Lets Talk Printers

[Hans Tucker]

Purchased an Epson EcoTank Inkjet Colour Printer a while back. Made a huge mistake in not setting it up immediately after purchase but waiting nearly a year. Got around to unboxing and trying to set it up and it just didn't work. Just continued to print blank pages. Tried WiFi printing then purchased a special cable to do a hard wired connection. Then head clean .. Deep Clean .. nothing could get this to print. Epsons Customer Service is the worse .. arrogant person on the other end ... have you tried this ... have you tried that ... Yes I have but no of these suggestions are in the setup manual nor in the Online setup procedure which I followed carefully to no avail.

Must have been more than a year since purchase and setup because the warranty expired. Lucky I took out JB HiFi extended warrant ... well not so lucky. It has been with their repair venue for nearly 3 months and no repair.

Ok .. rant over. I am cutting my losses and buying a new printer.

Question. What did you buy, brand and type. Inkjet versus Laser.

[floyd_2]

I would be pressuring JB for a replacement if their extended warranty provider can't resolve the problem (which they obviously can't). What a con job. They take your money for the extended warranty as an upsell but can't come through with a solution when you want to claim. I sounds mysteriously like the time when I claimed on my contents insurance when there was a lightning strike next door that killed my expensive scanner and printer. The insurance company literally had to be cornered into doing the right thing.

Anyway, I've been using a Brother HL-3170CDW colour laser for years. In fact, one of my brothers also has one, and so does my 82 year old mum. None of us has had a single problem with the printer, and third party toners are inexpensive. It'll get down to what you need to print though, as I don't think that lasers do a very good job for photos. I've found over the years that infrequently used inkjets don't last, but that infrequently used lasers last forever. I'm not sure if Brother makes the HL-3170CDW anymore, but it's certainly been a good value printer for me. I guess things to look out for with colour lasers is the cost of replacement toners, the yield per cartridge, definitely how long you get out of the drum, and whether the drum can be replaced (and how much it would cost to do so). That would get down to how much printing you do of course. I'm nowhere near the end of the drum on my printer after years of service and I believe that the drums only have 15,000 page life spans on this printer. Knowing the price of the drum kit (same price as the printer lol), I'd probably replace the printer if that time eventually came and get fresh warranty with the new printer.

[Outcast]

Hans,

Familiarise yourself with the contents of this page:

https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/consumer-rights-guarantees/repair-replace-refund

3 months seems more than sufficient time to decide if they can repair it & actually conduct the repair IMHO..

I would go back in, armed with this information & press your case...

To be honest, I never bother with extended warranties... you are basically paying for something that the Australian Consumer Guarantee covers anyway in that 'a product should last a reasonable amount of time'. What is considered reasonably does vary but, largely comes down to how much you paid for something... ie: a TV costing a couple of thousand should last considerably longer than the 2, maybe 3 year warranty it comes with. We have had many successes pressing our claims on products that have been as old as 5 years but, only had a 1 year warranty on the basis that for what it cost, it should last longer than it did. In no cases did we actually have to involve the ACCC, simply a mention of Australian consumer law & being firm, standing your ground was sufficient.

Sorry to hear of your printer woes, we've had an eco tank for about 7 years now, works like a charm & has saved us a fortune on the all in one printer cartridges...

Hope the above helps

Cheers

[leon]

I have used Canon Printers all my printing life, cant go wrong IMHO rarely and issue, they just print for ever an i can tell you i have printed many thousands of photos.

The quality is superb if you get a decent one that is.

Leon

[mura_gadi]

Hey,

I'd start with the ink cartridges and work backwards, a lot of cheap printers have very expensive aftermarket inks.

A good ink bin is also very important, lose ink carbon is amazingly carcinogenic... so have a look for ink disposal or spillage issues in any reviews.

[RB]

I agree Leon.
I've always used Canon.
The one I have uses the big inbuilt ink tanks that you refill from a bottle.

I don't like Epson printers.

RB
:thumbsup:

[astro744]

I bought a HP Laserjet CM1015 MFP on a whim shopping for something else at the time and saw a few boxes of these printers stacked up near the checkout. This was in 2009 or 10 I think. Last official driver was for Vista but can be made to work with all features under Windows 7. Under 10 it has limited features if you do a clean install of 10 but fully featured if you upgrade from 7 with the printer already set up. By full features I mean when you press the scan to file button on the printer it opens the HP software for you.

Since I bought it I had purchased two sets of M,Y,C,B cartridges and an extra two Black. (Still have one unopened black and the second colour cartridges are showing nearly full). The only thing that may be going on it is the drum as copies aren’t that clean but I wont replace it until it fails or I need new toner and this is only a recent development.

It is not a WiFi printer so I need to have a PC on to act as a print server. Even works with air print although the setup was tricky as the air print works through the print server PC running Windows 10 Pro.

I think the manufacturers have woken up to themselves and no longer offer large toner cartridges at least not in home models. I was shopping around for a wifi laser printer to replace the HP before I last bought the set of toner cartridges but wasn’t happy with anything I saw. I don’t think I will ever buy ink again as the toner costs far less to run at least for this model. I think more recent lasers with smaller cartridges may not be as cost effective but I would say still better than ink. Photos don’t look too bad on laser but if I want a glossy I’ll go to a print service.

Note the drum is one of the more costly items and when it goes it may warrant a new machine but it depends on the model and features it provides. I would like an A3 colour scanner/laser printer for home but just cannot justify the cost. A3 ink multifunction is not too badly priced. Duplex scan print is nice if you can get it (prints both side without you having to reinsert the paper).

I bought it for the kids to use for school projects and it has served them well. It is big but very reliable.

I would certainly push to have a replacement of your current one that you bought. I believe that Epson design is supposed to be economical on ink.

[Hans Tucker]

Thanks all for your inputs and Carlton thanks for the link to the ACCC section.:thumbsup:

[AstroViking]

Hi all,

FWIW, I picked up a Fuji-Zerox CP215w colour laser from OfficeJerks for $170 back in 2015. Networked, wireless, cheap to run, still going strong, and I can get aftermarket toner cartridges (full set of 4 individual CMYK) for about $50 off eBay.

I fully agree with astro744 about printing photos - take them to a proper print place and have it down properly. Lasers are only 'OK' for photo-realistic printing.

Avoid inkjets like the plague - cheap to buy initially, hyper-expensive replacement ink, and they never work when you need them to.

One more think - HP and Epson have rolled out "printing as a service" where you pay a set amount per month to print a set number of pages. The advantage is they (as I understand it) will send out new cartridges as you need them. However, if you don't pay your subscription you can be locked out of your printer.

See here: https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/21/epson_payments_issue/

Cheers,
V

[gary]

Hi Dean,

By way of background I spent a considerable amount of my career designing laser printer controllers, that is the electronics inside the printer.

Note that for some time with the Hewlett Packard printers the drum tends
to be integrated with the toner cartridges.

So whenever you change the HP toner cartridges, you also get a brand new
set of drums inside of them.

Over a longer period of time it tends to be mechanisms such as the pickup
rollers that need to be replaced, but replacement kits are readily available
and they are pretty easy to replace.

[astro744]

I think you may be right with the HP cartridges as each has a green glass roll which I guess is the drum. I always thought there was another drum inside the machine or is it called diffuser! Mine probably needs a bit of a clean inside but it’s working and the kids no longer use it. The toner I have for it will last another 4-5 years. I paid $108 total in mid 2020 for BK, C, M, Y generic toner. Genuine HP toner is more expensive and I did buy it the first time 7 years prior.

[Hans Tucker]

The Epson EcoTank Inkjet Printers are not cheap to buy. The only reason I chose this model was the refillable ink tanks. I think my next buy will be a Brother Laser Printer.

[gary]

There are no additional drums but there is typically a pair of rollers one
of which has the fuser in it (not diffuser) through which the paper passes.

The fuser is a heating element which heats up the assembly to around
400°C to bond the toner to the paper.

Due to this heating/cooling cycle as they print, the fuser can fail over time
but typically again you can buy a replacement kit. One telltale sign that
a fuser may have failed is the toner doesn't adhere and makes a mess.



That green glassy roll is the drum. Drums would typically be coated
with selenium but sometimes germanium or silicon.

They are photosensitive. There is a shutter mechanism that creates an
aperture slit across the drum. When putting in an new cartridge, avoid
opening that shutter or exposing it to sunlight or bright light.

Back in the day when the drum was its own subsystem within the printer
and essentially there for the life of the printer, any contaminant or blemish
on the drum would result in an annoying mark on the printed output
forever.

With the advent of the drums inside the toner cartridges any defect would
go away once the toner cartridge was replaced. The downside is that the
cartridges are much more expensive than back in the days when they
simply contained the toner. It's a good idea to drop them off somewhere
that recycles them to re-use or harvest some of the materials rather than
letting them go to landfill.

[astro744]

Thanks Gary. Learning a lot about printers. My initial long post was simply me trying to say I’ll only ever buy a laser now as I had been through the cheap initial ink printer cost and expensive refill path before getting the HP laser. I take my old toner cartridges to work as they have a recycle cartridge service. The Epson model that is in question did intrigue me though a few years back.