Pictures and video of my inkjet and mod

[aab1]

Many are curious to how I print for 0.4 cents a page in color on an inkjet so I made a thread to explain. Firstly I use HP Officejet Pro series printers which are made for high speed high volume low cost printing and beat lasers of similar price in both speed (34 ppm color, 35 ppm black) and for half the cost per page. I have the L7780 model (the best from 3 years ago).

So already as is it's half the cost per page, but you can buy ink by the liter (which makes 50 000 prints at least, look at the black ink bottle on the image below, I've done 40 000 prints since replacing it and it's still just under half full). I've also drilled holes in the ink bottles and ran microtube from the bottles to the cartridge's refill port, about a 30 minute modification. These printers have pretty strong piston style ink pumps so they can easily pump the ink from the bottles.

Here are pictures of my modification:





Here's a video of it printing:

[Eric1968]

Very nice, but you'll never reach the quality of the original ink.

[aab1]

Very nice, but you'll never reach the quality of the original ink.

The ink is guaranteed to match genuine ink and I've nothiced no change it quality whatsoever after the original included HP ink ran out. I don't buy cheap universal ink, I get ink specifically made for my printer model.

[aab1]

BTW those 4 black things with orange caps are spare printheads, the printer needs 2, one for black and yellow (the 2 most used colors), and one for cyan and magenta. They last about 60 000 prints and cost under $50 each.

[I3FusionGuy]

Congradulations, you have discovered continuous ink supply system, which has been around forever. I hope you have fun replacing your inkjets purge unit after 200k pages and cleaning out the waste ink, not to mention the overusage stress on your printers flimsy plastic frame. You do understand that all these rube goldberg tubes and bottles you have added to your printer make this unusable in a business environment, right? Is an end user going to be comfortable changing ink bottles and possibly spilling it everywhere? Are you going to warranty the unit from accidental tube removal and spillages from clumsy employees? How long will ink stay viable in these canisters for a period of time if the user only prints three pages a day?

Your arguments for "lower cost per page" are insolvent, because the modifications you have made invalidate all manufacturer standards. Basically, you are making an inkjet printer into a printing press and NOT the low-maintenance, low user intervention, minimal-support-neccessary desktop printer.

Congrats for the mod, but it is not a good office solution, and I think you need to do more scientific testing to determine how well your printer lasts with your CIS.

Come back and try to sell your CIS products here after 3 million pages of R&D.

[aab1]

I think I had mentioned it in my OP, but even with no modification and buying full price HP cartridges, the HP business inkjets still cost half the cost per page than laser printers. Even without any mod but using compatible cartridges, the cost can be easily 25 times less than laser.

BTW the HP business inkjets already have a built in CIS, I just added larger bottles to it (the cartridges are nothing more than ink bottles which is they they are so cheap).

It is also actually much lower maintenance with the mod, that's the point of the mod, I only need to replace ink every 50 000 prints.

As I said I have over 250 000 prints on this $600 printer (which I didn't even expect to last 100 000 prints and even if that was the case it's still cheaper even if I had to replace the printer every 100 000 prints).

Anyway I agree this mod isn't for everyone, it's a bit more tricky to replace or refill the bottles but well worth the enormous savings and is far less trouble than refilling the cartridges every 2000-2500 prints.

[10871087]

Very nice, but you'll never reach the quality of the original ink.

Who cares so long as your not printing photos, this is a totally cool mod for your application (I watched the video).

[aab1]

Who cares so long as your not printing photos, this is a totally cool mod.

Actually it is the same quality, I get high quality printer specific ink, not cheap universal crap. I can confirm the quality is identical to the few thousand pages that first printed with the included half full genuine cartridges.