Godfrey, thanks a lot for posting this quotation from the manual.
From that, I would agree with your conjecture of what Epson did.
The last "Why" question was rather rhetorical. I understand that you
weren't the engineer who designed this printer.
But I disagree with the sentiment that we cannot criticize engineers for
what they've done. Every so often I see things that are done awkwardly
(often for saving some money, while creating huge inconvenience or waste,
sometimes because of lack of proper thinking).
When I encounter such things, I am always trying to find at least *some*
rational for what they've done (even if I would disagree with it).
Often, it is hard to imagine anything even remotely sane. For those cases,
I've found the mantra that helps me to keep my own sanity:
"C-grade students also get a job."
(The origin of this phrase might become more clear from the following
background fact: I've taught many (several hundreds) students with various
engineering majors, and some of those felt they were entitled for
a good grade just because they attended the class, even though they
didn't put enough effort in it, if at all.)
Here is one example of a rather drastic engineering "oops":
The stairwell case in a family-oriented, reasonably spacious recently
built apartment complex was just a bit too narrow for a queen-size spring
box (for the bed) to pass at the turn/corner (straight, diagonally,
vertically, - we've tried all), so that the only way to get
it to the 2nd and 3rd floor was to lift it with ropes from the balcony.
Cheers,
Igor
PS. And the numbers quoted by Paul are huge! 3 ml, or even 1 ml?!
Switching some 12-15 times would consume the entire cartridge.
If true, that's a robbery!
Godfrey DiGiorgi Mon, 01 Jul 2019 18:40:40 -0700 wrote:
You ask questions for which I can only conjecture, and I don't do that. I
can only say for sure what the manual says.
"EPSON P600 User Manual - page 137
Switching the Black Ink Type
Switching the black ink type takes several minutes and consumes some ink
in the process. Check the black ink type media list to select the correct
type for the media you loaded.
1. Press the home button.
2. Press the black ink change button.
3. Select Proceed and select one of these types of black ink to switch to:
• Photo Black to Matte Black—switching takes about 1.5 minutes
• Matte Black to Photo Black—switching takes about 3.5 minutes"
I would imagine that the two Black inks use the same feed lines in the
head from this, and likely because of the added cost of doing independent
feed lines (and whatever other complications that it might entail). But
that's as far as I am willing to conjecture. I don't design this stuff, I
use it. Far be it from me to tell the engineers how to do their job.
I turned off autoswitching because I only rarely print on papers that
don't take Matte Black ink and found that if I chose the wrong paper type
at first then later changed to the correct paper type, the printer
needlessly cycled back and forth wasting a lot of time and a bit of ink.
G
On Mon, 1 Jul 2019, Igor PDML-StR wrote:
Godfrey,
That information that the printer has an ink-changing cycle is interesting.
But what is actually done during that cycle?
I assumed that having both blacks simultaneously spares you from any
ink waste, and what I am reading from your suggests (if I understood it
correctly), that could be a wrong assumption.
But I am still curious, - what do they actually do? Purge the nozzles from
one black and initialize them with the other one? That would mean
that despite having both black cartridges installed at the same time, they
are multiplexing the head nozzles.
But why? Why wouldn't they have separate sets of nozzles, just considering
each black as a separate color (like they do for Light Black and Light-Light
Black [LK and LLK])?
Igor
Godfrey DiGiorgi Sun, 30 Jun 2019 18:14:15 -0700 wrote:
BTW: the P600 ink tanks are much larger than R2400 and R2880. They're up in
the 20-25 ml range. And the Photo Black and Matte Black inks are installed
simultaneously … the printer will even change ink mode automatically based
upon the paper you select, if you enable that option. (I don't, because it
means more possibilities of an ink change cycle which takes time and costs
ink.) I've found the P600's ink tanks and general economy in printing reduce
the per print cost quite significantly over the R2400.
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