Anti-Competitive Behavior in the Printer Industry?

Greyfox writes: "Here is an interesting story about the printer industry versus ink-cartridge refillers. Anyone who's bought a low-cost inkjet knows that you can spend over half the cost of the printer on ink. So it was only natural that an industry would spring up around refilling the cartridges. Well the printer industry has apparently been fighting back, trying to protect their market share. As with all good stories, legislation is being considered. Worth a read." Sort of like spyware -- it's a back-and-forth battle.

Comments

Epson Chip Resetting Kit

[Mignon]

I see several mentions of Epson (and other) printers having special chips on their ink cartridges. I have an Epson 777 ink jet. It is pretty cheap (~$80US), but Epson ink replacements (~$45 a pair) are about half the cost of the whole printer.

So I got an "Epson chip resetting kit" and generic ink cartridges. It's pretty easy to use - you take out the old ink cartridge, pop out the chip with a little plastic tool that comes with the resetter, insert the chip in the resetter. Wait a couple of seconds for an LED to change color, then insert the chip in the new cartridge. Then install the new cartridge as Epson's instructions direct.

The chip resetter wasn't cheap - $36, but the ink was - $7 and $9 for B/W and color, respectively. I figure the total fixed cost of $116 for printer and resetter is still reasonable, and $16 for a pair of cartridges is much more reasonable. Also, I got my mother an identical printer, so I can just reuse the resetter since I am her official administrator.

Then again, if I were printing a lot, I'd get a refurbed laser printer. Their per-page cost is way lower than inkjet.

It's about QA

[dy_dx]

I'm surprised that I can't find any posts explaining why printer manufacturers are against refills (other than the knee jerk "they want all my money" response).

I had the chance to meet one of the inventors of ink jet printing awhile back, and he explained why the HP "smart chip" would be (it wasn't rolled out yet then), a Good Thing(tm).

Most ink cartridges today have print heads on them already, which is a big part of their cost. Now obviously, the print head on an inkjet cartridge doesn't last forever. With today's really high printing resolutions, this head is a device which has to spit out pico-liters of ink with very precise timing. The ink must be at the correct temperature so as not to evaporate before hitting the paper or to stay wet on the paper for too long. All this requires a pretty sophistocated print head which wears down with use. After enough use, printing performance actually suffers.

The only way to guarantee printing quality under these conditions is to make sure the printing head is replaced periodically (i.e. with a new cartridge). By allowing cartridge refilling, there's no way to guarantee the print head gets replaced when it needs to be, and thus they wouldn't be able to guarantee that "an HP printer will always print quality." So there's actually a QA issue.

HP has developed a separate print head / ink assembly, but generally only very high volume printers use this type of solution (because it's not cost effective for Joe Q. Consumer to buy a gallon container of red ink), and even then they have to separately replace the print head occasionally.

Re:Depends on the company.

[Da Schmiz]

I've had a great many inkjet printer get ruined

I used to be HP Authorized Technician and fix HP computers and occassionally HP printers for a living. I can tell you that you really don't want to get an ink spill inside your inkjet printer. Older HP models (like the original DeskJet and the 5xx series) had a large, important circut board at the bottom of the case, where ink (or any other spilled liquid) loved to collect. I've seen many a printer ruined by people who tried refills and didn't get it right.

And, as you point out, unless the ink is the exact same consistency, the print head will get clogged or else simply not deliver good print performance.

Additionally, the reason they make the print heads part of the ink cartridge is (at least in part) so that users will change the heads regularly. For good print quality, you need new heads every few hundred pages anyway, so tying the head to the ink forces Joe Blow not to forget to change the heads.

Now, don't get me wrong: I believe that this is also a case of the manufacturers taking a legitimate claim and using it as leverage to force the users to pay more. I'm not naive. But that doesn't mean that the manufacturer's claims are entirely without merit, either.

I think that ideally, the heads and ink should be separate, standardized modules. Each one would have to be labeled with precise information about (in the case of the head) number of jets, jet spacing, voltages, etc. and (in the case of the ink) the types of heads it will work with, the quantity of ink per container, etc. That way, you could (theoretically) upgrade your printer by swapping in a higher-quality print head. If they could legislate that kind of solution, it might work.

But DIY ink refills are at best a hit-and-miss proposition -- if the government were to legitimatize ink refills, they would have to also regulate the quality of these offerings... something like requiring a warranty, in case the refilled cartridge somehow ruins the printer.

Oh, and BTW: None of this applies to laser refills, which I have very little experience with. My understanding is that some are very good, and others are very bad. And, having had to clean toner spills out of laser printers, I can tell you that it's not a fun job. But laser is by far the better technology: my printer here is a LaserJet that produces nice, sharp (albeit B&W) pages and that has jammed maybe once and otherwise never given me a problem. Of course, I don't use it as much anymore... I really have no need for hard copies of anything 99% of the time...