Swapping printheads and inks among Phaser models

[fixit4me]

I am new here and I will try to catch up on what is going on. But in the meantime here is a thought that you might want to explore.

I would like members opinion on a couple of things that some may find interesting. Or not.

It's common practice for some xerox techs to drop a printhead from one model phaser into another. An example would be to drop a serviceable 840 printhead into a 850 or even an 8200 And consider this to be a good repair.

In addition to swapping the print heads they drop in a 840 loader and 840 ink in any of these units.

They swear that you can't tell any drop in print quality under any condition. They agree the 8200 is a higher res unit but the prints using 840 inks and 840 printheads in any of these printers just don't show any difference under print comparisons.

I am sure many of you techs have probably done some of these things yourselves.

But to my real question.

Ink cost for 840 inks are cheap, $2 - $5 off of eBay. Compare an 850 at about $20 and 860 or 8200 even higher.

How many of you have dropped an 840 loader full of 840 ink into a 850 or 8200 and printed a few thousand copies just to see how it performs?

I have done this for a long time and have my own recorded results. How about you?

 

[datscolor]

None of these models can swap printheads outside of their own nomenclature. The firmware will not handshake with the image processor. The inks between models are not compatible chemically. If mixed, they will coagulate and clog the jets.

 

[tommyfp3]

Thank you datscolor. I really do appreciate your response and it is all good in theory but as mentioned I have been swapping printheads and dropping in 840 ink for over two years and have always traced my results. Never, ever, ever has the 840 ink clogged the jets or caused any problems whatever of any swap between 840, 850, 860 or 8200.

I am not trying to start an argument just wanting to know of others who have gone away from theory and actually done what I have. Or do they care?

 

[datscolor]

It wasn't theory. Until Xerox eliminated my position, I repaired Tektronix printers from their introduction. I understood you to have swapped an 840 printhead into an 8200 or an 850. I would be very curious how that was done. Great if it worked.
As far as inks, we sold many printheads that failed due to ink mixing or third party ink. Personally, I would go the lowest cost route, too. The third party manufacturer guaranteed their ink to work and they bought lots of printheads from us.

 

[Dacurve]

I'm a former Xerox hardware specialist.
840/850 printhead are practically identical. so are the 860/8200 printheads. ink was changed from the 840/850 but can be swapped out among these 2 printers (some color differences between the 2 machines though and they use different color lookup tables). ink formula for the 860 /8200 is exactly the same.. 860 ink was updated to 8200 standards (some customers complained about colors that changed, xerox made a updated color profile for these customers because they -unofficially- changed the ink formula.

ink can -not- be swapped out between 840/850 and 860/8200. this could and on the long term will cause damage to the printhead. i'm not sure about the chemical makeup of the inks, but they are different. one of the reasons they changed the ink was to prevent cyan bleading if you keep your prints for a long period of time.

can't remember if you can swap the actual printheads between 840/850 and 860/8200. can look this up for you though.