printer help

XWrench3

Daemon Poster
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2 years ago, i bought my wife a wireless printer, an Epson XP-310. she used it for about 10 months, before it broke. Epson replaced the entire unit under warranty. we set it up, and have had no further trouble with it. until now. the last time she printed off pages, it worked perfectly. but now, it will not print at all. it shows at the least every cartridge having a minimum of 1/3 full, up to 2/3rds full on 2 of the color cartridges. the printer sat since early spring without being used. which i feel has more than a little to do with it. i tried cleaning the print heads, and made a page that was about 3/4 full of heavy black bars on my printer and ran thru hers, in the hopes that pumping ink would clear the problem. there are no print error codes or messages. so i am thinking that there is a good possibility that the ink has all but dried into dust in each cartridge. is there a way short of buying all new cartridges to verify if that is the problem?
 
Don't waste your money on new carts for it. My WorkForce 845 sat for 8 months while on an assignment. When I got back it wouldn't print anything in any color. I replaced the black cart and no joy there. The ink dries up in the print head and blocks off the flow. You won't get any errors for that as the print head itself isn't monitored.

As cheap as good printers are and with black Friday and cyber Monday, scout one out that does what you want at a good price. Might want to consider a laser printer. The powder doesn't dry up.
 
thanks for the reply. i did not know that laser printers used powder. that, is good to know. the next question is how big, and expensive are those cartridges compared to ink. i guess the real number boils down to price per printed page. is the cost comparable?
 
I've been considering a lazer printer myself because I really don't print a whole lot or often, Have a few old printers sitting in a closet and the price of the ink was actually close to the price of the entire printer, I haven't priced them out yet but laser are more expensive to buy BUT with the fact it can sit a year and not dry up it will save me money in the long run. As for things like photo printing I really don't know if they are as good or not so if you print photo's I would research that.
 
@Dauntae: Photo printing is usually a better quality with inkjet, but if you're not going to do it often get a LaserJet and stick with using something like Shutterfly for your photos. I've seen multiple deals this year where you get 100 prints free and you just pay shipping, which is like $8. Normal pricing isn't terrible, either, if you really need it. Plus there is always your local Wal-Mart or Walgreens for printing photos. You can get a color LaserJet, but the photo quality isn't quite as good unless you drop big money on it.
 
I work for a school district that STILL has 4600 Color Laserjets, and the ONLY reason they haven't used them lately is because cartridges are too expensive for the site's budget to justify replacing. BUT, that being said, the cartridges they have in there are STILL good, cause they're all powder. They only run out as fast as they do because it's one color printer to an entire elementary school, and we have a print shop for large scale orders if/when needed. I happily recommend a Laserjet printer.
 
i want to thank everyone for the advice. its great knowing that i can get help when needed. / i looked at the Canon printer, and it looks great, but i do have one concern. the toner cartridge. it is an all in one. so in my mind, if one color runs out, you have to throw away the rest of the powder, even if all we ever used is black, right? i do like that the drum is replaced at the same time, even though that will make the cartridges a bit more expensive. EASY, simple maintenance is high on my list of priorities. but i also hate throwing toner away.
 
I think you read that wrong. It scans, faxes, and prints. So it's called an all in one machine.
If you scroll down near the bottom of the description, it shows the toner drawer open and 4 separate cartridges for black and the other 3 colors. The cost of the machine is a bargain but the carts on the first time outlay is a little harsh. The cart kit is around 300.
BUT
If you consider how the toner doesn't dry up like ink does, the warm up and first page print is amazingly brief, plus the PPM, it's still a good bang for the buck.

However if it doesn't do pictures justice, you can always put your pics on a USB stick and take them to Kinko's. Be cheaper than letting a ink printer sit a long time between jobs and the ink dries up.
 
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