In this newsletter, I am focusing on the Epson 2400 as a color printer, and offering a more economic and environmentally safe way to use it. I wanted to let you know that we are releasing a fully developed ICC profiled CIS ConeColor ink alternative system for it. With more than 45 popular papers profiled, this will be a true turnkey system. The ink wastage idiosyncrasy of this particular printer may alone drive you into an alternative eco-friendly ink system for it. That section of this newsletter is an interesting read because it is the first printer that we have noted such a large percentage of ink waste in comparison to ink use. And of course there is nothing you can do to prevent the printer from pausing and cleaning its inkjet heads or performing its automated clean functions. But it is extraordinary what we found out about this printer in a controlled experiment that you can easily replicate. We can also offer you advice on how to prevent the eventual return of our printer to Epson for replacement of its ink waste pads. That moment when it happens, is followed by the printer automatically shutting down and locking its print head into position.

ConeColor inks for the Epson 2400 now fully ICC developed.

The CIS and ConeColor 4oz bottle ink set has ICC profiles available for a large array of papers to make your adaptation of it very easy. The 2400 CIS system uses both the matte black and photo black, with the unwanted black cartridge riding piggy back until its required. ConeColor inks are very closely matched to Epson inks, but our ICC profiles allow it to be used as if professionally profiled for you. We include complete color workflow instructions with our package system so that you can produce fantastic color. The papers we profiles are listed below.

Epson unarguably makes terrific inks that give chemists terrible headaches when they are charged with trying to come up with an ink that is as good as! We will honestly say that our inks are not better than Epson inks. But we can also honestly say that our inks are as close as possible to Epson Ultrachrome K3 in comparison to competing brands. We did come up with a great ink. So that your expectations are met, I will explain the differences you can expect between the OEM (Epson) and ConeColor inks.

Epson inks have a slight advantage over ConeColor inks in glossiness. Although our inks produce fantastic gloss, Epson wins out in close side-by-side comparisons. We do not use any dye components in ConeColor inks, and Epson reports the use of proprietary dye in their K3 pigment formula. In my opinion, this gives Epson K3 an edge not only in glossiness, but also in dMax with Photo Black. By example, Epson Photo Black has about a 0.1 density edge over ConeColor Photo Black. While this may be insignificant to many, it may not seal the deal for those who are absolutely concerned with printing the blackest possible blacks on glossy materials. Of course, the matte inks are very similar between the two. As a fine art matte printing ink set, ConeColor with ICC profiles may actually become a superior solution to the OEM.

And if you can produce your own pro quality ICC printing profiles, we can suggest replacing out Matte Black, Light Black and Light Light Black with our Neutral Piezography versions (Matte printing only.) This would be a remarkable color reproduction system of combined ConeColor and Piezography blacks clearly superior to the OEM solution.

Also, ConeColor does not have the bullet-proof fade resistance of our pure carbon Piezography black and white inks. ConeColor is not a color Piezography ink! Piezography black & white inks have absolutely no human visible fade. The technology we invented for monochromatic ink making is limited to monochromatic ink making. That type of fade resistance is not possible with color pigments. ConeColor does however, have very good color pigment performance, and also has very good print head performance. And of course, all of our inks have always been associated with very low metamerism when compared with Epson.

ConeColor offers you a color managed solution, savings to the environment, and cost savings to you, using a very high-performance color pigment formulation. ConeColor is an environmentally conscious alternative that will produce color that will satisfy your expectations, resist fade, and perform very well in your printer. It is an ink that we are very proud of.

So you do not have to waste tons of paper while trying to save money and the environment, we have produced professional quality ICC profiles for the following papers:

ConeColor inks are designed around the concept of being environmentally responsible for those who prefer not to throw away one-time use cartridges.

More than 450 million ink carts were thrown into USA landfill last year. Cartridges are mostly made of plastic. Oil is required to make plastic.

One source cites that 10% of all foreign oil is imported into the USA in the form of plastics in printer carts. 90% of this oil is therefore put back into the ground in the USA in the form of landfill. How much oil? It is estimated that it takes about 2.5 ounces of oil to make a single inkjet cartridge and more than 3.5 quarts of oil to make a single laser printer cartridge. Reusing a cartridge saves oil and reduces our dependence upon foreign oil. The amount of energy required to convert oil into plastic which is quickly discarded into landfill also affects the atmosphere. The amount of energy required to get these millions of cartridges from your home or business to the landfill has probably seldom been pondered. If you mail order your single use cartridges, the amount of packing material required in addition to the paper and plastic wrapping that the manufacturer uses is staggering. This is without a doubt, an industry that consumes huge amounts of energy in manufacturing something that can be reused if consumers are given that choice. There really is no compelling reason why an inkjet cartridge can not be reused. They could be refilled with ink and used many times, should the printer manufacturer desire that. But unfortunately, printer carts as made by the printer manufacturers are difficult to refill and many are nearly impossible.

We ordered a set of nine EPSON 2400 cartridges from a prominent Epson OEM ink reseller and received a box of cartridges which when opened produced an enormous pile of waste packaging. The box was neatly packed with just a little air bag packing. But the box was nearly filled by the refuse of our opening the cartridges.

This is just nine cartridges worth of packaging. Magnify this by thousands and thousands of cartridges being bought for one time use and it is easy to see that landfills are filling up with more than just discarded one-time use cartridges. They are also filling up with lots of packaging.

Can inkjet be sustainable? Is it possible to own a printer designed to consume inks and papers, yet leave a small footprint on the environment? Certainly, the present model is anything but sustainable. The manufacturer expects the user to buy small amounts of ink in plastic cartridges, use the ink, and throw the cartridges away. There may be a recycle program available that incinerates the cartridges, but there is no reusable program in place that is encouraged and nourished. Incinerated cartridges produces toxic material for landfill. The material takes up less space. However, the solution is not to discard in the first place. The solution is to reuse the ink delivery system.

A sustainable inkjet system feeds ink from bottles into the inkjet printer. Some users have found ways to refill their own cartridges. Others have found ways to make home-made CIS systems. The easiest method is to purchase a CIS such as this bottle fed system we are selling for Epson 3800 printers. The concept is similar to the CIS for the Epson 2400 printer. A 4oz bottle holds more ink than 8 cartridges. We hope one day to see the manufacturers offering eco-friendly solutions such as this, or a refilling service by authorized agents. 450 million ink cartridges thrown into USA landfill last year is a staggering statistic, and its just so unfortunate for the environment.

Being green is a universal concept. Every individual can have the choice of leaving a small footprint on this Earth if they are given the correct choice of products, or if they choose the correct products. The most powerful source is the customer, and when the customer begins questioning how their consumables are packaged, that question works its way up stream to effect powerful changes.

The concept behind using a Continuous Ink Supply system is to create a self-contained ink supply with as little impact on the environment as possible.

Naturally, there is a beneficial costs savings to the consumer.

A large percentage of the cost of an Epson cartridge is the high costs of plastic, filling charges, and the costs of energy required to carry out all the operations required to get from oil in the ground to finished product in your hand. Naturally, a lot of paper and plastic waste is also associated with the packaging of single use cartridges. That packaging is also expensive. And on and on it goes...

A single Epson 2400 cartridge has a retail price of $14.24. It contains 14ml of printable ink.
A single bottle of ConeColor ink has a retail price of $28.00. It contains 120ml of printable ink.

The cost per ml is $1.02 for OEM versus .23¢ for ConeColor.
When you factor in the cost of a CIS System, the ConeColor is still only .39¢ per ml for the initial investment.
The next set of bottles will reduce the cost to only .23¢ per ml.
But the savings to the environment are considerable. We use minimal packaging with our products.

Click this link to purchase a complete system of ConeColor inks, CIS, and CD-ROM of more than 45 profiles for your Epson 2400 printer for only $388.80.

Ink wastage and the Epson 2400 printer.

Epson 2400 printers produce a large amount of waste ink in comparison to other Epson printer models such as the 2200 and the 1400. This waste ink is produced by automated head cleanings which occur during many different printer operations. The Epson 2400 cleans its heads not only when the user commences a head cleaning cycle, but also during the normal course of printing. Often the Epson 2400 moves over to one of the ink sumps to spray some ink through its jets. It pauses the printing, cleans, and then returns to printing. Certainly you can see this when you print with the cover open. Changing an ink cartridge causes the printer to go through cleaning cycles which affect more than just the replaced cart. Turning the printer off and on again can cause it to clean its heads, yet keeping the printer on when its not in use can cause the heads to dry out requiring head cleanings.

Head cleanings spit out a few millimeters of ink each time onto sump pads which empty into the bottom of the printer where large absorbent waste pads are located to absorb this planned waste ink. The Epson 2400 has two of these sump pads and a very large absorbent waste pad. The printer actually has a way of counting all these millimeters of ink and at a planned amount of ink will actually lock the print head, preventing any further use of the printer, and the driver utility will alert the printer owner that they need to send the printer in for a planned maintenance repair.

Right before our first Epson 2400 got to that point, we were alerted with a message that a maintenance process was soon expected. We downloaded a utility from the Internet which allowed us to reset the ink waste counter and continue using the printer. Unfortunately, the entire bottom of the printer filled with ink eventually and when we sent it in for repair it was returned to us as unfixable. Ink waste had completely covered the printer during shipping. It seemed inconceivable that that much ink had been wasted. The entire printer was covered in ink.

We wanted to try and determine just how much ink an Epson 2400 printer wastes during normal use. We could not imagine how much ink it would take to fill the bottom or a printer through normal use. So we purchased a brand new Epson 2400 and decided to bypass the ink waste system by installing two ink waste tubes that empty outside the printer, rather than inside the printer. This simple modification naturally will void the printer warranty. But by doing so, we could avoid filling the waste pads and also measure the precise amount of ink the Epson 2400 wastes. We kept very careful records of each of the operations such as turning the printer off (for an overnight or a weekend), replacing spent OEM cartridges, and initiating head cleanings only as needed.

From March 6, 2008 to April 29, 2008 we turned the printer off 29 times, changed out 30 empty cartridges, and performed 45 head cleanings. This amount of usage filled up two waste bottles for a total of 280ml of ink waste. Each of the head cleanings we initiated were the Stage 1 type which use the least amount of ink. It should also be noted that not every single turn off and on operation resulted in automated head cleanings. Certainly, changing out an empty cartridge did initiate automated head cleanings. This is a tremendous amount of ink waste that may be a result of ink cartridge replacements (our opinion) which seem to flush a certain amount of inks out through all the heads.

Changing out 30 cartridges and with 8 remaining cartridges in the printer, we calculated that the most possible ink that could have been consumed by the printer is 38 x 14ml or 532ml of ink. The printer however, sent 280ml of ink out of the waste tubes which represents nearly 50% of the ink we put into the printer.

The amount of OEM ink purged from a total of 38 cartridges is staggering. While the pads can easily hold this much ink and several times more, its startling to actually see the amount of ink wastage produced by the Epson 2400. In this case, more than 10 ounces of ink was discarded by the Epson 2400 into its waste pads. We diverted it through two ink feed tubes outside the printer into these bottles to avoid the eventual and expensive "maintenance" procedure of shipping the printer back to Epson for waste ink pad replacement.

Although we have not yet initiated a similar test with ConeColor inks and a CIS, we do believe that the result of never changing out an empty ink cartridge will result in much less ink waste with the Epson 2400 printer.

If you would like to modify your Epson printer to divert ink waste away from the ink waste pads and into a bottle, please write dana@inkjetmall.com for the procedure. When the Epson ink waste counter begins to register full, you will be able to continue using the printer without having to send it back to Epson for waste ink counter reset and replacement of the waste ink pads. The ink that is left behind by this operation is not very usable. Unfortunately it all gets mixed together into what we found to be a very dark greenish color. Still, there may be some use for the waste ink collected in the bottles. Certainly, having it thrown away when you return your printer to Epson is not going to accomplish anything. If anyone comes up with a solution for the waste ink, please let us know so we can share. One of the ideas discussed here is the potential for it to be thinned and used as a greenish black watercolor wash.

We altered our Epson 2400 printer by feeding the dual waste pad sumps into ink lines which empty into a bottle rather than into the waste ink pads at the bottom of the printer. It is not a difficult procedure. By contrast, the Epson 2200 has only one waste sump and seems to waste a little less than half the ink of an Epson 2400. In fact, we have undertaken this same experiment with an Epson 2200 printer. And it appears that the dual waste ink sump system of the Epson 2400 produces twice the waste ink of the earlier 2200 printer.

Happy Printing!

Jon Cone
InkjetMall