Ink Feed System for Epson Photo R200: How to Make Home Printing 50 Times Cheaper

Theory

Introduction

Perhaps many know that these days to set up a home-based digital photographic lab you don't have to have huge photo enlargers, red lanterns and a lot of chemicals - for that, it suffices to have a good photo camera, a powerful computer and a high-quality printer. For the period of their progress, printers have turned so close to professional photo labs at the print quality that the only restriction for printing all the photos at home is the cost of a single printout which is now about three times as expensive than similar prints made at digital print kiosks.

It may seen that buying a good photo printer is not a serious burden to the family budget for most middle-income families, because $200 for a person who is keen on photography is a trifle. However, companies that manufacture printing machines target just the cost of consumables and not the cost of the printer itself when calculating future profits. Where will the user go once run out of the ink cartridge capacity? Go out to buy some new at the nearest consumables shop. And having got scared by the warnings and by the sales assistants who make profits from promoting original goods, the user would rather buy cartridges made by the printer's manufacturer and give the money to the sellers because the prime cost of an ink cartridge is minor pennies compared to the retail price.

Advanced users are trying to sort out with cheaper, not original cartridges which are sometimes indeed dangerous to use because may be filled with poor-quality ink. Read about that over here. Amusingly, even use of non-original cartridges does not solve the problem, and the cost of a single printout is still at a high level.

But there are highly advanced users who are in their elements when handling computers - they overclock processors and video cards, do the modding of housings, and remake the cooling systems. This material is aimed at them because over here we are telling how to "overclock" the printer to values incomparable to those in processors and video cards. Today we are talking about the IFS.

IFS, or Ink Feed System, is used to achieve a substantial reduction in the cost of photo printing at standard home-based photo printers. Systems like these are installed in industrial printing machines in which the ink is fed directly to the tanks without any cartridges, and once the ink runs out more "fuel" is added up to the required level. Ink cans can be of various capacity - from 50 grams to several liters, with the cost of ink without cartridges being an order lower.

Operation and features

The Ink Feed System being reviewed operates as follows. Instead of standard cartridges, their substitutes - damping chambers, or capsules - are installed. We'll be talking about the differences between them a bit later. To these pseudo-cartridges there fir 3 mm PVC-capillaries which are bundled into a cable and are fitted beside the electronic cable for the print head or on top of the print carriage. The cable is fed out of the printer, with each of the pipes put into a 200 ml ink can. Since almost every modern cartridge has a chip that detects its capacity, then instead of original chips there is installed a plate with self-zeroed chips that cheat the printer's electronics and creates an illusion of endless cartridges, or more precisely, finite but quickly restorable. Then, during printing the ink from the bottles runs through the capillaries and enter the print head thus providing a permanent influx of ink to the pseudo-cartridges from external tanks. Therefore, the size and capacity of each cartridge is increased by about 20 times. Considering that the cost of ink kit of six 200 ml cans varies within $60 to $100 (depending on the manufacturing company), the cost of a printout made with a home printer is much cheaper than even at digital photo labs, let alone home-based printing with cartridges.

Ink

Depending on the purpose, modern inkjet printers use various types of ink - water-based, pigmentary, sublimation, solvent. We are not going deep into the technical details of these types - the only difference is that the former is a dye solution, and the latter is a dye emulsion, that is a dredge of fine solid particles of pigment. The mentioned 4 types of ink have different bases, so they can't be mixed. If you decided to change the type of ink used by the printer, then when moving to a different ink type the print head of the printer must be thoroughly cleaned and washed from ink remains.

Among inkjet Epson printers, the most popular are those using water-based and pigment ink.. For example, all printers of the economy C-series - from Epson Ñ43 to Epson Ñ86 - use ink of the four colors (Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow), which means that to build an IFS there would be needed four cans of different ink and a 4-capillary PVC-cable. However, the type of ink within these series is different, because on printers from Epson Ñ41 to Epson Ñ46 there are installed water-based ink-cartridges, whereas on Epson Ñ63 to Epson Ñ86 - pigment ink cartridges are installed. For photo printers having six color cartridges R200 and R300, there are used inks on water base, and therefore for these printers you would have to buy a kit of six ink cans (Black, Cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta, Yellow). There are also photo printers that use 7 or 8 cartridges, for which there are matching inks. To make the right choice, we recommend contacting authorized specialists involved in sales and maintenance of IFS. The situation is the same with printers by other manufacturers. The difference is made by those printers using cartridges with integrated print head, e.g. HP and Lexmark. In view of the small capacity of electrical part of such print heads, cartridges in these printers are short-lived, and use of IFS in these printers is of little efficiency.

Now a few words on the ink manufacturers. Currently, there is a great number of ink manufacturers on the market, and we can't say for sure that one manufacturer makes awful ink and the other one makes really ideal ink, because they all offer both serious shortcomings and strong advantages.

Let's tell about some of them. For a start, take OCP ink. There is data that these inks are closest by their characteristics to Epson original inks and offer a similar rendition, however they are very difficult to make available and hard to guarantee their reference quality since there is a lot of imitation among them. That is, you can use OCP but very carefully because in one case the color rendition will be the way on original cartridges, while the other case may result in a replacement of print head at the service center and impossibility to fix color rendition with any profile. On top of all that, OCP ink costs quite a lot.

There are a lot of varied rumors about Lomond ink, but there is no unanimous idea on that. On the one hand, this ink offers quite a good color rendition and a very good color profile support by the manufacturer. On the other hand, there were occasions when this ink strongly dried up inside the head and thus deadly clogged the nozzles. This type of ink is not very common among IFS, but we should not forget that Lomond is a leading manufacturer of photographic paper which not only can be used but is recommended for use.

There is no data on InkJet ink unlike WWM ink of which there is some data. WWM ink is manufactured by an Ukrainian company whose assortment includes all types of ink for inkjet printers. The cost of these inks is not very high, so their competitive edge is at a high level. The color rendition of a printout on the base of these inks require color correction although some enthusiasts believe that it goes fine even without that. The plus is that color profiles for WWM inks exist and work well enough. Moreover, since these color profiles are created by mostly advanced users and not by the WWM company itself, they are all adapted to handle Lomond paper which is also rather competitive in terms of price.

Practice

The "guinea-pig"

For instance, we take Epson R200 photo printer which can be regarded by right as a "folk model". This inkjet printer of A4 format uses 6 cartridges - 5 color and 1 black. Epson R200 differs from the elder Epson R300 model by the lack of a memory card reader and no possibility to print photos without a computer. All the other mechanical characteristics are fully identical, and you can read a review on this printer on our web site here.

Let's take a closer look at the printer. Every cartridge is installed to the printer separately and has own chip that detects its capacity. All the 6 cartridges are fitted into a unified print cartridge that has a common lid on all the cartridges. When installing any cartridge to the printer, the special ink collector in the form of a thin plastic tube on the carriage punctures the protective polyethylene below the cartridge and along that the ink is fed to the print head. The print head is common for all the six cartridges, and its replacement is possible only on service terms.

Running ahead, let me say that to provide correct printing on the base of most IFS with non-original ink, a color correction is needed which can be done only at a computer. There comes the conclusion – buying an Epson R300 printer in our case is not justified since it differs from Epson R200 in only the possibility to print without a computer, which is of no use for the case of an IFS.

Package bundle

In our tests, we used an IFS provided by Resetters company based in the Ukraine with representation offices in Moscow and Yekaterinburg. This company develops and ships ink-feed systems for most currently available inkjet printers and is a dealer of WWM which ships ink sets. Let's look at the kit which is required to build an Ink-Feed System.

The first package contains all the spare parts required for assemblage of the IFS, the second one has a kit of hydro-donors, there is also an ink-set with a support for them.

The inks are shipped in a unified block fastened with scotch tape, in a sequence required for plugging in. As was mentioned earlier, each can holds 200 ml of ink and has standard dimensions of both the container and the plug thereto. For carrying convenience and ease of installation of the IFS, there is also a special container that holds the required number of cans:

It can be further fixed rigidly to the printer using independent appliances, but that is not always required. One side of the container is transparent to facilitate the ink level control.

Inside the main package bundle we found the following contents:

1. PVC cable of 1 meter length with sealed capsules for each color.
2. Plate with self-zeroed chips.
3. Syringe for pumping ink into the capillaries and capsules.
4. Rubber adapter from the syringe to the capsules.
5. Kit of fasteners to lay the cable and fix the auto-chips.
6. Needle to burn holes in the plugs of ink-cans.
7. Clip for blocking the tubes.

As you can see, the whole kit is simple enough. In the base of the IFS there is a plate with auto-chips, 7 disposable syringes, 1 meter of silicon cable, and 3 plastic fasteners wrapped with double-sided scotch-tape for fixation. The plate with self-zeroed chips is of a complex shape, and if you assemble an IFS on your own, it will not be easy at all to make it.

If you are not ready to spend for a complete IFS kit, you can try making the IFS on your own and order only the hardly available components like auto-chips with a plate and a PVC cable with inks. In this case, the result will in many ways depend on the skillful hands. That is, chances are high that you may dirty yourself with ink up to your ears and in the end fail to assemble a normally functioning IFS. Actually, there is a lot of info on assemblage of an IFS on your own - for details, read the forum on the same web site.

The review of the package bundle ends with a kit of hydro-donors. Hydro-donor is a device capable of maintaining the same pressure in the capillary regardless of the ink level inside the can.

In essence, hydro-donor is a Marriot vessel that equalizes pressure. Many arguments are going on as to their expediency or uselessness to IFS, but from our side we adhere to the viewpoint that they would be of use. Then we give reasons for our opinion in the "Some traits" section. Now we are moving on directly to the procedure of IFS installation on out Epson R200 in question.

Installation

You are unlikely to install a IFS into a newly bought printer with no cartridges installed at least once. As you understand, cartridges have to be disposed somewhere, and not to a trash bin of course. Installation starts with the standard procedure of the replacement of cartridges in the system described in the documentation to the printer, although there are some differences. Once the printer brings the carriage with cartridges to their replacement position, the power has to be turned off in order the move the carriage freely with your hands - that is required for the system installation.

Now that the carriage is in the position of cartridge replacement and the power is off, we remove the first cartridge. Actually, the cartridge has two valves - one on the output hole for ink, and one on the input for the air. That is why the removed cartridges are air-tight and can be stored endlessly, however, not all cartridges offer these valves, especially non-original. So, to be on the safe side, we have to tightly close the hole punctured by the assembly operator during cartridge installation into the carriage to avoid drying up of the ink. It's better to do that with a piece of scotch-tape. Once you take out the cartridge, try turning it over as fast you can to prevent an ink drop from getting onto the punctured film. That will allow sealing the hole as tight as possible.

Apply the scotch tape to the whole and glue it along the perimeter to the remains of the film - this way you can restore its integrity. Then wind the whole cartridge into the scotch and mold the scotch with hands for tight abutment. The cartridge is ready for storage. This technique is unlikely to be a remedy against drying up the ink since inside the cartridge there is air but anyway it can prolong the storage period for some time.

Once you have removed all the cartridges, the printer is ready for the system installation. It is worth mentioning here that there are two ways if IFS installation on R200. The first way implies dismantling the printer down to the printing base, that is, removal of all the plastic parts with further laying the ink cable with the electric cable and bringing the ink cable over through a whole to cool motor of the carriage. This way is complicated and is outdated. The second way does not require dismantling the printer because the ink cable is brought outside from under the transparent lid. In this material, we are describing the second installation technique since it is much simpler and newer.

The first thing to do is fix the cable fastener on the printer's plastic. For that, take the main fastener of the cable:

Apply it 6 cm away from the edge of the plastic (see the photo) having preliminarily removed the film from the gluing layer of the double-sided scotch and glue it so that 5 mm is left at the top.

Then install the cable into the latch of the fastener, having measured it preliminarily so that it freely moves along the guide of the print carriage without pressure or loosening. Pay a special attention to the leftmost position of the head since the cable in it may be pinched between the carriage and the plastic housing. To adjust the carriage, move it manually.

Do not forget to leave some cable margin to install capsules inside the carriage. That is very easy to do by putting the capsules inside the carriage and pinching the cable with the lid to fix the cartridges. As a result, you should get something about like that:

Then slightly pull the cable and put the second fastener on it in the point where the cable crossed the border of the glass lid along its natural laying path, but for now do not glue the fastener:

Note that the edge of the fastener should touch the lighter skirting of the printer. That is needed to prevent the printer's lid from pinching the capillaries. The fastener should be glued at the very last turn upon completion of all the operations with the printer.

That done, the first stage of laying the cable can be regarded as complete. It is now time to connect the hydro-donors, if you have got them. If not, you can safely skip this stage. Albeit possible, it is quite difficult to equip the IFS additionally with hydro-donors after pumping the ink into the pipe than at the installation stage. Therefore, to connect two capillaries it suffices to stick the pipe from the main cable onto the thinner part of the adapter from the hydro-donor pipe:

The pipe is put on the adapter tightly enough, and that is normal because air tightness is a must for the system functioning. Also make sure the adapter be approximately equidistant from both capillaries. Connect all the six pipes of hydro-donors with the cable pipes. In the end, you should get 6 hydro-donors hanging on the cable. It is now time we connected them to the ink cans. Each tube on the cable has a color marking:

That is a standard color sequence which you should not violate at no step of IFS installation. The sequence looks like this:

This is just the sequence cartridges inside the printer are positioned, and ink cans should be positioned also in that order. This sequence should be also followed while assembling the whole system. If you fail to match a couple of colors, the colors on the photo will be much different from the required, and to revert the situation you would have to clean the head, so take this item most seriously - equipment can's stand errors.

Take a battery with bottles and, starting with the black pile up hydro-donors on the cans. There are a few tricks and traits at that. For normal functioning of the hydro-donors, they should be screwed as tightly as possible to provide air tightness of the can, but that is not easy to do as it seems at first. Besides, it is necessary that pipes coming out of the hydro-donors touch the bottom level of the cans outside the boundaries. Therefore, we strongly recommend to dismantle the battery of cans by removing the scotch-tape that fixes it and again wrap them up again with the scotch-tape after piling up all the hydro-donors on them.

Unscrew the lid off the can and do remove the ring left of the can because it will hinder installation of the hydro-donor. To prevent the capillary from twisting tension, turn the hydro-donor prior to piling it up a couple of times by 360 degrees anticlockwise. Then, before putting the hydro-donor into the bottle, press it with your hand a bit - otherwise, after the waterproof tightening there will be excessive pressure in the can, which may force the ink out through the upper air-intake filter. That is, the sequence will look like this: turn the hydro-donor in the hands, squeeze the bottle a bit, lower the hydro-donor into the bottle and tighten the plug. It is advisable to avoid excessive squeezing of the bottle walls, otherwise ink may come outside. Once you feel that the plug no longer lets the air through, stop squeezing the bottle and tighten the hydro-donor to the end. Frankly, it requires quite an effort to do so. In the end, you should get six bottles with tightened hydro-donors in the right sequence.

To facilitate the job, blue lids have stickers made in the color of the inks inside each of the bottles. If you don't use hydro-donors, then it makes no sense unscrewing the lids because holes for letting the capillaries from the cable and air inside are made right in them. For that, there is a special metal stick in the package bundle by heating which you can burn a hole of required diameter in the lid for the silicon capillary. Also, using the needle you should puncture a hole in the lid to let air inside. Don't worry - the ink won'd dry up. The capillaries should be pushed in to a length enough to touch the can bottom.

Once the hydro-donors are tightened, you can lower the pipes to the very bottom of the can from outside and fix it with a piece of scotch-tape. Most important is that the pipes be not pinched and then run upwards, even if the cans are fitted inside the container.

Finally, we can move to the last step of IFS installation - pumping in the ink. If you look inside the carriage, all becomes clear where and what should be fitted.

Six capsules should be put on the six noses of ink collectors which are easily seen on the carriage bottom. The sequence of color setting is shown on the sticker at the top. On the capsules, there is a color marking, and to do the installation right just align the colors in the printer sticker with the colors on capsules. But prior to that a plate with auto-chips has to be fitted.

The plate is made of rigid propylene and includes only one auto-chip It emulates operation of all the remaining chips thus acting as a functional substitute for Epson's native chips. The remaining 5 boards are dummies needed for establishing contact in the point of fastening native chips.

The plate is installed with auto-chips facing down, and some effort is required to fit the plate right in its place. Once the plate is installed, it has to be fastened with a fixing L-shaped fastener by gluing a piece of double-sided scotch-tape to the carriage housing, as is shown on the photo:

Once the plate of auto-chips is installed, move on to the installation of capsules. For that, we would need a syringe with a rubber adapter put on it and a paper clip. Every capsule is an air-tight housing the disposable syringe with the nose cut off so that the hole inside fit the diameter to provide air-tight sticking on the ink collector. The hole in the syringe should have a bit smaller diameter than that of the ink-collecting connection pipe. The white part of the piston is left inside the capsule to facilitate monitoring the ink level as well as to damp the vibration of ink on moving the carriage. At the top, the carriage has an air-tight rubber plug sealed with bicomponent glue through which there runs a capillary with ink.

The capsules differ from damping chambers to the better side, although the latter are of more impressive and expensive look due to exterior similarity to cartridges. That is because a capsule system is more suitable for cleaning the heads in case of its clogging and for monitoring the ink level inside the system.

Take them and position in a way so that the cable not twist and all the colors be in the right sequence.

What goes then depends on the side you fitted the cable. Ideally, the black color should run through the capillary from the external side of the printer, that is, the one distant from control buttons, whereas the yellow - through the distant capillary or the one closer to control buttons. If the cable is laid in just this way, the capsules should be installed starting with the blue and finishing with the yellow, while leaving the black till the end.

Take the syringe and insert the capsule nose into the rubber adapter on it so that the following picture is shaped up:

Then turn the whole structure in such a way that the syringe be above with the capsule below, and then start drawing the ink smoothly into the capsule. Your task is to fill the capsule approximately by half. Do it carefully so that you won't have to return the ink excess into the can by pressing the syringe piston. By no means fill the capsule to more than half - this will spoil the system functioning.

Once the capsule is half filled, use a clamp to pinch the capillary running to this capsule from the ink can. That is needed to prevent equalization of pressure between the can and the capsule after disconnection of the large syringe - otherwise the ink may flow out of the capsule back to the can and vice versa. Once you have pinched the capillary, you can safely disconnect the rubber adapter from the capsule and put on the capsule on the ink collector of matching color. Don't be afraid of turning it over - the ink won't leak out of it. The most interesting part is putting the capsule on, because that should be done applying so much effort that you are afraid lest something breaks up. But in fact the printer is much stronger than you think of it :). Do the procedure with all the capsules, installing them in turn. It should be noted that tubes look very nice while being filled with inks.

If you remember, we have left the black capsule till the end. That is done because capillaries tend to get pinched on the sharp bends, and sine the length of the cable for each capsule is the same and the black capsule is most closely the cable outlet from the carriage, then the turn of the pipe turns out to be sharp enough and tends to break which may block access of ink to the capsule. To avoid this effect, we should run the pipe of black capsule over the cable and not under it and then fix the capillary on the light-blue pipe. We found out bout this method of laying through experiment, so if you have done all normally without tricks then perhaps it's better to leave all in the original state. As a result, you should get something about like that:

As you can see from the photo, the cable is fastened by the outlet - you should follow suit. For that, take the last plastic fastener and a small piece of double-sided sticky tape and attach the cable so that the cable be not pinched upon closing the lid that fixes the cartridges. In doing that, the plastic fastener should be at the inner part, with the sticky tape at the side of the carriage. From the side, it should look like this:

Once all has been done, make sure none of the capillaries is pinched after closing the fixing lid. Then make sure the length of the cable matches the original by moving the carriage from the leftmost to the rightmost points of its guide to see if it gets pinched anywhere. If needed, adjust the cable length. At that, assemblage of IFS can be regarded complete. Turn on the printer and start the command for cleaning the heads. As a result, you should get this:

Now glue the last fastener already put on the cable and then you can close the lid. The printer is ready for operation and no other physical actions should be done to it - what is left is to set up the drivers and color profiles and wait until the heads are completely cleaned.

Once the power is on, it is required that not one but two or three head cleaning operations be done, which should result in almost complete functionality of the IFS, however, not all is that simple. As practice of testing the nozzle shows, some nozzles won't work even after primary cleaning operations. That is because air is inside the ink collection system. You won't be able to expel air through cleaning operations, but you may seriously expend the whole resource of the cloth that absorbs ink during cleaning. That is why we recommend that after 2 or 3 cleaning operations the printer be left for 6-8 hours. During this time, the air in the system will flow to the ambient environment inside the capsules naturally, and the system will be ready for operation. Leaving the system for a few hours is needed to let the air dissolved in the ink turn into bubbles and get to the upper part of the capsules. You can put the printer with cans on a plane and well-fixed table. Use of hydro-donors gives you quite enough margin, because the length of the cable from cans to the printer is about 0.5 meters, and if there aren't there, the cable length is reduced by approximately 30-40 cm.

IFS installation on a printer is an absolutely reversible process, so once you need to uninstall the IFS from your printer, its presence will not be seen at all and the guarantee will not be canceled. Installation of the system even does not require opening the printer housing, and it takes less that 10 minutes to remove it.

Driver settings

The paragraphs below are aimed at those who wish to make the most of home-based color printing. As was already mentioned, color correction is needed to provide normal functioning of the IFS because non-original inks offer a color rendition not matching to that of original ink. Those who have even printed photos in the automatic image correction mode will likely not notice any difference, especially if Epson original paper is used for printing.

You can follow two ways to solve this problem. First - make a rough adjustment of color in the printer settings using a number of printouts but this method is time-consuming and does not bring normal results. There is another method - color correction using a color profile.

Here we should tell a little about color profiles. For details on their operation principles, read our article, but here we are touching upon it very briefly. Color profiles are able changing the colors in a picture still before printing to make up for the colors inadequately printed and thus build a bridge between two color spaces. That is, you see a good photo on the monitor and you want to see the same on paper. If printed without a profile, the light blue sky may turn dark blue, and all the light tints may lose their true color. The printer profile adjusts colors in the picture before printing to make the printout be as identical as possible to the on-screen photo.

There exist predefined profiles for Epson printers with WWM inks and Lomond photographic paper of various densities. These profiles are available to download from here:
Epson_R200_WWM_Lomond_SuperGloss_280_Premium_Glossy_icm_no-color.rar
Epson_R200_WWM_Lomond_Gloss_230_Premium_Glossy_icm_no-color.rar
Epson_R200_WWM_Lomond_Matt_160-170_Premium_Glossy_icm_no-color.rar

Copy the contents of these archives to the “C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\color\” folder. To make the profiles affect the printed image, some adjustment to the printer drivers are needed:

To that end, in the Printer Setup window, open the "Color control" tab, select the manual mode, press the "Add" button and choose the required profile. You can choose the required print mode by the names of profile files. We have profiles for three types of Lomond photographic paper - Lomond_SuperGloss_280, Gloss_230, and Matt_160-170, and you can print using them with the printer settings without color correction and with the Premium Glossy PhotoPaper selected. In the print quality settings, set all as per this screenshot:

The high speed option selected essentially worsens the quality, and switching the Best Photo mode to Photo RPM will result in essential drop in print speed but the quality will be much better.

If you print from within Photoshop, you can make use of the color profile selection from the settings. This will let you not activate color control with the driver (the first screenshot) and thus the color correction can be done more adequately with the Photoshop algorithms. To that end, in the Photoshop CS select File -> Print With Preview and choose the profile matching your paper:

In so doing it is advisable that the print settings be matching those described above, that is, to the ICM-profile without color correction. By the way, the color profiles for WWM + Lomond come not from companies which produce these remarkable products but from an ordinary user nicknamed Konstantin from the forum of Resetters e-shop who must have spent many nightly shifts creating these files. Thanks to him. We have to warn you in advance - the profiles are suitable for good photo printing only. To print documents with smooth gradients, it's better if you use standard printer settings.

If the driver indicates a very low level of ink in the cartridges, you can immediately zero the auto-chips by moving the carriage to the cartridge replacement position as is described in the printer operation manual. All the levels will be restored to the status of new cartridges. You don't have to do that - the chip will zero themselves. This walkaround is given for the case if you are annoyed by the ink level monitoring windows with the exclamation marks on it indicating to the need for cartridge replacement.

Some traits

Saying that use of Ink-Feed System is free from any problems would be dishonest to the user, since some failures are anyway possible. The thing is, the IFS is built on the pressure difference, which may cause various issues.

The first problem is "streaking". It means that during printing the printer may leave streaks with changed color and blots on the paper. If A4 sheets are printed, then the printer sometimes starts streaking at some printout between 15 and 20. This can be remedied through lowering the cans 5-6 cm below the printer level. The second problem is in the permanent gap of the nozzles, as well as print voids in some parts of the page. This problem can be either related to either the lack of pressure or poor quality of the ink, or clogging the parking point of the print head. If the printer is in a dirty premises, then dust may stick to the rubber cap in the point of print head parking because this point is always inked. As a result, if the air-tight joining of the cap and the print head is degraded due to the cap contamination, the ink on the print head surface will dry up, which eventually results in drying up the whole head. If the ink is OK, the lack of pressure should be recompensed by placing the cans a bit above the printer level. By the way, by the printer level we understand the desktop plane on which the printer is placed. The IFS may be affected by the atmospheric pressure which in some cases may result in two problems. Systems without hydro-donors may be affected by the ink level inside the cans, which changes the pressure in the system as the level drops. All the above issues are mostly typical of systems without hydro-donors since the latter are meant to make up for the problems of pressure because of the ink level inside the cans and thus slightly relieve the problems with atmospheric pressure, although such complications may also happen to hydro-donors as well. It should be noted that hydro-donors is not a universal remedy, but all the issues with IFS are through-passing, and the system runs most frequently quite normal. There exists some statistics saying that problems related to the lack of hydro-donors occur on printers which previously were in intensive use and slightly wore out, and in other cases hydro-donors are not required and their use is sometimes harmful. Therefore, whether to fit them or not is the matter of your sole discretion. Besides, there are problems with breakage of cable pipes on the cable bends, therefore care should be taken when installing the IFS and correct laying of the cable

You've got to be aware that you should first of all strictly follow all the requirements and recommendations as to the printer maintenance described in the operation manual. If you service your printer adequately, whether with or without IFS, there shouldn't be problems with it. Most likely, after IFS installation your printer will be operated in more demanding modes, because it is quite costly to print much with cartridges, but use of IFS opens wide opportunities for activities. Therefore, some time after the IFS operation an additional maintenance is required, especially after the gaps between nozzles come up more frequently.

For example, a periodical cleaning of the cap with special solution. Cap is a pad on which the head is parked while the printer is idle. It is made of a foam-rubber layer closed with air-tight rubber on the sides. To clean it, move the head to the leftmost position either manually the way in IFS installation or using the service button for cartridge replacement. As the cleaning solution, distilled water can be used which is easy to buy at the chemist's. There is also a special solution for rinsing the heads which can be bought at a kiosk selling consumables for printers, keeping in mind that rinsing solutions should be different for water-based and pigment inks. Rinsing should be done with a syringe and a needle, pouring the liquid into the cap and drawing it is off with the needle.

The rubber knife to the right of the cap also requires periodical cleaning. It can be easily cleaned with toilet paper soaked with the same solution.

Finally, keep an eye on the piece of cloth, or more precisely, at its contamination level. While cleaning the heads, the ink leaving the nozzles get on the cap from where it is pumped over to the cloth which soaks all these wastes. Pulling and extending the hose out of the printer running from the pump to the cloth, you can make the life of the latter easier. This hose out of the printer should be lowered into a separate container which will be the trash-collector. Having done that, you will be much surprised to realize how tenacious the cloth is, because the amount of ink during cleaning the heads is fed in huge quantities. If you intend to print much, you will anyway have to draw out the pipe or replace the cloth because sooner or later the resource of the cloth runs out. If you use the printer for printing documents and the color rendition is not important, this drain hose can be lowered to the black ink container thus arranging a rotation of ink in the printer.

Final Words

In this material we have given a detailed account of Ink-Feed System assemblage for Epson R200 printer, as well as touched upon some general things related to inkjet printers and IFS thereto. It is quite natural that further on IFS will gain more popularity since they give the user a home service comparable at cost and quality with only professional photo printing labs. IFS installation is possible on most currently available inkjet printers both newly bought and those that have been in intensive use for a long enough time. The only restriction is the compulsory technical expertise of the person who is up to installing and using an IFS at home because some unforeseen situations described in the "Some traits" section may come up. Our printer in question has already been in use, it is operating trouble-free. Another Epson R200 that has been in use with the IFS for over three months has already printed over 300 sheets of A4 format and caused no complaints. So we suggest printing much and cheap. Good luck.