Saturday, August 20, 2011

CANON PIXMA MP145

I had like more than 10 printers, and majority of them are Canon. I recall the day in 1997, when printers were priced at RM500.00 (the base line printers). It was Canon BJC 210sp. It was a medium performance printer. Print outputs was not bad, beige colored (lol), they vibrated hard enough to loosen the screws out of your cheap computer desk, and the best thing is, they are heavy duty, and could withstand a whacking. The setback of normal consumer printer, and even professional printers, specifically the ink-based, be it Inkjet, or BubbleJet or SuperJet, SuperInk or whatever, is the ink price! Back then, during the local computing boom (I would coin it) during the late 90’s, people used to buy their new PC with a new printer. The first to go redundant was the printer.
That was when people started to realized, that printer refills and inks are not cheap. Manufacturers are gaining their profit not through the sales of their printers, but through the original ink refills. Simple math, ink is price way more expensive than whatever fluids that our vehicles drink. As the matter of fact, after 20-50 pages of printouts, these printers is already on strike mode, demanding for new ink cartridges to be installed. Say, around RM50.00 to RM70.00 for a new cartridge. Okay, we buy new cartridges, plugged it in, and after another 40-60 pages the printer go hungry again. What the…?? Out of that, let say 60 pages print output, there was surely not 100 percent error free printing, we might use like 80-90 percent out of it. It ends up, like we’re paying like over RM1.00 for a printout. Unfortunately, schools and even pre-schools had also demand their pupils to submit their homework and assignments on printouts… cool! That’ll explain how I ended up buying more printers more than underwear.
So I had this Canon Pixma MP145 around 2009 which was already fitted with CISS tank. CISS stands for Continuous Ink Supply System, and it is a third party device. The Canon Pixma MP145 itself is an AIO (all-in-one) or some may call it multi-function printer. It has a flatbed scanner which can also direct-copy (either black and white or color), scanning and printing through its USB connections. Not bad for a machine costing less than RM200.00. So, the CISS is fitted in, to counter the expensive genuine-ink cost. The CISS tank is place outside printer, where tanks filled with each color connected through a set of tubes, acting as a feeder directly to the modified ink-cartridges. Since we have 4 colors (black, cyan, magenta and blue), so we need four tanks. Look so easy eh? Basically, the cost of refill inks is RM10-RM20 per 100ml. That’s cheap!
The initial operation was a snap. Print quality is not that bad either, and the ink supply level seemed take years to finish. Color printing is made affordable, I print randomly, over-zealously … I just print anything on sight. I had print like more than 20 books ranging from couple of pages to 500 pages. It was simply awesome. I had these book neatly compiled and laminated, and some sent out to be hard-covered.
Then after a few days, the printer was on strike mode, whilst the inks level still high. It was the printer itself, where Canon had fixed a certain print output levels for its printer for each installed cartridges. What a genius. Resetting the printers to accept the CISS cartridges is pretty simple. This is some of if which I remember (got in from the internet anyway);
Turn Off the printer
Press and Hold the STOP / RESET then Press and Hold the ON / OFF and release STOP / RESET,
Press the STOP / RESET (2 times)
Release both buttons => the printer is now in a position SERVICE MODE (on the printer LCD appears the number “0 “)
After the lights on / off button is green, press the STOP / RESET button according to your needs;
press 1x = Orange flame lights> for Service pattern print
press 2x = Green lights flash> for EEPROM print
press 3x = Orange flame lights> to reset EEPROM
press 4x = green light lights up> for the Waste ink counter reset
Turn Off the Printer and unplug the Power.
Turn On the Printer and use it… Done!
I had the MP145 for 2 years. I’ve printed like more than 50 reams with it. I had made like more than 10 times of Waste Ink Counter resets. The CISS system is indeed a genius. This is the best printer so far, in terms of output quantity over my cost of ink refills.
Over its last days, the printer had shown a sign of heavy wear on the right side, due to the fact, the ink cartridges are aligned and parked to this very spot, for its cleaning and maintenance. I used to disassemble the whole unit, and had it wash and rinse over and over again to clean the ink smudges and dirt. Cleaning is sort of tedious. The left side of the printer need to be dismantled, and the take out the cartridge and the holder units and clean them all; the holder, the ink suction hose and the base plate of the printer. I washed them with lots of water, completely dry them out and put everything back again. 
By the way, the CISS cartridge already looks so bad. It kept pouring out inks even after I kept its level raised by few inches. Maybe I need to replace them. It still had more than 75ml ink on each tank. Then, there’s a limit to everything. I believe this printer has made the last print outs last June. I don’t know, maybe I could try relieving it back to life again…but, it does consume my time and water…and more tissues.  

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