[Hidden-tech] Local Ink-Jet Printer Repair

[Will Loving]

On the topic of inkjet printers as "a sales vehicle for ink cartridges", I
offer this little story:

My father - born in 1911 - was childhood friends with Dave Packard (the "P"
in HP). They grew up together and worked together as teenagers installing
antennas on people's houses and repairing radios. Dave went off to Stanford
and the rest is history. Over the years my Dad and Dave stayed in touch and
in the year before both of them died, I escorted my father to Los Altos to
visit with Dave one last time (this would have been 1996 I think).

As we were eating breakfast one morning, Dave posed the following question:
"We have a plant in Idaho that makes 1,000,000 inkjet cartridges a day. The
wholesalers sell them for about $17 each and the retailers sell them for
about $25-30 each. How much do you think it costs us in parts and labor to
manufacturer them?" ...long pause... We took our best guesses but were way
high. The answer was $0.50, $0.25 in labor and $0.25 in parts. That was in
1996 and I'm sure costs have only gone down since them.

Of course that doesn't take into account R&D budgets, but you know that they
are still making LOTS of money on cartridges. I've been predicting for years
that we will someday see a promotion like "buy two sets of cartridges and
get the printer free." It's almost that way now.

Will

Will Loving, President
Dedication Technologies, Inc.



on 8/2/06 9:25 PM, Jonathan Dill at jfdill at jfdill.com wrote:

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> 
> David Shakun wrote:
>> Any recommendations for area businesses that perform printer (inkjet,
>> laser) repair?
> An inkjet printer is essentially a sales vehicle for ink cartridges.  If
> you put environmental concerns aside, I would expect it to almost never
> be cost-effective to repair an inkjet printer unless it is a really
> high-end unit, or you can find someone who repairs a lot of inkjet
> printers so can do it at a lower cost.  I wonder if any manufacturers
> out there are taking back old printers and trying to recycle them or
> anything, that would definitely be a good thing and I'd like to hear
> about it.  Beware of Dell inkjets though, they are cheap plastic junk
> and poorly supported in my opinion.
> 
> If the printer is out of warranty, it looks like something is clogged
> up, and you won't cry if it ends up trashing your printer, you might be
> able to do something with swabs and high purity isopropyl alcohol
> (97-99%).  I used to do that myself when inkjets were more expensive.
> The best swabs are foam-tipped, the ones I got were sold for cleaning
> the heads in magnetic tape drives.  Cotton swabs can leave fibers that
> will leave streaks on printouts.
> 
> Jonathan
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