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10 Tips for Cartridge Care
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Here are a few suggestions to help you get the most out of your inkjet cartridge, OEM or refilled.
1. Before installing the cartridge, make sure the plastic clip
covering the print head (usually only on color cartridges) and the tape
have been removed.
2. Keep the contacts at the back of the cartridge slot on the printer
clean. Ink and dust may cause the printer to lose contact with the
cartridge resulting in the printer indicating an error. These can be
cleaned with a cotton swab dampened with alcohol or distilled water.
Allow them to dry completely before installing the cartridge.
3. Be sure to print something, anything, at least
once every two weeks. Allowing inkjet cartridges to sit unused for
longer than that is to risk it.  4. If you know you won't be using your inkjet printer
for several weeks, remove the cartridges, put the clip on the color
cartridge, put each cartridge in a baggie and store them in a cool,
dark location.
5. Keep your printer clean. Printers need good ventalation just like
computers do. Use canned air to keep the covering over fans clear and
don't sit your printer on carpeting or a similar surface. This applies
to both inkjet and laser printers.
6. Keep printing until you notice an obvious degredation degradation to the print quality.*
7. As soon as possible after the cartridge runs out of ink bring it in
for refilling. The longer a cartridge sits empty, the more likely ink
will dry in the print head and reusing the cartridge will be made more
difficult.
8. Do not attempt to clean the print head of an ink cartridge with alcohol or any substance other than distilled water.
9. Do not leave cartridges, especially those just refilled, sitting in
direct sunlight or anywhere the temperature is high. Ink expands as it
warms, and if the cartridge is heated too much the ink will force its
way out of the cartridge. Laser cartridges should be stored where it's
cool, dark and the humidity low.
10. Make sure you don't force cartridges into printers. Cartridges have keys on
them to prevent the black cartridge from being installed in the color
cartridge slot, for example. Forcing a cartridge into place will most
likely damage both the cartridge and the printer. Cartridges should
install as easily as they came out. Consult your printer's manual if
replacing the cartridge proves difficult.
*Many printers will indicate a low ink level even though there's
plenty of ink left in the cartridge. They do this because printers
cannot measure the actual level of ink in a cartridge. Instead, the
number of pages a cartridge should be able to print, according to the
manufacturer, is stored in the printer's memory. Each time a new
cartridge is installed, the counter resets and counts out pages as they
pass through the machine. However, a page is not a page. Manufacturers
use an algorithym to decide what constitutes a page.
Generally the standard is 5% page coverage. In other words, if all the
printed portion of a page were gathered together in one corner it
should cover 5% of an 8½x11 page. In many cases, the page count
method isn't an accurate way to assess the amount of ink left in a
cartridge. This is why we urge our customers to keep printing until the
quality of the printing begins to degrade. That way you get the full
use of all the ink in the cartridge.
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New Cartridges to Remanufacture & Refill
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With the New Year comes new capabilities to refill and remanufacture cartridges recently released to retail.
HP #74, 75, 74XL and 75XL are among the inkject cartridges we can now refill. We also have inks for the HP #60Blk, 60XLBlk, 60Color and 60XLColor as well as the HP #701 and 901Blk, 901XLBlk and 901Color.
On the laserjet side of the shop we are now able to remanufacture the Brother TN-110/115. At present we are only remanufacturing these to the high yield version (TN-115) as this allows to to keep our costs down by buying a single level of toner. If you have the TN-110 cartridge it can be easily converted to the TN-115 toner level. Also new to our laser lineup are the HP CC364A and CC364X. The "A" or low yield version of this cartridge cannot be converted to the "X" or high yield version. The higher yield cartridge is physically different from the low yield version in order to hold more toner. How much more? A lot. There's a substantial difference in the number of pages produced by the "X" version over the "A" version, 24,000 compared to 10,000.
As we gain the ability to remanufacture and refill a new cartridge, we'll make an announcement on our website at cwsandiego.com.
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Naked Conversations
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Perhaps you're wondering why we, a retail store with 4 employees
that remanufactures and sells ink and laser printer cartridges, would
bother putting up our own website and blog.
It's all about communication. It's all about naked conversations.
The book Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, according to its subtitle, is about "How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers".
After reading this book a couple of years ago, spurred on by
my enjoyment of Scoble's personal blog and my familiarity with his
history with Microsoft, I came to appreciate the unique opportunity
that the internet, and particularly a blog, provides businesses to
communicate one-on-one with their customers. Blogs are more personal
than call centers or corporate emails, cheaper than ad campaigns and
are perhaps the most efficient way to put a human face to a corporate
logo.
Customers come into our store or call daily with many
questions about printers and cartridges. Printer consumables are
generally taken for granted. We know in order to print we need a USB or
parallel port cable, paper and ink or toner. That's the extent of most
printer user's knowledge about the subject. The average consumer
doesn't know why OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) inks cost so
much, why printer manufacturers recommend only using their ink/toner
and paper, if using after-market products will void their warrantees or
degrade their final print. Most consumers give little thought to
printing.
Now that the economy is forcing individuals and companies to
reexamine their expenses and cut costs wherever possible, many are
taking a second look at the costs involved in buying OEM products. But
they aren't always sure that buying remanufactured products is
practical or safe. They've heard stories on the internet about a
refilled cartridge bursting in a printer and ruining the machine. They
wonder if the warrantee on their printer will be voided by using
third-party or refilled cartridges. Will these remanufactured
cartridges produce the same results as originals, will they produce
just as many copies? When consumers sit down to consider the
implications of saving money by switching from buying OEM cartridges to
buying remanufactured and refilled ones they encounter a lot of
uncertainty and doubt.
We want to encourage people to ask their questions, to give us
a chance to explain how our business works and how they can safely save
money and get the same quality they're used to. This isn't always
practical over the phone or even over the counter in the store. While
we might enjoy spending an hour explaining everything to a new customer
at the counter, we are, as I said, a small shop and there's almost
always work waiting to be done.
It's far easier to have a website and blog where we can post
answers to our customer's questions at length and with references and
links to more information. We can engage in a conversation without
taking time away from production. This medium allows us to research a
question better than we could on the phone.
The internet provides the means to have true conversations
with customers. No longer are we restricted to pushing information out
to them hoping they notice and respond.
I would encourage any business of any size to consider the
benefits of having a blog open to the public. You might also consider
reading Naked Conversations since Scoble and Israel explain the subject
far better than I could hope to do.
If you'd like to know more about starting a blog or website for yourself or your business, you may email or call me (858-581-9191) at the store. I'll be glad to share with you what we've done and offer what advice I can on how best to start a conversation with your customers.
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Have a great New Year
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On behalf of the entire Cartridge World San Diego family, we wish you a very successful and profitable New Year!
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