HP Deskjet 1220C (A3 printer)

[highbridgesb]

I have an HP Deskjet 1220C (A3 printer) and have several times installed compatible cartridges. This time, however, the orange light flashes and I cannot get rid of it by any means - including putting in new compatibles.

The originals cost almost as the printer itself and I refuse to buy them.

Has anyone any thought as to how this problem can be overcome please?


Steve

[lnbolch]

A long time on-line friend had been working in HP's quality assurance group and got dumped during the merger with Compaq. He was quite bitter about losing this job, so he was certainly not spewing company propaganda.

When discussing printers in a forum where we both subscribed, I mentioned that I had two top-of-the-line HP printers die, with only the first covered by warranty. He asked only one question "Were you using third party inks?"

Since the printers cost just under $1,000Cdn at the time, I certainly was. He explained that the ink is actually part of the electronics - due to the way it was discharged onto the paper from the print head. It had to meet the electrical specifications within a very narrow tolerance. Since its formula was totally proprietary, a third party ink supplier could only guess at this value, and if discovered, needed precise manufacturing quality control to maintain it.

It was the electronics that blew. The printers began acting flaky, printing garbage, spewing out many sheets of paper with a little bit of print on some and finally they simply quit. It was actually a rather slow death. These were fairly early colour printers, and HP may have changed its methods since then. I saved a few dollars and wrecked nearly two grand worth of printers. Good economy, eh?

[highbridgesb]

Thanks Larry

I guess I send it to that printer graveyard in the sky!


Steve

[DavidW]

I took the 1220C that I'd had since new to the dump last month. It had decided to show colour cartridge faulty (along with the flashing orange light) on a high-capacity OEM cartridge. The cartridge hadn't been used much, but was out of warranty. I wasn't going to spend £40 on a new cartridge, particularly as it may have been the printer itself that was faulty.

It's a very old machine - around 7 years old. It won't print borderless (indeed, the bottom border is huge), the gamut is small, there's no ICC profiles, the ink technology is dye based and very old, and the use of a CMY cartridge means that it's expensive to run. I couldn't see there being any Vista drivers either, and like it or not, I'll probably finish up with a Vista machine within the next 12-18 months.


I didn't regard the 1220C as a photo quality printer, so it only got used for very occasional A3 plain paper work, which is why the cartridges had been sitting in it long after the cartridge warranty had run out. A4 plain paper work usually gets churned out of my Color LaserJet 3800dtn; it wasn't worth the extra expense for an A3 colour laser.

As the only photo inkjet I have is a relatively lowly Canon i865 (CMYK dye, K pigment), I am almost certainly going to order a B9180 next week. The B9180 will take over all my photographic and larger than A4 printing - in fact, everything that the colour laser won't do apart from CDs. I'll hang on to the i865 for printing CDs.



David

[highbridgesb]

Thanks

I use the A3 printer to print on A3 145gsm card (Coats of Arms) and need the A3 size. Any recommendations as to a suitable printer for this use?


Steve

[DavidW]

I'd look at the HP B9180.



David

[highbridgesb]

Thanks David

I'll have a butchers.


Steve