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0) To address the first problem - keeping your print heads clean (an article I wrote 11 years ago) - Keep Your InkJet Print Head Clean[^] - it's pretty nifty, in that it will allow you to use the same piece of paper over and over again.
1) For the 2nd question I have an Epson Stylus Photo 1400, and it has a CD caddy to print on printable DVD/CD. I think Canon also makes a printer with the same feature (or at least, they used to).
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Thanks for the article John. I was expecting to see something I've read a million times before, but I didn't expect to see code and an actual accompanying program - nice.
As for the replacing the printer - it's either gonna be laser, or none at all, and it looks like laser isn't an option for printing on CDs. I wouldn't really expect that getting a different inkjet will do much to address my root problem.
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Laser printers can't print on dvds. It would have to be an ink-jet.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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I have a Canon Inkjet as well. It's a multi function and the scanner part is actually very nice. But I agree, inkjet sucks. It's shaky and noisy, ink is expensive and refills don't work well.
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Had the same problem because I only used the printer from time to time, so ink dried out eventually, which is why I ended up dicthing my inkjet printer a couple of years ago.
I had to buy a printer during the lockdown though (for the kids homework) and there was no affordable laser printer available (because, well, lots of people had to buy a printer during the lockdown, thank you very much teachers - but to be fair that was not a big deal).
So I ended up ordering a very very cheap hp inkjet, and I subscribed to hp instant ink, which is cool : I get as much ink as I need for a couple of euros a month - or even 0 if I print less than 15 pages a month vs. about 65€ of cartridges almost every other time I had to print something.
Maybe I will get rid of it once good laser printers are available to buy again, but for the moment, that's plenty sufficient.
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I used LightScribe back in the day. Don't see it much these days.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Some years ago, there were vax printers, depositing droplets of melted, colored vax onto the paper. They were said to avoid the ink jet problems of cloggin up: The vax hardened from cooling down, not from any sort of evaporation. So next time you want to print anything, any remains in the nozzle is heated up again and become liquid.
You don't see many vax printers around today. If I remember right, there were problems with the long-term stability of the dyes; they were slowly broken down by UV light and the image faded out. For CDs kept almost constantly in their closed cases, this is not much of an issue (compared to printing photos to hang on the wall in the sunshine). If you happen to come across a vax printer, you might consider it - but my guess is that you will have to search the secondhand market; I don't think there are many brand new models on the market today.
I have a dead ink jet printer, but before I buy myself a new one, I must manage to build up a new enthusiasm for hobby photography. (In my younger years, I spent all my time and surplus money on camera equipment, film and darkroom materials.) For serious photo work, only ink jet printers are available. A coworker of mine got his printer for a bargain price of around USD 3000! Our office walls were covered with his (really great) photos, printed directly on canvas(!) on his printer. It could handle A1 width (roughly 84 cm) wide continous roll heavy paper or canvas, with a software controlled knife to cut the paper from the roll at any length. I also believe that professional printers like this have a professional grade nozzle cleaning mechanism, and ink bottles are of a completely different class.
I consider my coworker's printer kind of extreme, and will step down a couple classes when/if I decide to establish my own "Darkroom Mark II". If I do, one non-negotiable requiremnt is that I will make use of it at least a couple of times every week. I am considering to make an announcement at work (we are 200+ at our site, and there are quite a few eager amateur photographers among them) that they can have large prints made at my printer for the marginal cost of paper and ink. For me, just to keep my printer in fit condition, for them to have the option to directly control format, paper quality etc, and have the print produced the day they hand over the image file to me. I guess I'd go for a model with A3 or A2 (30 or 42 cm) continous roll paper.
... This is of course way beyond your printer needs. I tell it only to say that for some uses, there are no viable alternatives to ink jet printers. If you can't be sure to use it regularly (/frequently), then find some other ways to have your prints made.
Allow me one last question: Printing on CDs nowadays?? What is the use case for that? You can't ship neither you own music nor software to others, expecting them to have a set-top player or CD-ROM reader, nowadays. Using it for your own backups, 650 Mbyte is uncomfortably small - even 4.3 GByte DVDs are not really usable. I just ordered a new external disk for backup, at a price of roughly USD 25 per terabyte, 2.5 cents per gigabyte. 1.5 cents for the capacity of a CD-ROM. So you can't be choosing CDs for saving money. Certainly not for speed! So I am really curious about your use of CDs, AD 2020!
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Member 7989122 wrote: Allow me one last question: Printing on CDs nowadays?? What is the use case for that?
Audio.
True story: An 80-year old acquaintance of mine has recently developed a taste for writing songs. He's no singer himself, but he records his stuff on a small portable voice recorder (which records into MP3s), then has me transfer them to either USB sticks, for his friends who can use them, or CDs for those who don't know any better. Yes, I know there's much better ways nowadays to do all this. I made the mistake of telling him I had a printer that could print on CDs, so he's having me create custom images (and I have zero talent as an artist) and print them...
Two things:
a) He pays me well enough to do this work for him
b) I'm not going to start teaching him or his friends "the better ways".
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dandy72 wrote: An 80-year old acquaintance of mine has recently developed a taste for writing songs.
That's awesome, kudos to him! I fairly recently started playing an instrument with the hopes of one day maybe composing a song. I haven't got anywhere near that point yet.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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For this use case I'd recommend a laser printer with Avery CD labels. The only other accessory I'd get would be the "Great Gizmo": Great Gizmos custom short run CD labels, jewel case starter kit[^]. I used one for many years with great results for positioning the CD label.
Now the bottom part of it got a second life as support for my 3D printer filament but that's another story.
Mircea
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Here here. 
Color is just not that important as just being able to print.
Viva la Laserjet. It's baaaaack
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Unfortunately you are running into a factor endemic to the technology. Given that consumer inkjet relies on the characteristics of a water-based fluid, those characteristics (concentration, conductivity, etc) tend to change over time. This leads to jet clogging, poor adherence to paper, and so on. Consumer printers have minimal ability to manage this, given that they're sold below cost typically. The manufacturer makes their money on cartridges, which usually contain the elements most sensitive to time-based changes in the ink.
Your application is a little difficult as well. Printing optical disc labels implies adhesive-backed paper, which you can't use in a laser due to the heat.
My suggestion is to find a local print shop (is Kinko's still around?) that would print labels for you as you need them.
The alternative is to keep an inkjet printer around and print a test page to exercise the thing every so often.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Of course you can use sticky labels (which come on backing sheets) in a laser printer, provided that you use label stock that is designed for this use, as most commercial labels now are. The problems which concern me with stick-on CD labels are the difficulty of getting them perfectly centered when applying them and the added thickness which they introduce, which is a problem for some slim-line CD drives.
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I haven't bought labels in a long time, so I didn't realize they'd addressed the label-coming-off-around-the-drum problem they used to have. Good to know.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I always used the laser Labels, and that Stomper/Stamper thingy.
buy good labels.
TOTALLY Agree about the Inkjets. I had ONE, never again. Same exact problem.
I did learn that taking the toner cartridges out, and ZIP LOCKING them air tight really helped.
Also try taking them out and RE-APPLYING the tape/plastic over the nozzle port.
Finally, try cleaning a "dried out one" with alcohol at the port, until you get some color. I've done that, but the ink was a bit funny for a few prints...
With ALL of the "games" they play with Tech and these cartridges. You would think an AIR TIGHT SEAL when the printer is off would be ONE of them? Park the print head in a way that keeps the air away...
But then how do you make money on a $50 printer... Selling Ink... Continuously!
I would Pay Kinkos to use their printer at their OUTRAGEOUS fees... It's got to be cheaper!
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and this right here reminds me why I bought our laserjet a few years ago.
To err is human to really mess up you need a computer
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I leave my inkjet printer powered on all the time and have a cron job print a test page once week to keep it happy! 
I don't print enough to justify a laser.
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StarNamer_ wrote: I don't print enough to justify a laser.
What's your criteria for "justifying" a laser?
My laser color cost me $100 at Staples nearly a decade ago. Clearly, I don't print much either, as I'm still on the starter cartridges.
Given what inkjets do when underutilized, the argument could be made that you should avoid inkjets if you don't print much...
If I followed your idea, I'd probably waste the entire cartridges printing weekly test pages and nothing else.
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The cheapest laser colour printer on Amazon is about £140 (Xerox). I might be able to find one cheaper elsewhere but it would probably be a brand I'd never heard of and of unknown reliability.
I have a 10-year old Epson inkjet printer+scanner which cost about £60 when I bought it; it uses individual colour ink cartridges. I've probably had trouble with ink cartridges less than half a dozen times since I've had it.
I actually scan more than I print - 2 to 3 scans a month compared with only 1 or 2 prints. So this would mean keeping the inkjet alongside the laser or buying a combined colour laser printer with scanner - the cheapest I could see was about £275 (HP) on Amazon.
Since I no longer print as much as I used to (does anyone?), sending a single page print to the printer every week keeps the heads OK and I haven't had problems for couple of years. The test print paper gets used for sketching, doodling, rough notes, etc., so isn't just thrown away. I buy 'compatible' cartridges which last for years - I last replaced one about a year ago.
Prior to the Covid-19 lockdown and working from home, if I needed laser quality prints, I could send them to a work printer; I work in the IT department. For reading, letters, etc, inkjet quality is usually acceptable.
So, given I'd need to spend around £275 for about 15 to 20 prints per year, I can't justify replacing the inkjet printer unless it breaks down. And with such low usage that seems unlikely!
Anyway, I'd rather spend the money on add-ons to my 3D printer where I 'print' something almost every day!
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I share some of your pain, and I have a Canon color inkjet for the same primary reason (printing on CDs) that you do. Like you, I use it very rarely. However, although the first print after a long (weeks) gap always takes a while (minutes) to start, and quite a lot of ink sometimes seems to disappear between uses, I have never had serious problems with it. One reason may be that I always shut it down 'properly', using the front panel soft power switch, after every use. Canon does warn you to do this, and it does seem to matter. I have always assumed that the printer 'caps' the heads in some way when you formally shut it down, so that they are at least somewhat protected from blocking up and/or drying out.
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Interesting - I was not aware of this. That being said, I always use its power button to power it off (which is clearly not just a switch that simply cuts power), and I've always made the assumption it "does the right thing" to do a clean shutdown--there clearly is some activity taking place, and it takes a few seconds for it to power off.
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You are doing exactly what I do, then.
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Oddly, I have a Canon Pixima ip6700D printer that seems to just work. I have not used it for up to 3-4 months and then when I do I print one test sheet and then it is ready to go with no issues. I find it amazing that this keeps being the case. I never have used any cartridges that are not original Canon OEM ones in it. I keep expecting to have to pitch it but it likes its home i guess.
It is also capable to print on CD's. Although the option was unavailable for US models and you could not order the parts from Canon for US. So I asked a work associate in Canada to get me the pieces. they where less than $15. Changed the firmware to Europe version and away she went.
Of course now that I said all this the ink in my 6700D just flashed dried out and nozzles melted. 
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MikeMSA wrote: Oddly, I have a Canon Pixima ip6700D printer that seems to just work
[...]
MikeMSA wrote: Of course now that I said all this the ink in my 6700D just flashed dried out and nozzles melted
You jinxed it. So the lesson is...
[Basic Fawlty]
Don't mention the...printer?
[/Basic Fawlty]
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Here's what worked for me. I bought an inexpensive 'pigment base' inkjet printer that could do CDs and could also use refillable ink cartridges. I then used 'dye based' inks in the cartridges instead of the normal pigment inks. The pigment ink particles are larger than the dye ink particles so the pigment ink printer heads have larger holes than the dye ink printers. Basically, I wore out the printer mechanism before I got a clog (very infrequent) that wouldn't clear with a simple cleaning.
There are issues with the dye based inks. The 'print' will be more likely to fade and be less 'wear' resistant than a pigment ink print. Normally when you make a print with a dye based printer you should use a swellable polymer paper to make the print more wear/fade resistant.
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