Hi,

I just unboxed my Epson PX800FW / Artisan 800. I got a little bit suspicious when it looked like the tape around the box was "rewrapped" but the content looked new and ok. But with my slightly aroused attention I saw "colour" in the ink section and on closer inspection (and a kitchen towel) I found magenta ink on all 6 needles, and on what I think is the waste pad beneath.

Is this normal ? Would someone be that stupid that he puts his magenta cardridge in the wrong place, 6 times and than bring it back to the store (who puts it properly in the box again and resells it to me) ? Hard to believe this is the world we life in. Could this be from factory testing ? (why don't they use the proper inks than, I guess the other colors are equally expensive to them)

How long do you expect that this ink will contaminate my outputs ? Ok it is not much ink, and maybe the first automatic cleaning and aligning and all that will clean out most of it, but it is the dark magenta maybe you need little ink to spoil the yellows)



Peter

OK, I continued digging the internet in search for users, stories, faqs,... and then I found a review where they use this image :

http://www.justechn.com/images?g2_itemId=25033, they just unboxed their Artisan printer which is identical to mine (European models have a slightly different name) (probably unused when they took the images because on another picture you see that they still have to turn the yellow "thingy" inside to set it up/unlock the printhead. On the picture you also see magenta "spill" on nearly every slot and on the "needles".

So now we either have a pattern or at least two idiots on two different continents, who ruined their printer, brought it back and the shops where so kind to resell them. I would bet on the first theory.

So I'm getting a little bit more at ease now but "why?", why is there magenta spill on a new printer. I read in the documentation that there is some really long clean-up routine when you install the cardridges (that I'm beginning to understand why).

If it is for testing, why don't they use the proper inks in the proper slots - they make their inks themselves so I guess magenta is nearly as expensive to them as black or yellow ?? It can't be technically "harder" to use the correct colors on the correct spots for testing purposes ??