Printer Surgery

Having worked in a library setting for a few years now, it has become apparent that libraries are a magnet for poorly-functioning printing equipment.  Laser or inkjet, fancy copier or cheapie desktop printer – all are doomed to failure within five minutes of operation inside the premises of a library.  There’s something about the aura of books (or perhaps the particular ghosts who haunt such spaces) that just puts every printer into hysterics.

Case in point – my current Epson Workforce 310.  I purchased this printer six months ago, preinstalled with a Continuous Ink System (CISS for short).  For the uninitiated, a CISS is a set of bottles and ink cartridges filled with ink.  A set of tubes siphons ink from the bottles into the cartridges, which go inside the printer.  The bottles contain 10 times as much ink as a regular cartridge and can be easily refilled with bulk ink.  Ultimately, this translates to zillions of very cheap prints, because bulk ink is inexpensive.  The downside is that cheap ink can lead to slightly washed out prints – and also, the alterations made to the printer in order to install the CISS voids the printer warranty.

I’ve had a CISS installed on my home printer with nary a hitch for years now.  I can print and print and print, for very cheap!  So I decided to purchase a similar setup for my library in order to save costs and to cut down on the constant problem of empty ink cartridges at inconvenient times.  The system worked great for months.  I should’ve known the library printer curse would get me though…  In one spectacular failure, I managed to dump masses of black ink on the carpeted floor of my circulations area while attempting to refill my tanks.  After MANY frantic runs with the carpet shampooer to ease the hideous black blobs on my floor into a mere ugly, faded stain, I wound up buying a new CISS for my printer to replace the one that had broken.  The whole fiasco and subsequent purchase was the beginning of the end of my streak of luck.  The new system never quite worked right.  Way too many head cleanings later, my printer decided to give up the ghost with an “end of service life” message.  Thankfully, there’s “an app for that” and I was able to get the thing going again.  Of course, I knew that a leak was likely to erupt from the sponges inside my printer if I kept doing printhead cleaning cycles and dumping ink in there.

And so it was that I became an accomplished (and proud) printer surgeon, despite my status as a non-mechanically-inclined person.

My printer’s engineering was no match for my plastic-snapping and waste-ink-tube rerouting capabilities.  I cheerfully hacked and cracked away, venting all my long-suffered printer hatred in one go (there was no anesthesia involved for the printer, poor soul).  I now have a tiny external tank (a condiment-size tupperware container with a hole poked in the top for the rerouted waste tube) to collect my refuse ink!  I installed a new CISS system a few days later and TA-DA – back to scads of cheap prints and a happy library director.  I cannot express in words how satisfying it is to see my “hacked” (a.k.a. mildly mangled) printer sitting on my desk every day.