Another Printer Bargain...

[ffutures]

And this time there's no question mark!

For a while now I've been looking for a cheap wide-carriage printer for posters and game handouts etc. E.g. I anticipate including some very large spaceship deck plans in the Empire of Earth game setting. Laser wasn't really on because wide toner cartridges are hellishly expensive, so I knew I'd have to go the inkjet route. Bid on a couple on eBay but failed to get them.

But on Wednesday I found an HP Officejet K7100 for £20 on Gumtree - an A3 inkjet that must have sold for about £150 originally. To make things even better, the vendor brought it round to me since I was a bit worried about transporting it by tube. It's a truly massive beast, about 2ft wide and 18" deep, 2ft deep with the trays extended for A3 paper; I got inks today (cost a tenner for recycled cartridges) and the results are excellent. Provided I don't waste the ink it ought to be just what I need.

What I need to do, I think, is store the cartridges when they aren't in use to prevent them drying out. Am I right to think that you can do this by putting some sort of tape over the ink nozzles? If so, can anyone remember which works best?

Comments

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Officejets are good pieces of kit, a step up from regular HP desktop inkjet printers. We have a Calcomp roll plotter next door with a 36" wide carriage but it's a pen plotter not an inkjet.

I spotted a Brother A3 printer/scanner in a local charity shop a little while back, red-tag reduced to £15. It was only when I went to grab it I saw it had a "Sold" sticker on it. Bum.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

One of the ones that Morgans were "giving away" if you bought enough ink cartridges? Maybe someone bought it just to get the inks!

Really can't believe my luck in getting the Officejet, it's just what I needed. You can even get a duplexing gizmo for it, but I think I can live without - there's only one on ebay and it costs £40!

No

[nojay.livejournal.com]

The Brother in the charity store had a real A3 scanner, it wasn't the Brother all-in-one model Morgan is selling which is an A3 printer with an A4 scanner on top, hence my disappointment. I keep sticking my head in the shop in case it comes back for resale as some of the office stuff does from time to time but it's not turned up again.

Re: No

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Oh, right, a good one. That's a shame. Did you get the model no. for future reference?

Re: No

[nojay.livejournal.com]

I think it was the MFC-J6510DW. The price new on Amazon etc. is about 150 quid. There's another model, the 6710DW which is nearly the same price, also with an A3 scanner but it has a second paper tray. They come with Wifi and Ethernet as standard as well as USB.

I don't want/need to scan A3 often but it's nice to have the capacity available when I do. I did have a flatbed A3 scanner but I lost it in an office move a while back. It's another thing I keep my eyes open for in charity shops.

Re: No

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'll let you know if I spot anything and don't snaffle it for my own use.

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

Seal the cartridges with some kind of airtight tape (electrical tape should do), and put it in a zip lock back with a source of moisture, (damp bit of cloth or sponge) and keep in a cool dark place.
Great buy, I'm very jealous. I've been looking out for a cheap A3 printer myself, though if I'm honest, I don't need one enough to justify the space it would take up, especially when I can get A3 colour printing done at work for a reasonable price these days.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'll try that.

A3 printers of one sort or another seem to come up on eBay or Gumtree quite often, but more often than not they're "buyer collects" (especially on Gumtree) or some other problem. I would have been prepared to collect this one, but the seller offered to bring it round, I wasn't going to turn him down!

I missed another HP A3 printer on Gumtree which was a tenner - it sold in the four or five hours before I spotted it. But it was a deskjet, not Officejet.