A Printer That doesn't break

Take the toner cartridge out of the printer and shake it end to end like a soda can (an ensuing practical joke anyway). the toner may not be evenly distributed and could be part of your problem.

Its worth a shot as its free!

Eric M

i use a xerox phaser 8860 solid ink printer. handles cardstock, prints double-sided, and ink is significantly cheaper than a laser or inkjet printer. the downside is the initial cost of the printer ($2500), and that i have to use a cold laminator when i want to laminate something (heat lamination messes up the ink).

the phaser 8560 is also solid ink, has only a slightly worse ink consumption, and costs between $600 and $700.

Better to buy an old Epson 600/800 for card work. The problem may be finding newer drivers for it. I can email them to you if you need it, but Epson has them from its support site.

A lot of the ink cartridges now are microchipped to prevent third party cartridges or refilling being done. Try to buy old used Epson stuff is the best. Stay away from Canon and Lexmark. Canons jam alot, and you Lexmarks eat ink like crazy (three pages sometimes if you are lucky). They both routinely microchip the cartridges just as IBM and HP do.

The ink for old Epsons is like ten bucks a cartridge and the quality of the images on photo paper is very good for prototypes. I also have the old HP you mentioned and that model does chug along well. It sounds like you need the drum replaced.

I broke my Epson 800 Stylus last week by accident and am still crying in my beer over it. Cost me ten bucks to buy a few years back and just kept going. That thing went for years with no problems. Only thing with inkjets if if they sit for more then a couple days you have to clean the heads each time before using them for any serious quality work at 720dpi or higher. The low res 360dpi on them look like crap. They are no good for letters or correspondence, but good and cheap for printing cards.

i had an epson stylus color 880 for 10 years prior to my current printer, i do agree that those things are workhorses if you treat them right (though it was still an ink-gobbler)

I haven't heard of memjet but at first glance I'm a bit skeptical. The only technical difference between this and a common inkjet seems to be the super wide print head - that I assume to be a separate part from the cartridges. I wonder about the maintenance and replacement cost of the printhead.

I suppose there are much fewer mechanical moving parts, which is a common area of breakdown for today's inkjets. I'd look at that giant print head with the multiple ink ports to be a point of failure, and possibly high initial cost. Probably the viability of this technology will depend on how cheap, robust and maintainable that print head is.