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Canon Pro-1000 waste tank contains $188 in ink!!! That's 25% waste!!!

bradhusick

Active member
I just had to replace the waste ink tank on my Canon Pro-1000 printer. I love the printer but I weighed the empty vs full tanks and there was 250 grams of ink in the full one. That's roughly $188 of wasted ink. I have not replaced any carts since new except the CO and one of the blacks. I am nearing empty on many of them.

That means that for every $750 I spend on ink, roughly $188 is flushed down the toilet, so to speak. It never reaches the paper. This means that 25% of my money spent is just going to waste.

Who would like to file the class-action lawsuit? I will be the named plaintiff.

Brad
 

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Is it possible that this was a one time new printer ink charging issue? I'm as appalled at ink pricing and the protectionist technologies they engender as anyone, but let's see how this one works over time. My 2 cents...

--Matt
 

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Ink charging should fill the ink lines, not dump lots of ink into the waste tank, yes?
Absolutely! But the wasteful event may only occur once. I try to see the engineer's point of view. If the printer is ruined when run dry (big "if", I grant you), the design will be complete overkill to make sure that never happens. There has to be a balance somewhere between wasting $500 in ink every time you change a cartridge, and destroying a $1000 printer every time you change a cartridge (those are, of course, deliberately chosen to be outrageous extremes.) But then where in the middle do you go?

How much of it is prudent engineering and how much is desire to gouge the user? I know we all like to assume it is 100% the latter, but I really don't know.

If your burn rate on ink continues so high, I will also be appropriately furious, though I'm not sure about the legal recourse.

--Matt
 

dseelig

Member
I find the Pixma Pro 1 also wastes alot of ink, to the point of I am considering going back to Epson. Still love my HP Z3200 but I alos want a desktop printer, and HP does not make one in this category.
 

Charles Wood

New member
Not sure what happened to mine but just went through a ton of ink and also filled the waste bin :(
Ink waste is a huge part of the cost of operating ink jet printers. I don't know about Epson but I know that Canon print heads can be ruined if a color runs dry. The cost per milliliter of ink is pretty outrageous. If you're using a 13x19 or 17x22 desktop printer, you're paying pretty steep prices for ink. The cost per milliliter drops significantly, at least with Canon, when you get into a 24" IPF series printer and even more so when you go to a 44" wide printer. Paper cost per square foot drop as well if your media choices are available in roll form. I also seldom buy ink from a distributor. I don't buy third party so-called compatible ink because I can't afford to take a chance on clogging the heads, color shifts or longevity but I do look for genuine Canon ink on eBay and usually find what I need at significant savings.

I print mostly on canvas and a large format printer is required to effectively serve the canvas business. I use a Canon ipf8400 and an Epson 3880. The Epson wastes a lot of photo black and matte black on media changes. I have a Canon Pro 100 and it is only used for labels on printable DVDs/BRD. No way around it, the smaller desktops really are a PITA when it comes to ink and media cost.
 

MoJo

Registred Users
i have the same printer, and have noticed the maintenance tank fills up very very quickly also....
 

Remko

New member
I just had to replace the waste ink tank on my Canon Pro-1000 printer. I love the printer but I weighed the empty vs full tanks and there was 250 grams of ink in the full one. That's roughly $188 of wasted ink. I have not replaced any carts since new except the CO and one of the blacks. I am nearing empty on many of them.

Brad
Hi Brad,

Your experience with the maintenance routines of the Canon Pro-1000 makes this an expensive printer to run/own. As I am interested in this printer, I called my dealer here in Holland. He informed me that this automated maintenance routine can be turned off, but that you then are expected to manually make a nozzle check print once a week.

The way to turn this automative maintenance routine off is by setting the "auto nozzle check" to off.

As Canon did not implement that auto maintenance routine for nothing, I asked if setting it to off and doing the weekly nozzle check has any negative effect on the print head lifespan. He said it will not be effected by it.

This dealer sells both Epson and Canon.

Hope this helps. To me it sounds very interesting. Will soon visit my dealer to make a couple of test prints from one my images on both a luster and mat paper and will compare it to the Epson SC P800, the other printer I am interested in.

cheers,
Remko
 

bradhusick

Active member
UPDATE:

I just replaced the maintenance cart again on the Pro-1000 and this time the wasted ink was 166 grams, or $124.

That's better than the first time, but still feels like I am being cheated by Canon.

On the plus-side, the printer makes excellent prints.
 

bensonga

Well-known member
UPDATE:

I just replaced the maintenance cart again on the Pro-1000 and this time the wasted ink was 166 grams, or $124.

That's better than the first time, but still feels like I am being cheated by Canon.

On the plus-side, the printer makes excellent prints.
At least you can replace the maintenance cartridge on the Pro-1000. The waste ink pads on my Pro-10 are not easily user replaceable and it would certainly not be cost effective for me to ship the printer to a Canon service center (there are no Canon service centers in Alaska). When my Pro-10 ink pads fill up and the printer will no longer print until the pads are replaced, the printer is basically junk and I will either be donating it to a local vocational school that trains people to work on computers and printers or taking it to a recycling center.

I just bought a new Epson P800 with an easily replaceable maintenance cart. It replaces an Epson 3880 I had for about 7 years. During those 7 years and many, many prints, I replaced the 3880 maintenance cart twice.

Gary
 

sabin

New member
I spend some time and $$ to test when is the printer wasting ink. There is a timer reseted on every print and when you turn it on or print the next image you get some cleaning depending on how long it was not used. There is also 0.05 grams of ink going in the tank on every print.

Here are the numbers I have found so far:

On after 0-4h: 0 grams
On after 4+: 0.11 grams
On after 5+: 0.15 grams
On after 6h+: 0.9 grams
On after 24h+: 1 grams
On after 2-3 days: 2 grams
On after 4+: 3.2 grams

Here are the numbers for printing after different period of time from last print. This numbers do not include the 0.05grams that are flushed after every print and are mandatory:

Print after 0-6h: 0 grams
Print after 6h+: 0.9 grams
Print after 12h+: 1 grams
Print after 24h+: 2 grams
Print after 2d+: 2 grams
Print after 3d+: 3.17 grams
Print after 11days: 3.3 grams

You can read my whole article here:
Публикации - forum.ADV-Bulgaria.com
 
Last edited:

henrikolsen

New member
I spend some time and $$ to test when is the printer wasting ink. There is a timer reseted on every print and when you turn it on or print the next image you get some cleaning depending on how long it was not used. There is also 0.05 grams of ink going in the tank on every print...
Great investigation work, Sabin. Thanks for sharing!

I'm also noticing and investigating some heavy waste of the Pro-1000, some color management errors, inconsistencies in custom media types etc, and can appreciate how much effort it takes.

I've had the maintenance cartridge fill with 300g of ink with less than 40ml of ink put on paper according to the accounting tool (initial set of inks still in use). And 50g of ink put in new waste cartridge in one go on startup after having replaced full maintenance cartridge after a week or more of stand still. That's quite a dump in one go.

Have you looked into the effect of the settings here, regarding automatic nozzle checking and system cleaning frequency?

Auto maintenance settings (link to manual=

Would be interesting to know their effect in regards to your thorough tests.

Also looking forward to your 20+ days results.

The second set of maintenance you mention (with timer between print maintenance) - is that dump done before or after the print is made?

Does it seem a little odd that the printer according to your data does both a power-on maintenance _and_ a second similar large maintenance dump on first print, e.g. ~2+2g after 2 days or 3+3g after 4+ days of shutdown? It seems a lot with the second dump right after the startup dump... Bug or different purposes of the two, both needed?

In your original post on forum.adv-bulgaria.com you mention "Executing power on maintenance does not clear any counters! If you make 10 power on/off in sequence it will waste ink every time, no matter how much time there is from previous power on/off". But the tables list "On after 0-4h: 0 grams". That table entry I would interpret as turning on again within 4 hours would not use an ink on startup maintenance (so not 10x of usage if turning on/off 10 times). Can you help me explain?

Wonder if similar heavy maintenance is being seen on the roll models of the same series, or only is present so significant on the Pro-1000 desktop model.

I'm somewhat shocked to see that a single A4 print, of typically around 1g of ink on paper, after only four days of standstill will utilise around 1 (print) + 3 (startup, 1st type of maintenance) + 3 (second type of maintenance) = 7g of ink in total. That's a 1:6 ratio of ink-on-paper vs ink-wasted! Or less than 15% of ink use put on paper, or the price of that single print being 6 times more expensive in ink that what's put on paper.
Printing once every day can still waste >2g a day if I understand the data correctly. A year like this could be ~10 full cartridges of ink waste. Doing one A4 of 1g a day makes this roughly 1:2, meaning twice as much wasted ink as ink on paper. Doing 2 A4 or 1 A3 every day gets you to 1:1 in ink TCO. Still surprising to me given daily continuous use of printer, dumping as much as is used on paper, effectively doubling ink costs compared with accounting manager.

I haven't seen this data included in reviews. Have seen some more fluffy mentioning of the always general expectation that some ink is wasted for regular maintenance, that it's good to keep the printer running without too many standstills, that initial setup runs through a lot of ink (not just filling lines and reservoirs, but also through to waste cartridge) etc, but non I have seen have noticed the amount shown here. And your data seems to not be related to initial setup, but for continued normal usage. That surely gives a vastly different total cost of ownership / printing than indicated many places. I'd like more reviewers to dig into this for better info, as the waste seems very significant even with frequent printing.
 

henrikolsen

New member
UPDATE:

I just replaced the maintenance cart again on the Pro-1000 and this time the wasted ink was 166 grams, or $124.

That's better than the first time, but still feels like I am being cheated by Canon.

On the plus-side, the printer makes excellent prints.
Can you report how much ink was put on paper in the time the 166g was put in the waste cartridge? Possibly quite precise if the accounting tool is used.
 

henrikolsen

New member
He informed me that this automated maintenance routine can be turned off, but that you then are expected to manually make a nozzle check print once a week. The way to turn this automative maintenance routine off is by setting the "auto nozzle check" to off.
Do we know if turning this off disables both kinds of maintenance routines reported by sabin (power-on and time-since-last-print-maintenance), or just some of it?
 

sabin

New member
Great investigation work, Sabin. Thanks for sharing!

I'm also noticing and investigating some heavy waste of the Pro-1000, some color management errors, inconsistencies in custom media types etc, and can appreciate how much effort it takes.

I've had the maintenance cartridge fill with 300g of ink with less than 40ml of ink put on paper according to the accounting tool (initial set of inks still in use). And 50g of ink put in new waste cartridge in one go on startup after having replaced full maintenance cartridge after a week or more of stand still. That's quite a dump in one go.
I do not know what firmware were you using regarding the accounting information, but before version 2.040, accounting was way off I think.

Have you looked into the effect of the settings here, regarding automatic nozzle checking and system cleaning frequency?

Auto maintenance settings (link to manual=

Would be interesting to know their effect in regards to your thorough tests.
No, mine is set to ON. I have not changed it from default.
Also looking forward to your 20+ days results.

The second set of maintenance you mention (with timer between print maintenance) - is that dump done before or after the print is made?
I asked myself the same question. I think it is done before print as if you do not put paper in manual paper tray it asks for paper again and again and every time you get 0.05 in the waste without printing. Also regarding print quality it is more logical to prep the nozzles before print. Not sure though.

Does it seem a little odd that the printer according to your data does both a power-on maintenance _and_ a second similar large maintenance dump on first print, e.g. ~2+2g after 2 days or 3+3g after 4+ days of shutdown? It seems a lot with the second dump right after the startup dump... Bug or different purposes of the two, both needed?
The only think I can tell is that I'm sure this is exactly as I explained it. Canon engineers designed it that way for some reason.... ot maybe marketing helped :loco:

In your original post on forum.adv-bulgaria.com you mention "Executing power on maintenance does not clear any counters! If you make 10 power on/off in sequence it will waste ink every time, no matter how much time there is from previous power on/off". But the tables list "On after 0-4h: 0 grams". That table entry I would interpret as turning on again within 4 hours would not use an ink on startup maintenance (so not 10x of usage if turning on/off 10 times). Can you help me explain?
If you print someting, then waint for 4 days and power it of and then off and on again 10 times you WILL waste 32 grams!!! If you print something the timer resets and fo back to "On after 0-4h: 0 grams" for the firs 4 hours after print.

Wonder if similar heavy maintenance is being seen on the roll models of the same series, or only is present so significant on the Pro-1000 desktop model.
There will be some differences as this printer uses CO to clean the platen as pointed out in this thread:
http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=117644.0;topicseen

I'm somewhat shocked to see that a single A4 print, of typically around 1g of ink on paper, after only four days of standstill will utilise around 1 (print) + 3 (startup, 1st type of maintenance) + 3 (second type of maintenance) = 7g of ink in total. That's a 1:6 ratio of ink-on-paper vs ink-wasted! Or less than 15% of ink use put on paper, or the price of that single print being 6 times more expensive in ink that what's put on paper.
Printing once every day can still waste >2g a day if I understand the data correctly. A year like this could be ~10 full cartridges of ink waste. Doing one A4 of 1g a day makes this roughly 1:2, meaning twice as much wasted ink as ink on paper. Doing 2 A4 or 1 A3 every day gets you to 1:1 in ink TCO. Still surprising to me given daily continuous use of printer, dumping as much as is used on paper, effectively doubling ink costs compared with accounting manager.

I haven't seen this data included in reviews. Have seen some more fluffy mentioning of the always general expectation that some ink is wasted for regular maintenance, that it's good to keep the printer running without too many standstills, that initial setup runs through a lot of ink (not just filling lines and reservoirs, but also through to waste cartridge) etc, but non I have seen have noticed the amount shown here. And your data seems to not be related to initial setup, but for continued normal usage. That surely gives a vastly different total cost of ownership / printing than indicated many places. I'd like more reviewers to dig into this for better info, as the waste seems very significant even with frequent printing.
Yes, this is one expensive printer to have, if you are not printing a lot often. After my observations I decided to leave it on if I plan to print more this week or so. That way I can cut the maintenance costs by half.

Regarding the missing 50 grams of maintenance after 48 days of printer rest that was reported by 2 people now I see one difference. Both cases has changed the maintenance cartridge and I have not done that yet. Mine is almost full, so soon I will report what will happen after I change it.

Here is a link to my excel document with all my research with dated, time, measured grams and notes. If you can find errors in my methods I will be glad to point them out.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tLhCR_kIgRq9_meGhD9IZnKJMJqlGxOHbSmP62jVnDg/edit?usp=sharing

We will see how things are now with the new firmware 2.050. I really hope Canon made some changes cutting maintenance costs. I will report when I find something new.
 
I was toying with the idea of buying one of these Canon Pro printers. I don't see enough of my photos in print, and I just can't seem to be summon the energy to order from a lab, but having a printer at home would hopefully remedy this. I cannot see myself printing more than a couple of times a week and sometimes not even once a week. Looks the ink cost would be enormous then.

Anyone thinks the Canon PIXMA Pro 10s is somewhat cheaper to run than the others?
 

sabin

New member
I can check that tomorrow.
Here are some new findings. It took more than a day to get some info what's is going on.

In the menu of the printer there are tree setting regarding auto cleaning.

1. Auto nozzle check, which checks the nozzle after every print and performs a little clean whenever it wants without any visible problem with the nozzles. I have not confirmed wasted quantity, but judging from the different time to clean it must be variable from 0.05 to almost a gram...guessing. I have disabled mine and printed hundreds of prints without problems with nozzles clogging so far.

2. System cleaning frequency: cannot be disabled, set mine on standard.

3. Ink maintenance. This setting is responsible for time related maintenances! After disabling it the printer does not perform the time related ink waste that I described in my previous posts!! I'm using this mode from 27th of may without any problems and I print with biggest pause of 2 weeks so far. After this two weeks on first print the printer wasted only 2.5grams and did agitation of the inks. After several days inactivity I'll repeat this conditions to see if it is time related or just print related.

There were some posts that the printer uses small amount of ink on regular bases if left ON, but I cannot find any evidence of that and I seriously doubt it. In fact every time the printer enters cleaning mode it make specific sound, but I have never heard the printer even slightest move staying on.

So, with 1 and 3 maintenance settings off, the printing waste is something like this.

Small prints 10x15cm about 0.07g per print fixed. This includes small maintenance on every 4-5 prints.

a3+ about 0.12 grams.

There is one more waste that is not included in the above numbers as I have not found out when it appears. It is about 4.8 grams on every 80-100 10x15cm prints. I have not found out on other media sizes yet, but I'm watching for the next to try to find something to relate.

And finally some of us has suffered the system clean of about 58grams that happens at least once per ink set. So calculating this hudge waste I will not be surprised of 0.3 grams per print is even less than the reality...

All this testing unfortunately require time and having something to print :)

I will report when I have new info...
 
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