Maintenance Tanks and Ink Reuse

Discussion in 'Large Format Inkjet Printers' started by ryan_curran, Apr 5, 2012.

  1. ryan_curran

    ryan_curran New Member

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    Hello. I am researching ways to extract or reuse or sell the ink in a maintenance tank. I would like any and all suggestions on how to do this and what can be done with extracted ink. Can the ink be squeezed out? Does anyone purchase used ink? Is there a way to separate it out into individual pigments? Any information or direction would be much appreciated.

    Best,

    Ryan
     
  2. plotter

    plotter Senior Member

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    imo dont waste your time, it can be squeezed out but it will all mingle together to get a dirty black. as far as i know no one uses used ink. i would really forget the whole idea.
     
  3. nico

    nico New Member

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    to be honest, i've never heard that anyone reused the used ink. and it doesn't sound like a clever thing to do. just imagine, a completely mixed liquid which doen't really resemble normal ink. and it may influence the printhead or later on lead to clogging or bleeding or some dirty specks on your prints if used in your new fancy printer. imho it's not worth doing.
     
  4. JTFLO

    JTFLO Member

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    I don't think reusing the ink would work out very well. Although, I have always pondered ripping out the maintenance tank to the plastic and shoving cotton balls in. Then just dumping the cotton balls each time the maintenance tank says full ;)

    It probably wouldn't work but I think about it each time I have to buy a new one ;)
     
  5. Andy-zhang

    Andy-zhang Member

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  6. William Allen

    William Allen Member

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    One colleague bought a chip-resetter for the maintenance tank on his 7800. He removed the ink-soaked felt pads and refilled the plastic case with sanitary towels. A messy job but workable and it saves him money!

    Once ink has been mixed, it could be separated by chromatography. I remember doing a project on ink pigments for A level chemistry back in the 1960s.

    I wouldn't bother with ink recovery because a tiny amount of black would ruin the purity of the colours.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2012
  7. IT Supplies

    IT Supplies Senior Member

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    This wouldn't be a smart idea. A chip resetter can work, but Epson sets the printer up to make sure that it fills up at a certain point because if it fills up more than needed, Epson wants to make sure that it doesn't go to far where it may fill up too much and somehow leak into the printer causing an issue and possible cost to repair. We sell genuine products at cheaper than retail.

    This may assist with the replacement supplies.
    You may also want to check with Epson's recycle program. They may take back filled maintenance tanks and empty ink cartridges.
    http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/Recycle/RecycleProgram.jsp
     

  8. William Allen

    William Allen Member

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    When the time came to replace our Epson7800, I was very aware that ink had cost me more than twice as much as I'd paid for the printer and that more ink had gone into the maintenance tank than onto the paper. Yes, I had weighed the "full" maintenance tanks before throwing them away!

    It was replaced with an HP Z3200 which gives beautiful results and uses very little ink, but the Epson customer service is way ahead of HP.
     
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