Wednesday 11 August 2010

Printer issues

I guess I can't really complain, having owned my Epson R2400 for about 5 years now, but it recently began spewing ink out of the front every time I changed a cartridge or it went through a cleaning cycle. It was still producing excellent prints, so I was reluctant to spend £600+ on replacing it.

I contacted Epson to see what they could do - they could collect it and service it for £200, but that seemed like a lot of money to spend on a 5-year old printer. After a bit of online searching, I decided that it must be the waste ink tank that was full. Rather than spending £600, or £200, I ordered a waste tank kit for a tenner that essentially bypasses the internal waste tank.

The printer is working fine again, but the really worrying thing now is, since the waste tank is now outside the printer and visible, I can actually see how much ink is wasted every time I have to change a cartridge! For what is said to be the most expensive liquid on the planet (mine works out to around £1 per ml), that's a lot of waste!

Do you think I can bottle it and sell it back to Epson?

Monday 9 August 2010

Commission completed

As expected, I didn't have chance to scan any further stages of this during the last 5 days of shows, so here we are at the finished article.

It's been a very successful 5 days, beginning with Thornton Le Dale Show on Wednesday, which was much busier than I was expecting, then 4 days at Hawes, which gave me chance to get this dog finished.

So that's it for commissions for this year (having done 2). I now need to get my print stocks back up for the next set of shows and to replenish the Harlow Carr Exhibition that is still going on.