Episode: 1480
Title: HPR1480: Continuous Ink Supply System
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1480/hpr1480.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 03:52:33

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So
Hi, you are listening to Hacker Public Radio, my name is Ken Fallon. Today I want to talk to you about the cost of printing and what your options are.
You may ask why we're still printing, well if you're a parent. Sometimes you need to print off stuff like coloring pictures to color in or puzzles.
My wife is a teacher by times and she prints off stuff for the class and I for birthdays and that print of invites and banners and that sort of thing. So printing is not dead.
Some time ago I looked at the cost of printing and realized how truly expensive it was to run an inkjet printer. Namely the price of ink per wage was more expensive than platinum.
And I realized that they're selling printers for a lot less or cost or a lot less subsidizing them with the view to having you spend money on more expensive cartridges that you bought in.
A bit like the razor concept where you buy a razor, one razor blade and a holder and then you spend the rest of your life buying razor blades. But only.
I do already have a laser printer. It's a HP laser just 1600 which also came with a virtually sample cartridge which is manufacturer speak for empty.
And that is quite expensive to run. It's about 70 euros to change one of the color cartridges in that but that said it does last quite a long time and it is quite cost effective.
The thing is I heard about continuous ink system from Govnew on all cast planet on free note that I received a free note that net.
And he mentioned that you could using this continuous ink system use it as a replacement for ink cartridges and that would make inkjet printer quite affordable.
So my wife had a need for to have a photocopier and scanner you know available on the desk that she didn't need to turn on the computer for she could just simply scan some stuff copies on stuff without needing to go through the PC which is the system I had set up before.
So with that in mind I went on the look out for a end to end system so I'll just step you through the various different things that I would advise you to do if you are starting a fresh.
Now obviously if you've got your own inkjet printer and some of these steps will be you all already have done.
So the first thing you should do is decide what functions you want in a printer.
There's in the Netherlands we have an excellent site called twickers.net and although it's in Dutch I've linked to it in the show notes.
You should be able to follow it. It works well with Google translate as well so you can get an idea.
Now I'm not suggesting that the prices will be equivalent but you'll get an idea of availability and what models that make and models are mixture needs.
In my case I wanted the ability to print a three I wanted a scanner I wanted a photocopier I wanted something that was accessible via the network for printing from raspberry pies and from work and from the different computers around the house.
And I wanted yeah some nice things this one does is it prints duplex automatically and it can scan a bunch of documents automatically but not it's pretty much an inkjet printer.
The second criteria I had was whether it should work with linux and if you go to openprinting.org forward slash printers you'll find out whether it's supported under linux.
Now if it's supported under linux because linux and mac use the same subsystem cups then you should be able to find out whether your printer is supported by linux and mac.
If even if you're planning on only running it on the windows it's absolutely no harm to go there and make sure it's supported by linux because it just gives you an idea of the popularity and support that that printer will have going forward.
So once you found out whether it works under linux you need to find out whether it really works under linux and you do that by doing some searches for the model number of the printer that you're looking for and linux and how to.
And what you want to check the dates and that to make sure that the articles are in that old because quite often a printual start has been unsupported and then radically become supported again.
One thing to watch out for is the absolute ease of use of some of the distributions. For example I spent a good half an hour trying to figure out why my mother-in-law's printer wasn't working.
Every time I connected it was in and then I went I couldn't find the printer and it turns out that it was been automatically recognized and in the space between I was under the desk and I was looking up my screen.
It had popped up printer found installing drivers and that was one of the distributions I think the next mint that will detect if you're in Europe it will set everything for we don't have letter that legal format over here.
We use a four and a three sizes and it's amazing how few distributions get that right Debian and Fedora also do not automatically adjust printers in my experience but only that's a by the way.
So have a look in the forums make sure that it works on the Linux that it's not a very long and convoluted workflow so if you find out that it doesn't then it's go back to step one and try and find another printer that will suit your needs.
The next option is are there print cartridges relatively available and what I suggest you do is go down to your local store be it Walmart or Hema or Tesco or wherever and see if they chip if the cartridges are available in those stores if they are then it's a good chance that you know at least if the CIS system doesn't work that you'll be able to use regular cartridges for quite cheap.
You should also drop into your local ink supply shop and see what printers they have and that they're selling there and that will give you an idea of model numbers bring your camera.
And then finally once you've decided how to do on what printer you have for the support of Linux you need to see if there's a CIS option and you can do that by basically just googling around for CIS options and the model number of your printer.
Quite a few of the when I googled around I kept ending up on city ink expressed a coded UK for such CISs because that's like the chap who runs us puts up an awful lot of videos on this ink system and when you're doing something as what I found dodgy as this is it's very very advisable to get some videos and to see exactly what's happening with it.
And you should really review the videos prior to doing the install and prior to making any purchase.
Now I did end up purchasing my system from city ink express.co.uk I can't necessarily recommend them I will just say that's on the night that I ordered the printer from a local store here in the Netherlands and I ordered the ink from.
Aside in the UK they ink from the UK the ink system from the UK arrived prior to the printer so I don't know what that says really and everything and more that there was additional syringes and bits and pieces included in the box which I didn't need in the end but it was all quite you know quite simple included in the box everything was included as I had expected it to be.
And it pretty much worked as expected so I don't know if that's a recommendation or not I haven't really been using it long enough.
So as I was saying I brought a brother the main reason in choosing a brother over a HP or anything else is because they don't use any chips or anti counter-fitting technology in their in their ink cartridges with the HP ones especially they have a chip.
That will report if it's been refilled which is a bit of a bit naughty and it's also got a chip in it that the same chip will report if it's not genuine article.
And some cases all they do is display not genuine article on your display every five minutes so it's continually flashing that you don't have an ink system.
So I decided to bypass all that and I went for this brother multiple printer and I don't use the Wi-Fi option but it uses the LC1240 or the LC1280XL ink cartridges in it.
And the thing you notice is that even though you've got a model number they seem to share quite a lot of the print cartridges between various different models so even if you pick a model that you can't find support for a such the ink cartridges may be supported by other devices.
So when I were prompted me to actually change convert install the CIS system was when I wanted to scan something and refused to scan because the black ink was gone so that was a bit pointless I thought.
So I basically went and on did the box one evening I wasn't looking forward to it because it seemed to be complicated and difficult.
So what you get when you open the box is hogo of strange syringes and needles long needles and you get a plastic component which is like the size of your fist essentially.
And it's a little a little pyramid shape with four different ink wells inside and each of the quarters of the ink wells for various different colors has got a knob to fill it and another hole on the side for a air filter and the air filter is about the size of your finger nail perhaps.
And it looks a bit like a child's spinning top and it just sits in there and it filters there.
So how this whole system works is you take out the original cartridges from your printer and you have this ink reservoir connected via a ribbon of tubes which go to in my case the four individual cartridges and the four individual cartridges.
Are slightly independent allowing you to fit them into the printer so you take out the original ones and you fit those in.
The first thing that you need to do when you start you start one thing I would suggest you do is wear gloves because it gets slightly messy and put some newspaper down.
You lay down your ink well and you open the little bottles of ink that were 100 mil bottles of ink and you make sure you take off the plastic or the foil seal off it so that it pours in.
Now this applies syringes with long needles that you can use to suck out the ink and pour it in.
Now that's very very very very tidy but you need to do about ten times in order to get each of them each of the ink wells extracted and from the bottle and put into the ink reservoir.
I of course being very impatient decided I would just pour them in and if you do it slowly I was able to pour them in less than a minute I had all of them poured in.
It's been about five minutes to have all of them done.
So what happens then is you see that some of the ink starts flowing down the pipes.
It's a bit like if you've ever given blood you see the blood coming out of your hand flowing in.
It's a bit gross as well but there you are.
So that was that then you have your system is filled.
If you're following the instructions on the video links in the show notes so even if your system doesn't look like my system works on the same principle so I suggest you follow the videos which is what I did twice actually once before buying it and once before and during the process itself.
So you fill it up you put back in the in the covers so that nothing will spill and you just kind of leave it on the side next to the printer.
You open up the printer and you take out the existing cartridges from the oh no you don't actually the first thing that you do is so you've got ink in the printer.
And now you've got like four cartridges next to it one for each of the colors.
And just what you need to do is draw ink siphon in ink from the reservoir into the printer cartridge and that's called priming the system.
So to give you a little syringe with a nozzle on it so you put in the nozzle into it is a little on the printhead itself.
So we're looking at the printhead now on the printhead itself you hold it and you break the nozzle foil with the syringe.
And then you suck pull the syringe up extracting the air and as the air extracts you see that the ink flows from the reservoir through the ribbon
into the bottom of the ink cartridge.
And once you get to the end it'll stop.
You take out the syringe, expel the air, push the syringe back in again.
It pushes down on a little seal, the spring mounted seal.
And then you can pull more air out and you continue to do that until the tiniest little bit of air of ink comes into the bottom of the syringe.
You've done that, you know that that cartridge is primed.
And then you take another syringe with another nozzle and you break the foil of the next one, you extract the air until the ink comes through into the syringe and continue doing that.
And all these bits have been supplied in the kit, but even if they're working you could reuse the same syringe and do this a few times.
So at this point then you're ready to rock.
You just leave the reservoir to the side.
And then you inject, you put take out the cartridges and you put the cartridges back in from the continuous ink system in order.
And you make sure look at the printer and pay whole.
It says all the printers cartridges are in and then it says shut the cover.
Now, if it doesn't say all the cartridges are in, you just wiggle them about until they go in.
That's pretty much that happens when you're replacing the ordinary cartridges anyway, you just wait for the sensor to identify it.
And this is the only little niggly bit is what to do with the, you know, do you shut the cover because the cover itself you obviously need to leave a space for the ribbon to come out.
And they supply a little hinge thing that will trigger the door shot sensor and a little piece of plastic that would hook on it in my case that goes and, you know, activates the sensor and then reports to the printer that the door is shot even though the door is in shot.
And that worked quite well.
They ended up just shutting the door a little bit and putting on some sort of tip and to keep it, to keep it just or some sticky back plastic for those of you who have grown up with blue Peter.
And that's pretty much it.
You, one tip he says was never to always to leave the reservoir on a flat surface, on the same flat surface as the printer because if you leave it higher, then it'll, the weight of gravity will force the ink into the printer and it'll become gungy and mess up your printer.
If you leave it too low, then the capillary action isn't enough to draw in the ink.
So what happens is you continue to print and print and print and print and your printer continues to see a full cartridge that's because the cartridge is full and slowly you see the reservoir empty.
And the reservoir as it empties, there's a helpful little sticker on the bottom that says, you know, when it gets to this level, you want to replace the ink.
It just prevents air getting into the system. So you nip down to your local ink supply shop and you buy little bottles, 100 mil bottles and you refill the reservoir with the particular ink that's empty.
So that is it. Continue to think supply system.
Then my one has just a little clip that has got a double-sided sticky tape or not and it sticks to the side of the printer and I've just got the reservoir right in front of the printer and it seems to work very well.
So that's it. Continuous ink supply system.
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