Printing Album Pages - Dye Vs. Pigment Ink

Scribus will use whatever fonts you have installed in the OS.

My local Staples has an Epson Work Force WiFi 2540 on sale for $60. Maybe I will pick one up. I am very happy with my HP Laserjet 1018 for black and white, which most of my pages are. However, I plan on using some colour on pages with maps.

$60? I just bought the same printer at Staples last night for $80! I should have waited the day.

Check Amazon for cheap refilled cartridges.

Apastuszak, I would caution against using refill cartridges, unless they are refilled with ink from the original manufacturers. Cheap replacement ink may cause problems like ink fade, ink transfer, and in some cases blockage of the ink delivery nozzles. Not a big deal on a cheap printer, but disastrous on a pro quality Epson Photo printer costing £500 ($800) on which the warranty is invalidated by their use. Not all may be this bad, but how can you be sure?

Terry

I paid $80 for my printer. I won't cry too much if something happens.

On my Artisan, I have used refilled ink cartridges since the day I bought the printer. I did have the nozzles clog at one point. I did a cleaning and all was good as new.

The one rule I go buy with Inkjet printers is: NEVER TURN THEM OFF. If you leave them on, then electricity flows to the print head and it almost never clogs.

I had an old Deskjet 932C with a duplexer that I had bought back in 2000 new. That printer was a tank. It has a solid metal frame inside. I NEVER turned it off, and it lasted till about 2010, when my wife bumped it and it fell off the shelf it was on. The paper tray cracked off, and the duplexer bent the paper path. I used refills on that too.

The only time I have ever had a problem with a printer severely clogging was an old Epson Stylus 740. I ended up getting rid of it and gave it to a family member because it was just way too noisy. They left it sitting in the corner of their bedroom unplugged for a month. When they finally set it up, all 4 print heads were clogged. I had to fill some cartridges with 90% rubbing alcohol and run about a dozen print cleaning cycles. Took a whole day, but I got it printing again.

My only concern with refills for the 2540 is that they have refilled the cartridges with dye based ink instead of pigment ink. Not sure how I can tell, without printing it.

Andy: I just bought it. that is $60 Canadian too.

My


What?? Is that true even with OEM Epson cartridges???

Epson OEM cartridges will definitely have pigment based ink. I'm thinking of third party refilled cartridges.

When my printer ran out of ink my grandson brought me his box of crayons.

Have you tried crayons yet?

Hi, I just wanted to "bump up" this discussion since I'm currently going through some "issues" with printing my modified Steiner pages.

I'm currently using a pretty new Epson Workforce Inkjet printer and have no complaints with it at all. However, I recently started modifying my Steiner pages adding a "fancy" border and some addition historical text and photos (not a lot though). Now, I recently printed out about 20 pages and saw a noticeable drop in my black ink levels (unlike I've seen before printing pages without borders and additional text/photos).

So, I started thinking that I might need to take my pages to a commercial printer for printing with a laser printer (I have gotten quotes ranging from $0.09 to 0.14 per page to print using my own paper). I have always thought that laser printing was far superior to inkjet printing for album pages, but after reading some of the comments on this thread, I'm starting to think twice about that.
I'm just wondering if I should take my pages to a commercial printer for laser printing or just continue printing myself with my inkjet printer, which again I'm very happy with the quality/sharpness, etc.?
Andy: since your pages are heavily illustrated, I'm wondering how much ink you go through?

Thanks for the advice!

I have two Canon printers for different tasks. The MP190 is seven years old and the only problem was when I once attempted to use the $5 ink cartridges. A night mare I'll not soon forget. The purchase price was $30. Last year I obtained a 3530 Canon for $30 with it's function being to print 4x5 size which it has done a good job on. The inks seem to be pretty stable.

I abandoned my Inkjet earlier this year. My Epson had a clogged print head and would not print yellow. I burned through an entire set of cartridges trying to clean out the print head. I ended up disassembling the printer and soaking the print head in alcohol. When I re-assembled it and turned it on, it stayed on for about 2 minutes. When I tried to print, the printer just shut off for no reason and would not turn back on.

I threw the thing in the trash and went out and bought a Brother HL3170CDW Color laser and couldn't be happier. I buy 3rd party toner for around $29 a color. I leave the printer off for a year and nothing ever clogs.

Thanks for the tip Andy. That printer currently sells for $159.99 on Amazon with 4.2 out of 5 stars from 773 reviews.

How's the cost of toner compared it Epson ink?

How's the quality of the print compared to your Epson?

I think the quality of the print is always better on a laser when you're using regular paper, like I am. You may run into issues down the road in 10-20 years with the toner sticking to the page.

The big plus for me is no print nozzles to clog. My printer usage goes way down in the summer when the kids are out of school. When an inkjets sits around that long unused it can get clogged. My end of August was always filled with cleaning nozzles,buying new ink and hoping to God that everything works for back to school.

I believe toner is pretty much plastic you're melting and affixing to the page, which is why I think there may be long term issues with it. Dye based inks have the issue of not being even water resistant. Pigment based inks may be the best compromise for longevity and crisp and clear text. But if you run into clogging issues with nozzles clogging and wasted ink on cleaning cycles if you don't print frequently.

I still have some pages printed from the Epson. I'll reprint them on the laser and do some hi-res scans and post pics, and you can decide on print quality. Give me a day or so.

On another note.

Laser:

4 re-manufactured high-yield color toner cartridges @ $29 each with a page count of 2200 pages comes to 5.4 cents per page

Ink:

4 re-manufactured LD Products high-yield ink cartridges for $23 with a page count of 500 pages comes to 5.1 cents per page

So, it comes to about the same cost per page. But my Epson got a firmware update that allowed it to detect third party cartridges and I would get nagged forever that I was not using genuine ink.

Up front cost is higher also. You can get an Epson 2650 on Amazon right now for less than $70. The laser printer I got is $159 (I paid $199 at the time I got it.)

But the worry free operation is worth it to me. I work in IT and troubleshoot and fix issues all day at work. There's a huge plus to having stuff "just work" at home.