Epson Stylus Photo RX600. Can't seem to print in black only.

"Boba" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

I have an RX425 that gives me the same grief. You can usually persuade it to print in black only, by selecting the " black ink only " option behind the " Preferences " button on the print manager pane. I don't know if you have the same item available over there, but here I buy a genuine Epson pack which contains all 4 cartridges and 100 sheets of photo paper ( I've got so much of the stuff I could wallpaper the house !! ) for less than the price of two cartridges purchased individually. It's called " Epson Photo Pack " under their cat number T055640CC and retails for about 24UKP or around $40. I don't know if it contains the right cartridges for your 600 - it doesn't say that it does - but it seems to list just about every other Stylus 'R' series printer. The contained cartridges are T0551, 0552, 0553 and 0544. If not, they might well do another similar pack for yours. Lessens the pain of ink purchase considerably. Incidentally, I have tried 'cheap' cartridges and refilled cartridges in a previous Epson that I had, and in both cases, caused head clog problems. I've also discovered that these Epson all in ones, don't like being left on continuously, because the printhead doesn't autopark after a period of inactivity, so stays out in the open air, dries out, and clogs. You're then up for blowing about a fifth of your ink on the dreadfully inefficient head cleaning routine ... It's a real pain in the arse really, as I want my printer ready to go the second I hit " print ". It does my crust in sitting there for 2 minutes whilst it groans and wheezes to the point where it thinks that it's primed itself ready to roll ... My good old HP never suffered like it.

Arfa

Boba ha escrito:

Epson printers can=B4t operate if one of the cartridges is empty. There is no workaround for that.

Yes, they would! And they have been, for quite a while now. Epson uses piezoelectric printheads, as opposed to the thermal heads used on most other printers. The enemy of piezo heads is air bubbles. They can damage the costly head, and that's why you cannot continue to use the printer if ANY individual cartridge runs out of ink. In fact, Epson designed its cartridges to signal "empty" when there's still around 15% (higher by some estimates) ink left! That's to make certain you can't run the cart completely dry and thereby introduce air into the head. If you don't believe that, carefully open up a spent cartridge over a sink, slice open the plastic film covering the various ink channels and rinse it out -- repeatedly push in the spring loaded outlet valve as well. There's so much ink left, it will take quite a while before the water begins to clear! It's incredibly wasteful and annoying, but it actually saves money in the long run, because it's even MORE wasteful to run tons of cleaning cycles just to purge the head once you've gotten air in the system.

Aftermarket carts and ink can save lots of money, but they're a crap shoot. Fed up with OEM price gouging and scare tactics, I decided to try a clear-cartridge refill kit for my R200. The RX600 uses the same kit:

Only $44.95 for 6 spongeless carts with autoreset chips, 2 syringes, plus 4 ounces of ink for each of the 6 colors. That's cheap! I find the magenta and light magenta are the only trouble areas with this kit, as they aren't quite as vibrant as Epson's. All the other colors match. Increasing the magenta level in the printer driver solved that problem and now I'm getting beautiful skin tones and perfect grays. Printer test images, such as

come out a damn close -- if not exact (using only my calibrated eyeballs) -- match to the Epson ink. I'm sure you could get an even closer match, if necessary, by further tweaking the driver settings. The drying times seem on par with Epson as is smudge resistance. It remains to be seen whether they fade over time any faster than Epson inks, however. It also remains to be seen whether they eventually clog the nozzles any worse than Epson inks. The documentation is excellent, but they might have mentioned one more tip. If your printer was left sitting for a while with original carts, you may have to run the initial purge cycle as I did, using the program.

CAUTION: Unless you intend to replace ALL carts, do NOT attempt a chip test/read or anything else relating to the chips using the SSC program on certain printers like the R200 -- you will end up with chips indicating near empty levels! Even if you could manage to fool the chip with a resetter, you still won't know how much ink is really in the original carts, which could lead to air entering the system. I took a couple of my Epson carts down from around 27% to around 3% when I hit the wrong button. Ok, I was half asleep and shouldn't tinker when I'm in that shape, but it happens. Fortunately, I had planned to swap all the carts with the refill kit anyway, so it wasn't a total loss.

Btw, no, I don't work for inkjetcarts.us, and this is my first order from them. I have no idea as to the lifespan of their ink, either on paper or in the bottle, or whether it will end up clogging my printhead. I'm simply impressed with the INITIAL quality and price of the kit, as well as their customer service. They answered my email questions promptly and included documentation and image files for review. If you're not in the USA, shipping cost might be higher than the product, so you'll probably want to shop around for suppliers in your area.

Or, you could keep buying original carts. I just personally felt ripped off when I did that.

Btw, I forgot to mention that Epson printers actually use a LITTLE ink from ALL the color carts, even when you select "black only" in the driver. They do this to help keep the nozzles from clogging in the case of users who mostly print in black. Nobody [besides perhaps Epson] ever claimed Epson printers were the most efficient or environmentally-friendly ones in the world.

Oops.. u said scanning not printing. My bad. Well, I dunno why they prevent u from scanning when the ink is gone. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Are ya sure it isn't only preventing scanning direct to printer output? Is it also disallowing scanning to file?

We have the same problem with an EPson CX5400. I only found out about the low ink stopping everything when it stopped. I was livid!!! I wil never buy any Epson product again, and I tell everyone who happens to discuss printers to avoid Epson like the plague.

H.R. Hofmann

Ray L. Volts ha escrito:

That explains why, in every Epson printer I had, the color cartridges seemed to evaporate. Even if one prints only black text, seems that invariably for each two black cartridges replaced I have to replace the color set of cartridges, regardless if I used them a lot or not.