Marcel's Blog

What’s inside your ink cartridge?

sjackm — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:59:46 +0000

I took apart an old printer yesterday. Some time ago I bought a multifunctional and so I didn’t need the printer anymore(also the black cartridge was dead and I wasn’t going to invest money into a cartridge that costs as much as the printer).

I was interested in salvaging some of the printer parts. It has some interesting mechanisms driven by 2 DC motors, which was a surprise. I was expecting to find stepper motors, but instead of precisely controlling a motor it seems that the printer relies on an optical detection system that uses transparent bands with black stripes. Perhaps in the future I’ll be able to use the cogs and motors for some kind of a robot-machine controlled with Arduino. I think I can also save some capacitors from the circuit board.

The printer also had an interesting ink “pump”. I think I got the idea behind it, after playing a little with the ink cartridge slide mechanism. You know on some printers there are lots of noises before starting a print, among which a weird “locking” noise? Well, at one of the sliding line ends there’s a plastic plate with a hook. When the ink cartridges pass over the hook, the plate locks tightly with the 2 ink cartridges. On this plate there are 2 sponges from which 2 hoses go to the “pump”. The pump is driven by the paper feeder( a long metal bar that pulls the paper into the printer). A small quantity of ink goes to waste( don’t worry, there’s a big paper-like sponge to absorb this, so your printer won’t ever “spill” ink out of it) as this mechanism cleans the nozzles.

Alright! So now back to the subject. I was just curious to see how the ink is stored inside the ink cartridges so I opened both the black and the color one. Pictures:

The empty black ink cartridge alongside with the ink holding sponge.

The black ink sponge. As you can notice, it was never fully filled. Now you can be even more furious when wasting your money on a genuine ink cartridge. Now I might be wrong about this, probably there’s a GOOD reason it’s not filled entirely.

Here’s another shot with the black ink sponge:

The color cartridge! I think now you get the point why the color cartridge is consumed so fast:

The color ink holding sponges taken out:

Another macro shot. The yellow ink sponge got dirty because of me handling it

Well, at least I learned how the ink is stored in ink cartridges. I always thought it was a reservoir of ink, not ink suspended in sponges. There’s probably a logic reason behind this, but I also think some of the ink will never be used this way. Also, the way the thermal ink cartridges work makes it more probable for the nozzles to get permanently damaged if the sponge dries out( although I guess there’s a protection mechanism for this). Here’s a fragment from Wikipedia, the bold lines are important here:

Most consumer inkjet printers, such as those made by Canon, HP, and Lexmark (but not Epson) use a thermal inkjet; inside each partition of the ink reservoir is a heating element with a tiny metal plate or resistor. In response to a signal given by the printer, a tiny current flows through the metal or resistor making it warm, and the ink immediately surrounding the heated plate is vaporized into a tiny air bubble inside the nozzle. As a consequence, the total volume of the ink exceeds that of the nozzle. An ink droplet is forced out of the cartridge nozzle onto the paper. This process takes a matter of milliseconds.
The printing depends on the smooth flow of ink, which can be hindered if the ink begins to dry at the print head, as can happen when an ink level becomes low. Dried ink can be cleaned from a cartridge print head by gentle rubbing with isopropyl alcohol on a swab or folded paper towel.
The ink also acts as a coolant to protect the metal-plate heating elements − when the ink supply is depleted, and printing is attempted, the heating elements in thermal cartridges often burn out, permanently damaging the print head. When the ink first begins to run low, the cartridge should be refilled or replaced, to avoid overheating damage to the print head.

Now I know that when I refill a cartridge, I should push the syringe as deep as possible, and after having it refilled I should let the cartridge rest a bit so the ink can be equally absorbed by the entire sponge.

What intrigues me is how the ink level detection works, because I couldn’t figure that out. I also can’t figure out why after refilling the sponge the printer still reports the ink level as low.

Can’t open localhost on WAMP- solved

sjackm — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:36:30 +0000

After having searched a lot for this problem, I finally figured it out. Most of the guides will tell you to change in the httpd.conf( located in C:\wamp\bin\apache\Apache2.2.21\conf) the listening port from 80 to 8080(or really anything you want that doesn’t interfere with another web application). That’s because Skype uses port 80 and it enters in conflict with Apache.

So what do you do if your wamp server now lights up green but your localhost page still doesn’t load? It’s a simple information I could hardly find: just add the port after localhost. You will now write this in your adress bar:

localhost:8080

Ultra portable 128 GB

sjackm — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:05:41 +0000

I recently came into possession of a Kingston DataTraveler HyperX USB 3.0 memory stick(thanks wasd.ro for this!). It’s quite an incredibly powerful mobile storing solution for those that are always on the run, and a traditional portable hard-disk is not an option. The specs on such a memory stick leaves you with the mouth wide open. But of course, you have to own a motherboard with USB 3.0 ports, else it will run like a regular high-performance memory stick on an USB 2.0.

The transfer speeds are rated as following:

USB 3.0	READ: 225 MB/s	WRITE: 135 MB/s
USB 2.0	READ: 30 MB/s	WRITE: 30 MB/s

Well unfortunately I don’t own a motherboard with USB 3.0 ports, but the transfer speeds are good for USB 2.0 too. I tested the memory stick with Crystal DiskMark. Here are the results:

———————————————————————–
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
———————————————————————–
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read :    35.192 MB/s
     Sequential Write :    26.237 MB/s
Random Read 512KB :    32.720 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :     1.510 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :     3.003 MB/s [   733.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     0.083 MB/s [    20.3 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :     4.233 MB/s [ 1033.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     0.085 MB/s [    20.7 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/119.3 GB)] (x5)

Sequential Read :    35.797 MB/s
          Sequential Write :    17.298 MB/s
Random Read 512KB :    34.510 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :    14.852 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :     3.787 MB/s [   924.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     0.868 MB/s [   212.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :     4.656 MB/s [ 1136.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     0.913 MB/s [   222.8 IOPS]

Test : 50 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/119.3 GB)] (x5)

Sequential Read :    35.431 MB/s
          Sequential Write :    26.927 MB/s
Random Read 512KB :    34.681 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :     0.797 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :     3.904 MB/s [   953.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     0.080 MB/s [    19.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :     4.581 MB/s [ 1118.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     0.000 MB/s [     0.0 IOPS]

Test : 4000 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/119.3 GB)] (x5)

As you can see, the transfer speeds are quite consistent with the change of file size, but it suffers almost a 10 MB/s drop when I drop the file size to 50 mb/s. I imagine the speeds for lots of very small files get even worse. Of course, this differs with the type of format. The stick I tested was formatted using exFAT( I posted a list of formatting options for the USB memory stick here). The conclusion from the results? If you were to copy 128 GB from this stick( you can’t actually, the stick has 119 GB in reality( it differs from one to another)) it would take 1 hour. It’s not that good when writing at 17 MB/s: ~2 hours. These reading and writing times can be reduced under USB 3.0: ~10min for reading and ~16min for writing.

Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe: Aircraft Transportation Basics

sjackm — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:36:50 +0000

This is a tutorial that covers the topic of Aircraft Transportation. It’s mostly a talk on it, not necessarily a tutorial, because figuring out how to make air routes is easy. You can say it at least stimulates your appetite for trying a different approach at winning the game.

Unfortunately, even if my goal was to provide 1080p resolution, this has to be one of the poorest quality videos I uploaded, not judging by image quality, but by annoyance . For some reason, Cam Studio produces what I would optimistically call a “time lapse” video output. I don’t know why it does it, I used it to record OpenTTD videos before and it worked just fine. Then I found Microsoft Expression Encoder 4. You think the title is long? Nah, it just gives you a tip: “beware… something else is long in this program too…”. I was very pleased to notice that it records very well my screen. My happiness stopped when I also noticed that it doesn’t directly record to a normal video file. Instead, it spits out its own, weird, type of video file. This needs encoding, of course! The encoding process for a 10 minute video file took 4 hours on my E6500. If that wasn’t enough, it seems that not all the footage recorded by Expression Encoder 4 is flawless. You can notice this when watching: most of the video is jerky, so you’ll probably listen to a story more than watch an actual video. Argh X(

I hope, even though I shouldn’t, that you like it .

2012 is here

sjackm — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 01:31:37 +0000

Happy New Year!

This night we should rejoice that another year passed and we are still standing, still having hopes and still being able to be happy. Even enemies celebrate together at this party. Like my dog and cat, I never saw them together until now:

Have any new year resolutions? Perhaps you have, but if you don’t, I’m sure you desire something on the long term. Like me- I wish for a successful year for my education and professional\hobby progress. Oh, and be a bit more creative than the last year.

I have to recognize: this is a period of excesses food is the most significant here. At least I had some delicious trout for the festive dinner. It was so well cooked that I enjoyed eating even the bones! My heart will surely thank me for all the Omega3 oils I ingested .

Among other things, the atmosphere is literally bombarded with beautiful fireworks, but pollution speaks for itself. In many areas the air is left unbreathable and covered in smoke. Well, at least it’s not as bad as a few years back, when you could simply cut through the smoke.

I noticed 2 odd things tonight. My hall clock stopped in 2011- at 12:10 I noticed that the clock was dead at 11:45 in 2012. Interesting time for the battery to fail . The 2nd thing kind of disturbed me. As I was watching on the window, I observed 2 kids drinking from what seemed to be a wine bottle. After they finished it, they broke the bottle on the asphalt. Both of them were younger than 10 years I think. Where are we heading with this? Some parents should be warned about giving some proper education to their children.

Finally, this is the fireworks show our town hall provided:

Drinking Twinings for the first time

sjackm — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 22:00:15 +0000

The December edition of National Geographic magazine came with a little bonus: a Twinings bag of tea. There weren’t a lot of details written on the bag other than the sortiment, simple preparation instructions and the adress of the company. I was expecting to see a description of the bag’s content, but probably that’s only mentioned on the box.

The particular tea I drank has the title “Voyage – Brazilian Baía”. The scent of coconuts and vanilla made me think I’m going to soon taste something good. It has a combination of a few aromas, but the the strongest flavor was still the coconut one. It also left a very weak bitter taste in my mouth, it was almost like a “polish” to all the other flavors.

I read in the magazine that the company( actually at that time only a tea room) was founded in 1706 by Thomas Twining, a time when tea was a privilege granted only for nobles. It was basically a pioneer in selling tea, popularizing it to the masses. So from this story I understand that Twinings is probably popular among british people and is part of Great Britain culture.

I must say that I was feeling like a “sir” when drinking this cup of tea, which I enjoyed to the fullest. I can’t wait to buy a pack of these when I’ll have the occasion

The interesting story of Mars

sjackm — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 22:29:01 +0000

I found a nice narrated documentary clip about Mars that is quite interesting: it tries to prove that Mars was much like our Earth in the past, until a major catastrophe, at least.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Game Review

sjackm — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:39:08 +0000

This is one of the most beautifully detailed games I’ve seen in a while. It basically like a milestone in RPG and MMORPG games, definitely a game that should inspire others.

15 Years of Download.com: Interesting Charts and Data

sjackm — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:12:08 +0000

The following is a cnet infographic with interesting data about download.com over the years:

Stunning Theory: Expect a second ”sun” to be seen on the sky

sjackm — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 09:54:27 +0000

Recently I’ve been reading some stories about getting a second ‘sun’ on the sky as soon as 2012( oh what a perfect date… is this supposed to fuel the theory of the end of the world? it is becoming increasingly ridiculous to correlate unusual natural phenomenons with a world end…

The ‘second sun’ will actually be a supernova explosion of Betelgeuse, one of the brightest and biggest stars in our vicinity. The resulting explosion will be so intense that it will outshine the moon.

Betelgeuse is only about 10 million years old(compare that to the 4 billion years of our sun), but because of its high mass it has rapidly consumed its hydrogen. This star is approaching a cataclysmic death, but scientists can’t be sure when it will happen. It can be today, or thousands of years in the future. So assigning 2012 as the date of this event is just a childish guess. Yes, it can happen then, although it’s highly improbable. And the explosion won’t damage our Earth’s ecosystems: it will just disrupt the normal day-night cycle for a couple of weeks. It’s all about observing a distant astronomical object (Betelgeuse is about 640 light years away form us- that means that the star may have already exploded!).

Here’s one of the blog posts about this I’ve read.

Blog – How Much Does Betelgeuse Weigh? (technologyreview.com)
Supernova explosion will be visible from UK (guardian.co.uk)
Neutrino fun facts! (scienceblogs.com)