• Maple Engineer
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    64 months ago

    Buy an Epson EcoTank printer. My family owns three. You pay more for the printer but just dump in bottles of ink when they need refilling.

    • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)
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      14 months ago

      I just got an old HP inkjet that doesn’t care about reported ink levels and cheap ink bottles from AliExpress.

      I print white on black because I have so much damn ink and nobody expects dark mode documents. Kinda funny when I take out a sheet of paper and have to dry it out. 120g/m² is absolutely the minimum when doing such crap though. Regular 80g/m² just wrinkles up and leaks through, although that’s also a property of dye ink vs pigment ink.

      But I also lucked out on sales combined with coupons

      Currently it’s €18.50, though for 0.5L (~1 pint) that’s still cheap. Honestly I am surprised I actually received that.

      • Maple Engineer
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        24 months ago

        Nice. We had one printer or another that required expensive ink cartridges before we got the Epson. I used to refill some cartridges but it was a pain. Now I just open a set of bottles and top up the tanks whenever it’s thirsty.

    • @[email protected]
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      4 months ago

      Just make sure you schedule a test print every couple off weeks to prevent clogs, is a little wasteful but if you get aftermarket ink it’s cheap enough that is worth it, otherwise a new head will run you down around 50 bucks.

      TIL EDIT: you can get continuous tank mods for most printers on AliExpress! I might give it a try with mine!

      • Maple Engineer
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        34 months ago

        They do require maintenance to keep them running smoothly. I’m fairly mechanically and technically capable so I can disconnect the head and run DA-2A through the mechanism to clean it out.

        • @[email protected]
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          4 months ago

          DA-2A works to a point, but if you let the printer sit for a year it might not unfortunately. Like I said print heads aren’t crazy expensive, but still kind of sucks. But hey inkjets still do have their place sometimes.

          • Maple Engineer
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            14 months ago

            DA-2A works to a point

            I have a 210 L drum of the stuff.

            We do a fair amount of printing and run the print head cleaning routine on our printer every few weeks to keep it happy. We’ve had the ET-4550 for over 8 years and it’s still chugging along. If it ever needs a replacement print head it will not owe me a damned thing.

    • @[email protected]
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      74 months ago

      I just bought a printer. Everything I saw said that if you print infrequently then you don’t want an inkjet. They’re very prone to clogging if left alone for a while. Went with a laser printer instead.