Avoiding Excess Cleaning Cycles on Epson 7800/9800?

My Epson 2400 produces great prints, I would like to print a bit larger and have been thinking about the Epson 7800. Everyone claims that the savings in ink costs is great, so if you print a moderate amount you will end up ahead. I figure that the ink on the 220 ml cartridges runs about 40 cents/ml, while the Epson 2400 cartridges are more like $1.00 per ml (or a bit more).

However, from previous (bad) experience of owning a flaky Epson 9600, plus a number of threads on the internet, it seems questionable whether this saving is realized for those who print a modest amount. See for example this discussion:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1003&thread=18738232

especially the last few posts.

It seems that the Epson X800 printers will do cleaning cycles even when they aren't needed, and that there is no way to turn these cleaning cycles off. With my Epson 9600, I found that just turning the printer on consumed from 2 to 16 ml of ink, depending on what mood the printer was in and how long it had been sitting idle. This was just for the automated start up; often more cleaning cycles were needed to get a good nozzle check. For one day (24 hours) since the last print, these automated cleaning cycles would generally use 2 ml, but sometimes 7 ml. For one week, 7-16 ml. If one were to print a 12X18 print daily, at 2ml/square foot coverage this would be 3 ml ink for the print and 2 ml for a mini startup cleaning cycle. Already the advantage of the lower ink cost is not nearly as great, since the 2400 cost $3.00 worth of ink and the X800 used $2.00 worth. The 2400 seems to need cleaning cycles infrequently with even moderate use.

Questions:

1) Has anyone figure out how much ink is used per square foot for their usage pattern, including the ink that goes into the maintenance tank?

2) Is there any way to turn off or minimize these automatic cleaning cycles?

Thanks.

--John

Addendum to my post:

Here is the answer that one of the posters in the DPReview thread received from Epson Canada:

"The machine is designed to do cleanings for various reasons at different times and the level of consumption can vary depending on the number of prior cleanings ran. The logic in the printer is to ensure the delivery of an artifact free print which requires that there be no missing nozzles. This also ensures unnecessary waste of media. This is accomplished in one of two ways, either enabling Auto Nozzle Check along with Auto Cleaning or by running cleanings at calculated intervals. These cleanings are set to occur based on calculated time intervals related to when the last time the printer was used, and cannot be completely avoided by any kind of regimented printing schedule. The sequence of these cleanings are divided into three different levels, they are known as Cleaning Level 1(3ml-4ml ), Cleaning Level 2 (6ml-8ml), and Cleaning Level 3 (9ml-12ml). When Auto Nozzle Check is enabled along with Auto Cleaning the printer will first perform the Cleaning Level 1 and will advance to the next level of cleaning until the issue is resolved, it will perform this before every print job. With Auto Nozzle Check disabled these cleanings based on calculated intervals will occur randomly between print jobs based on printer usage. The advantage of running with the Auto Nozzle Check Disabled is that the cleanings will only occur based on usage and not every time you send a print job. Based on my testing I have determined that leaving the printer on or off may have little impact on the ink consumption attributed to these cleanings. It would be most efficient to leave the printer off when not in use, and to bunch your prints together as much as possible."

Still would like some practical suggestions from someone with a lot of experience with the X800 series on how to minimize ink "wasting".

--John

Hello John
I just joined this forum after googling "epson 9800 excess ink use" and finding this thread! I have had a 9800 for 6 months and in general really like it - but compared to my 4000 the cleaning cycles are often and copious. The upside is I have yet to have *any* clogs, wheras clearings clogs with the 4000 is just part of the printing process.

I have 'auto nozzle check' and 'auto cleaning' switched off, but if I go more than about 3 days without printing it seems to use about 20mls cleaning, regardless of whether or not the printer is switched off in between. I have been keeping a log of ink counts, and can't seem to reduce this any way. I know in the overall makeup of material costs the ink isn't much compared with the media, and is not significant compared to the sale price of the prints, but it does seem to be an overkill method of keeping clogs at bay.

Like you I'm watching out for advice / progress in this department.

Bill

Bill and John.

Any evidence that keeping the humidity high makes any difference in clogging with the 9800?

Asher

Asher
No I have never been able to correspond humidity and clogging. When I bought the 9800 I kept my 4000, still use it for cut sheet & PK papers (my 9800 is set up with matte blacks.) The 4000 continues to clog routinely, usually fixed with a couple of cleaning cycles, while the 9800 remains clog free to date. The humidity in my office is around 20 - 30%.

Bill

With the 4800 you can turn off auto cleaning in the menu. Can you not do that on the 9800? I just run a nozzle check before each print session and do a manual clean only if needed.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

Nill
That is exactly what I was asking above - I have auto cleaning turned off, but there seems to be a level of cleaning built in which is triggered by a combination of print frequency and time since last printing. I can't find away to reduce it, but as noted above I don't have a clogging issue either so I guess it works. It just seems so wasteful though, to have 20 mls if ink flushed if I take a 3 day break from printing.

Bill

Bill,

Have you tried doing one small print a day? Just to prevent the timer from signalling to flush away another 20ml of ink?

Asher

BTW, what does the 20ml cost?

Asher
20ml here is NZ costs about $US12. Haven't tried the 1 small print per day, not sure if the time spent would be cost effective. Overall it's no biggie, just something I was researching to make sure I wasn't missing something. The overall ink cost per square meter really isn't that much compared to media, depreciation on the printer, office overheads, etc etc.

Bill

You turned off both Power Clean and Auto Clean in the menu? I vaguely recall having to do both.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

Nill
I only see options for 'Auto nozzle check' and 'Auto cleaning', in the setup menu. Both are set to 'off'. Power Cleaning can be run from the maintenance menu, and at intervals the printer prompts for it to be run but I always decline.
Bill