New Ink Jet Printing System Without Cartridges
by Justin Thomas, Virginia on 06.21.05
Anyone had experience with one of these? They are called Continuous Flow Systems (CFS) for inkjet printers. The ink is kept in bottles outside of the printer. Miniature tubes bring the ink inside the printer to the printer head. The companies offering the systems say that the expense can be 1/10 of purchasing cartridges. Here is an illustrated explanation of how one system works. The price for an Epson printer set-up is $190. This includes prefilled cartridges, tubes and external inks. More details at Inksupply or Atlascopy.
I've heard that CFS ink is only worthwhile win high use situations otherwise the tubes clog frequently.
though I have no direct experiece with CFS.
This system isn't new. It's been around for a while.
Check out alternatives like Xerox's solid ink in smaller printers like the 8400. Ink comes in small packages, very little packaging to recycle, no cartridges ever. The ink looks like crayons, goes directly in the printer and melts for use when the printer heats up. That's it. Just add another "crayon" on top when you get low.
I have one of these set up to do quadtone B&W photo printing. If you're not doing a large amount of printing, I don't think it is worth the hassle, but if you do, it is great. Wasn't too difficult to set up or maintain. I have had clogging issues, but overall I'd say it has been worth it.
I've been using CFS systems on Epson 900's, 980's, C84's, C86's, C88's 1520's, 1270's and maybe a few others for the past 6-7 years. You might guess that since I'm still running these that I've been pleased with the results, I am. More impotantly CFS systems help keep my printing budget under control (I print marketing flyers for one of the top producing real estate agents in Colorado)and at the same time keeps countless cartridges out of the landfill. Regarding issues of "drying out" this is easily remedied by simply cycling the printer on and off once per day when not printing ( there are programs available to do this for you automaticlly)
what's in the ink? toxic, non-toxic? is there any eco-friendly inkjet ink?