photo Printer. This printer is a dye sublimnation printer, which means it doesn’t use ink cartridges but a film with the colours impregnated. The unit is very sleek and looks great, not taking up much room - until you add the paper tray that is. Then it looks like an ugly duckling! Once you’ve finished with printing though you can pack the cover away and it will look great again.

Photo quality is very nice as is expected from a dye sub printer, colours are laid one on top of another to build up the image. Each photo takes about a minute to print which is OK if you only need to do a few but may be too much if you have 1-200 to do. The Samsung SPP-2020 and SPP-2040 don’t need a computer to print photos, you can just hook up your camera using Pictbridge and off it goes, however the SPP-2020 doesn’t have a preview LCD screen like the SPP-2040 so will need to use the camera’s screen do decide which to print. The printers print onto 100 x 150mm photo paper.

The software that comes with the printer is PhotoThru, and includes both Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.3 and above versions. The software formats everything automatically making photos easy to print.

Overall these 2 printers are great, the only drawbacks being the ugliness of the paper tray, the not so fast printing and that the paper tray holds only 20 sheets - however the superb quality of the prints really counter that. If you need quality but not speed, this is the photo printer for you.

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Last month Hewlett Packard announced an across the board price rise of 5% for all HP inks, HP toners and papers. While we have been lucky over the past 2 years with our appreciating dollar causing great price drops in consumables, unfortunately things are now going the other way and we are going to have to start paying more. The vast majority of printer consumables coming into the country are paid with US dollars, so any changes in the exchange rate are reflected in the prices end users pay. With the US dollar rising, this means we will be paying more for consumables.

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Following on from the post last week about Canon’s lawsuit against a refiller, it seems to me that we are going to see a lot more aggressive legal action from the big four printer manufacturers. Last month Lexmark reported a nearly 50% drop in profit, due mostly to price discounting. Epson has also reported a loss of over $120 million because of poor performance in their LCD division. Epson expects sales in their printing division to be lower this year.

While the companies don’t say that refilling has hurt their businesses, they must be thinking how to get back the 15-20% market share that refilling and compatible cartridges has. In the past both Canon and Epson have for the most part ignored refillers, with HP repeatedly saying it’s the ‘consumers choice, but HP is better’. Lexmark has been aggressive with their actions against toner remanufacturers (see info on their DMCA lawsuit) but has left ink refilllers alone.

Epson has taken action against manufacturers of aftermarket ink cartridges but only on a small scale. With the huge profits at stake these actions will only increase as it makes it worthwile for the printer companies to win back market share and badly needed revenue. With the explosion of digital photo printing expected to take place over the next year or two the market, and potential profits, will get bigger and bigger. The big four will not want to relinquish a bigger piece of the pie to refillers - in fact they will want to make the pie, and their piece, bigger.

It would be far better the big four used the consumer education carrot rather than the litigation stick to increase their market share. Refill inks are cheaper for a reason - refillers do not spend millions of dollars a year on research and development to make better inks, but the printer manufacturers do. Genuine inks last longer, work better and are better for your printer. Refill ink cannot, by it’s very nature (because genuine is patented so cannot be exactly copied), match genuine.

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While we seem to be on the Canon theme this week, it was reported in the press on Tuesday that Canon has won a lawsuit in Japan against a company refilling their ink cartridges. The company, called Recycle Assist, was recycling used Canon cartridges by cleaning and refilling them. Canon alleges that Recycle Assist was infringing their patent as a special leak-preventing structure of the Canon cartridge was being re-used. The Intellectual Property court agreed with Canon even though a a lower court had ruled that what Recycle Assist was doing was technically ‘repair’ and was allowed.

The judge ordered all the refilled cartridges be destroyed and that no more may be imported. Recycle Assist plans to appeal the decision.

It appears that this judgement only affects Canon against one company in one country, however an ultimate win by Canon may mean that no company anywhere in the world will be able to refill Canon cartridges for sale to consumers. Of course, if Canon wins the other manufacturers won’t be far behind with their litigation too. This will have major repurcussions not just for neighborhood refillers but companies like Cartridge World who are expanding worldwide on the premise that refilling ink cartridges is legal. While I am not a great fan of refilling due to quality issues, I think if people want to get their cartridges refilled they should be allowed to do so.

I doubt though that this judgement will affect home users who do their own refilling, although Canon may take action against those selling inks and giving instructions to customers on how to do it. Those companies may be stopped just as companies instructing people how to download illegal mp3’s have been stopped. Let’s wait and see. If you have a comment you would like to add, please do so!

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If you need a laser printer, have you thought about buying second hand? Some great examples of second hand printers are HP Laserjets like the 4 series (4, 4+, 4M, 4M+) and the Laserjet 2200 and 4000 series. A lot of these printers have been treated very kindly, usually in a quiet corporate environment.

Make sure when buying that the printer you choose has a low page count. Typically under 30,000 pages is fine. Find out if you can what environment it was kept in. Avoid printers which have been used in the locality of humid and seaside areas. Check and make sure a toner cartridge comes with the printer and how full it is. If there isn’t one or it is nearly empty, do some research on how much a replacement cartridge will cost and balance that against the cost of the machine.

As these printers are usually over 20kg, Australia Post will not transport them so make sure you get a firm shipping quote from the seller before you agree to buy. You have to make sure that the seller packs the printer very well with good packing so it is not damaged in transit - pay a little extra for this if you have to. Make sure the printer is insured.

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