Brother MFC3220C

[loudesilence]

Looking for information about how to turn off the \"auto head clean\" feature of this machine. It uses gobs of ink and the small carts don\'t seem to last. Turning it off disables the fax so not an option. Any help would be appreciated.

[Mike B]

Don\'t think you can. Never heard of anyone figuring it out.

Come on if the manufacturer couldn\'t make four or five times the cost of the machine in ink cartridge sales how could they make the machine. This is the reason they tell people to only use there cartridges.

[djbass]

On most Brother machines the auto head cleaning cycle is written into the firmware, so short of hacking your own.. no deal. Keep in mind it also does this for a very good reason, without those cycles the head would block up and eventually fail to function.

However, that being said this particular model is just a lemon of a machine. A lot of the heads were failing prematurely and they did seem to have an excessive cleaning cycle.

Come on if the manufacturer couldn\'t make four or five times the cost of the machine in ink cartridge sales how could they make the machine. This is the reason they tell people to only use there cartridges.

Couldn't be farther from the truth. While it is true that most manufacturers rely on after sales of ink to fund future development of new machines, that's not the primary reason for recommending their own cartidges.

Not all ink is created equal, often they contain lubricants and other additives to extend the life of the print head and ensure optimum print quality.

There are unfortunately many unscrupulous refillers and manufacturers of third party inks that often use food dyes, or claim their inks to be 'identical' to the OEM ink, despite the fact that many of the manufacturers use patented formulas.

I can count in the hundreds the number of damaged print heads/purge units I've seen as a direct result of refilled or non genuine cartridges.