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It has been
evident for several years that printer manufacturers make far more revenue
for their company profits from replacement cartridge sales than they can
ever conceive of accumulating from printer sales - The possible figures are
staggering - and particularly extreme with low cost entry level printers.
When one realises that cartridges contain ink and that over the years
manufacturers have progressively been reducing the quantity of the ink fill
that they supply in cartridges (with very few exceptions) - It means that
customers pay more per print with newer printers than they did with older
models.
This is the case with
Hewlett Packard and Lexmark where cartridges have been made progressively
smaller in size. e.g. Just a few years back HP sold cartridge for home user
inkjets which contained 40mL of ink - Latest HP offerings as little as 5mL
per cartridge!!
The only serious way to save cash with HP
Lexmark Dell and a few others is to refill the cartridge with ink - This is
basic recycling and is the cheapest way to run printers as it is replacing
the raw commodity used -
Ink. HP & Lexmark attach
the print head onto their cartridges so this is another reason to recycle as
purchasing a new cartridge means that the print head is replaced for a new
one - Not a bad thing but - not always essential as the empty cartridge has
a reusable printhead - refilling these type of cartridges avoids the need to
always be replacing this expensive part.
Epson and Canon put the printhead into the
printer as a re-usable part and make the part which contains the ink a much
simpler "Ink tank" - These are much cheaper to produce / copy and many clone
cartridges have appeared over the years some as good as the original for
quality of prints.
These compatible
cartridges have been increasingly undermining Epson's market share of the
replacement inkjet cartridge market.
It is an indication of
how much the after market sales of ink cartridges matters to Epson
profits, that this manufacturer has been raising actions in the UK High
Court citing infringement of Intellectual Property and Patents which Epson
hold on their Ink Tanks. In the UK none of these actions (or threat of
action) has been tested in the courts as in 3 cases we know of so far the
companies written to and threatened with High Court Action have backed
down - settled "Out of Court" and agreed with Epson not to continue
selling compatible cartridges which infringe.
CHIP RESETTER - REFILL SYSTEMS
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INK LEVEL CHIP
RESETTERS
A number of new systems
which allow users to reprogramme / reset the chips and refill cartridges
with ink have appeared. The first "Universal" model with unlimited
resets was the JY168. This was improved and appeared as the JY268 or
Q368. The latest model available the YXD268
MkIV
(Dual Bracket model) has the best chip reset
indication & recognition and resets even the latest
models of Epson printer cartridges (more
below)
The YXD268 MkIV
Universal chip resetter has
been incorporated with inks to make up extra value refill ink kits for
popular Epson printers:-
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YXD268
