Black-Only printing with the Epson 1280

First, I have to say thanks to all of those who have helped to get me to this point, especially Bob Michaels who was kind enough to send me sample prints of his work, along with his time and enthusiasm. Below I will pass along some of the wisdom Nick has shared with me in keeping my 1280 humming along. Without him I may have chucked my printer out the window by now.

There are a lot of smart and helpful folks at the Yahoo Digital Black and White Print group. If you are at all interested in digital B&W printing you need to be there.

You should also spend a lot of time at Clayton Jones' Black-Only printing page. He dives into the nitty gritty details of BO printing and is one of the pioneers. Clayton has done a lot of work and shows you how to configure your printer for output. No need to reinvent the wheel here.

I created this page because I had a hard time wrapping my mind around how all these parts were going to fit together. It's actually easy once you know what to order and what it looks like in practice.

Let's go under the assumption that you have an Epson 1280 printer and you want to convert it into a continuous feed system for black-only printing. Here are the parts you are going to need to buy from MIS Associates. I would HIGHLY recommend that you call and talk with Marc Hornung at MIS when ordering your parts to make certain you are buying the correct and most up-to-date parts. I am not responsible for you buying the wrong parts or screwing up your printer. Proceed at you own risk. You have been warned.

I've become a big fan of BO printing for several reasons:

I've participated in several B&W print exchanges via the Yahoo group. To my eyes the Black-Only prints look just as good as the prints made with multiple inks. Here is what one person wrote about an exchange:

"I am astounded at how BO printing has taken off (thanks to Clayton's proselytizing), and in Friedman's case, to such great effect. Other BO prints in this batch, Charles' twilight shot (great mood), Davajon's cactus (way over sharpened), and Jim's shot of the young couple all make mockery of the need for full spectrum grayscale inks, especially when viewed at normal distance. I am convinced that unless handled nose-to-paper, BO prints easily out-shine grayscale ink sets in their vibrancy. Jim's print is one of my favorites."

You have to go into inkjet printing knowing that your prints are going to look different than those produced in a traditional darkroom. DT inkjet printing is just a different animal.

Here are the parts you will need for BO printing on the 1280:

Here's what it looks like:

Initially I was setting my ink bottle on the right side of the printer and using the bridge bracket to hold the ink tube. Every so often I would get the tubing tangled up in the print cartridge as it ran back and forth. When I was battling a nasty clog I changed the bottle to the left side just so I could test a clog theory. That theory didn't pan out but I did eliminate the tubing getting caught while printing. Now I use the bridge bracket to prop the cover open a little when the printer is off and covered between sessions so I don't put any stress on the tube. I print with the cover open but I do cover the printer with a towel when it's not being used.

Below is my initial setup.

In the above photo I have the printer cover open as a print is being made. At the top-left of the photo you can see the bridge bracket along with a clip that holds the tubing. At the right of the photo you see the small bracket that also holds the tubing. Again, I don't recommend this setup anymore for the tubing.

What you can't see are the felt pads on the sides of the cartridges. These pads keep the carts good and snug and allow you to discard the original clips that held the carts in place. Otherwise your tubing will get caught in them. You have to remove the original clips because of the ink nozzle on the top of the cartridge.

1280 versus 2200

Clayton Jones and I did a test where I sent him prints and TIFF scans of images from my printer and scanner. We both printed them at 2880 DPI -- he on his Epson 2200 and I on my 1280. I could not see any difference between these two printers. I also could not see any difference between prints made at 1440 DPI or 2880 DPI from these images. Don't waste your time printing at 2880 over 1440. It's not worth it. If you don't care about printing color I can't see any reason to get a 2200 over a 1280. Clayton thought he could see a small difference under a loupe. But to my eye the prints were identical. Clayton also said that he believes not all printers are created equal. He didn't have much faith in the 1280's based on some prints from another photographer. The prints from my 1280 changed his mind.

The Magic Bullet?

Deep in a thread on the Yahoo group I read a post from Nick Nugent that advocated keeping the ink level in your ink bottle(s) at the same level as the print head. I contacted Nick off list and he expanded on his theory. Here's what Nick wrote:

The idea is to avoid the siphoning action between the printhead and the bottles. Level too high in bottle will cause ink to pool on your paper during printing. Level too low will cause ink to retreat back into the cartridges and it may take a long time to purge all the air out.

I cut pieces of cardboards and raise each bottle individually depending on their level. This is the easiest and fastest way until it gets really low then I would add ink. I threw away the MIS bottle carrier and maded a cardboard box with the sides at exactly the printhead level. It's easier to lift them and adjust the level.

Few people realize there is this subtle relationship. It turns out that if ink levels are kept very close to the printhead, you have an ideal system for printing, much better than cartridges. Every time you change or refill your cartridges you get a chance of air getting into your system. And worse yet, all cartridges are not created equal. They rely on some sort of tiny vent system and the internal sponge to maintain an ideal suspension so the ink will only get out enough for printing. Refilling might cause a vent to become plugged up, an imperfect vent system may cause ink to drain out profusely.

A closed CIS system with the bottles on one end provides an ideal resistance or suspension. No longer do you worry about clogged or wide open vent holes. Except you still have to watch out for your bottles vent holes. If they are plugged up you'll get no ink.

The bottom line is an ideally maintained ink levels will almost always cut down your cleaning efforts. Why: ink won't get sucked back into the cartridges. So make a ruler and mark the position of the printhead - where it is just slightly above the paper when it's printing, and measure against each of your bottles.

Another thing to watch out for is how tight your cartridges fit in their slots. Too much freeplay will cause air leaks. Caught hoses may also cause problems with the seals. When you know that you have kept a good ink level, no foam in your cartridges, no plugged up vent on the bottles side, and still you get say black ink mixed with yellow ink, chances are you may want to try to reseat the cartridges, or the rubber seal is no longer tight.

By the way, I still keep all my bottles on the right side of the printer. But I think either side will work. Let me know how maintaining an ideal ink level: at or very slightly below the printhead, will work for you. I have 5 CFS systems and they all work amazingly well though sometimes I don't print anything for weeks.

One little test that might help you see the siphoning effect: get a bottle of water and use some scrap CIS tubing to siphon some water out. Adjust level of the end of the tubing out side the bottle until water stops dripping but not flowing back to the bottle. You'll see that this is exactly how we want to maintain our CFS system.

But as always, a good ink level and a vacuum break is key besides the normal issue with ink drying at the head even if you have a very good printhead cap. There is another thing you can do to allow your printers to idle even longer. Raise all the bottles to slightly higher than the printhead for storage, and lower them 15 minutes before printing.

I believe instead of refilling cartridges most folks would be better off converting them to a CFS system. Many things can go wrong with refilling: how much ink to inject, possibility of the bottom seal not seating properly, vent holes may become clogged with ink, etc. With a CFS all you worry about is maintaining a good level and refilling is easy.

Several months after following Nick's advice I've had trouble-free printing. I've had my printer off for weeks at a time and get a perfect print the first time or with one cleaning cycle. I truly believe he's found a magic bullet to one of CFS's agonies.

Thanks Nick!

Additional links:

I've ordered a spongeless damper system from inkrepublic.com. It should be here in a few days and I'll start testing it out. I'm coming up on my first year of printing with the MIS cartridge and I've run into a monster clog. Hopefully the Inkrepublic system will eliminate the hassles with sponges found in the Epson/MIS cartridges. Stay tuned. -- 01/11/05

I gave the Ink Republic system a good go, but I could just not make it work. First I tried to use MIS Eboni ink in the damper but I could not get it to flow past the filter in the damper. IR sent me a few of their inks and I was able to get them to flow. However, I had a hard time getting good nozzle checks without a lot of cleaning cycles.

Next I am going to experiment with an idea from Nick Nugent. Check out his theory here: http://www.rgb-scale.com/CIS/

Measure of last resort?

Here's an interesting email from Nick. Try this at your own risk!

As you might have known I have a 1160 that is very resistant for cleaning or getting good nozzle checks. I bought this one used and it came in very bad shape. But I was able to restore it except for difficulty in getting good nozzle checks.

Last night I used an extreme measure. I should have used just pure ammonia but I used something else for lack of it. I found a left over bottle of Kleen-Strip, a water-based paint brush cleaning and reconditioning that works by softening latex or oil paint on brushes. Since I was just about to toss the printer into the trash or save it for parts I did the forbidden: I injected this fluid full strength into the head inlets and let it soak overnight.

Lo and behold, this thing really clears up the jets. Cleaning now is very easy. I suspect the encapsulation in modern pigment ink is made of some sort of acrylic or polymer which is dissolvable in ammonia. Over time this polymer builds up on the wall of the ink chambers which cannot be flushed out using either alcohol or plain water. I'm going to get me some ammonia for filling the cleaning cartridges. Ammonia is the solvent which can dissolve Golden polymer varnish according to Golden Paint Inc. Swellable polymer is also the material used on certain inkjet media to increase print longevity.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me.

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