A few months ago I got a printer, so that I could print my own documents without having to go all the way to the Hokkaido Centre or somewhere to print. Back at home in NI we’ve had a whole range of printers, mostly from Epson and HP, but lately we got a Canon multifunction and have had no problems with it at all. So I went for a Canon this time around and got a multifunction so I can scan and copy and so on as well…
A month ago then I got a CISS for it (Continuous Ink Supply System) from Rihac systems in Australia (also in UK). It cost a bit, but it’s bunged full of ink, something like a bazillion cartridges (maybe 60…) worth of ink or something ridiculous, so the overall price is a bargain! Also when the time comes to refill I don’t have to pay for more cartridges, just for the ink. But, as I still had ink left over in the cartridges I had before, I didn’t fit it right on it’s arrival. Rather this Wednesday night saw me run out of ink in my black cartridge and so I thought I would go for it!
Taking care to lay out some paper and get a box of tissues to address any spillages or unexpected events, I opened the box and got the gear out. There was a tank full of ink, a bunch of tubes and bits and pieces, a syringe and a couple of frightening needles! I had to prime the system as it had been flown and couldn’t be sent primed, presumably it would burst open in a mid-air inking frenzy and turn everyones baggage cyan, magenta and yellow… I managed to prime the system with minimal spillage and only peripheral blackening to my hands and clothes, an older, dark coloured jumper chosen for the occasion. I then managed to put the thing into the printer without spilling anything and follwed the instructions to thread the tubing through the printer, add little blocks to stop the lid crimping it and measuring out the right lengths so it could move back and forth easily… Then I put the cartridges in, reprimed a couple of bits that had collected more air in the pipes in the process, and turned it on.
Now at this point it is worth saying that Canon only wants people to buy Canon ink for it’s printers. Printers aren’t expensive these days, every one wants you to buy their printer, and the reason is so they can sell you ink. printer ink and cartridges are extortionate to say the least, which is a big part of getting one of these ink systems. It used to be that cartridges would be made a certain shape or with certain patented parts, so that only that company could make them, but that started to lose it’s control and so now, to ensure you get only the “correct” ink, they put a little chip on the cartridge. This little chip’s job, of course, is not to stop you using other cartridges, nono, it is to keep an eye on how much ink is in the cartridge so the printer can tell you when to buy more. But as an aside it just so happens that if a cartridge doesn’t have the right chip, it won’t work with the printer. And that chip is made by Canon. So to put in this ink system, the fakey cartridges on the end of the tubes have to have these chips, and Rihac provide instructions for removing chips from real cartridges and sticking them onto theirs so that they appear to be real cartridges (then we disable the ink level monitor). But they also offer, for a small fee, some chips pre-fitted to the cartridges. Now sometimes I like to fiddle with these things, but the last thing I wanted was to buy this whole thing then mess it up trying to put these tiny chips on. So I got the prefitted ones.
So yes, I had put everything into the printer and turned it on and the printer told me it couldn’t recognise the cartridges. This was a bit of a disappointment to say the least. I emailed Rihac and, as it was past my bedtime, I went to bed.
Rihac replied on Thursday morning and suggested I call their customer support line in Australia. I decided against that, I figured they would probably just tell me the chips have some kind of problem, or maybe Australian chips don’t work in Japanese printers so the ink markets can be independant or something annoying like that. So I decided to take matters into my own hands and, following the instructions I mentioned before, I set about taking the authentic chips from the canon cartridges and replacing the supplied chips with them. Now it is worth pointing out that before I did this, I closed up the valves on the ink tank so that it wouldn’t get air in the tubes again and I wouldn’t have to re-prime it after moving around. I finished up changing the chips and put it all back in and the printer recognised the cartridges! Success! But wait, it still didn’t seem to be happy. It was moving things and whirring for much longer than normal and eventually it displayed an uninformative error message saying “Turn me off and on again!” on it’s little screen and stopped working. So I did. Still nothing! At this point I noticed air had got into the tubes… so I removed the stoppers I had put back in and used the syringe to push the ink through to the cartridge like the last time to re-prime the system… But I forgot I had closed the valve on the back of the tank… When I took the syringe out the pressure I had built sent a spurt of black ink splattering up the lovely, nice, clean, white, rented apartment wall! Tissue upon tissue went to mopping up the ink, trying to soak as much out of the white wall paper as possible. But it was immediately apparent that no amount of tissuing was going to clean up this mess. And the time had passed, I had Japanese classes to go to and a prayer meeting that evening! Fortunately I had recently used some bleach based bathroom cleaner that had amused me by turning the blue rag I was cleaning with white as I cleaned. So, that evening, a careful application soon removed the inky mess, and gave the room that “just been swimming” smell!
I had left my printer in a non-printing state, it was just giving me error messages when I left it to go to class. But when I returned in the evening and turned it on, it sat there ready to print as though there had never been a problem. I still don’t know what happened to change the situation, but after a few test pages the ink was flowing freely and it has been printing brilliantly.
So now each page works out even cheaper than the ￥10 I would have to spend at the Hokkaido Centre for copying, so I can print and copy at home, in colour, and save money! I also feel I should name my printer as it has displayed a level of intelligence and emotional trickery that normal appliances don’t seem to hold… Squirty McGoo*
I am not sure if I would recommend the system or not, I’ve only been using it a few days! But certainly anyone who isn’t adventurous, would panic when faced with possibly indelible ink on their walls, or doesn’t like having their emotions and sanity toyed with by an inanimate piece of imaging technology probably shouldn’t get it…
*unless someone can come up with a better one? My only criteria is it needs to be fun and also be recognisable as a printer when put in the sentence “I’ll just run a off a copy on old Squirty McGoo”
Tags:
canon,
CISS,
ink,
inkjet,
mess,
MP540,
name,
printer,
Rihac,
Squirty McGoo 
