Ecotank printers?

I LOVE my Roomba, in fact, I have two - one for upstairs, one for down. I run them every day, and they do a great job. I’ve had them for about 7 years. I also have a Foodsaver, which is used a lot, even for more liquidy foods (using the sealer only, of course!). I just made enough tamales for 8 meals, so of course, the Foodsaver is priceless. Even when I buy bulk foods from Costco, I cut them down into meal portions and use the Foodsaver to vacuum seal them, whether for the freezer or dry foods that go on the shelf (such as a cornbread cake mix I make). I can’t imagine not having either one. Definitely better than an exercise bike!

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I’m on my 4th “foodsaver” vacuum bagger.

I cook sous-vide all the time, and just picked up 4 prime rib-eyes which I season, bag, then freeze to throw in the sous vide in the future. 4 steaks will last me a year.

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I’m on my second one. I did start buying the rolls online though, as they’re cheaper than buying them at Costco (which besides the cost of the bags, means a 2.5 hour round trip drive), and they work just as well. I do remember you talking about your sous vide before. I’m still considering that option, and I know Costco carries them also.

I get my rolls from Amazon.

I have two Anova immersion circulators, also from Amazon. Cheap and reliable. I’m not a fan of the “all in one” units because you can be limited in size. I use my Instant pot for most things (not powered on, but the pot itself is then insulated) but I can use the circulator in a cooler I cut a hole in the lid of to cook, for example, a prime rib roast or short ribs for 24-72hrs respectively.

I also make my own bacon then after slicing, bag and freeze small packages.

I keep my bulk pack of yeast vacuum sealed, and just enough for a few months in the fridge. Same with some spices. I buy chicken in bulk as well, season and bag enough for one meal and freeze it all. Just throw it in the sous vide when desired. Finish on the grill.

Like a laser, I can’t imagine being without a vacuum sealer.

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I have an ET-3710 ecotank. it is about a year old and no longer prints yellow. Next office printer will probably be a laser.

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How often did you use it?

about every other day for invoices / shipping labels, but that only uses the black and the cyan lines. Those work great!

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Your right of course. If I get an exercise bike, we’ll use it all of one day before it becomes a place to hang our clothes. And I don’t need any more spots for the kids and husband to randomly toss clothing around the house.

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I have two ecotank printers. One wide format for my normal printing which I don’t do a lot of and it hasn’t dried out on me even with months between prints. The other I ditched the ink and filled it with sublimation dyes. I will likely never own another inkjet printer that is NOT an ecotank. With the amount of printing I do with it I will likely never run out of ink. Sublimation dye… that I’ll probably run out of. But SO much cheaper than buying a sawgrass.

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Which ones do you have?

I think the reason there are problems with Epson Printers is that they were the first to go really high rez. I had one of the early ones that would take up to a 17" x 22" paper. I was using 3d Studio Max for Architectural rendering so the large page size and high rez was a real boon. I did have a lot of issues with folk who had made their mark as experts about color as the colors were not the same in the screen vs the print, and even the shading as caused by shadows got them upset. But that original machine had one-pint color containers that were expensive to replace but lasted a very long time.

Almost Immediately the next ones sold had the usual tiny tanks that were much more expensive per print. But tiny DPI meant that they clogged easily, and I suspect that the old pint-sized tanks were sorely missed. Hence the Ecotank.

I was using black only laser printers that the printer with a new load of ink was about $10 more than a new cartridge only. I ended up feeling bad to buy only a cartridge.

I have a Ecotank 2720 for printing and an Ecotank 15000 for sublimation printing, and I love them both. I’ll never go back to a conventional cartridge printer.

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My folks have an Ecotank and they’ve used it successfully for the last 4+ years still on the ink that came in it (which tells you how often they print) - it doesn’t dry out like standard inkjets. They absolutely adore it. This may be another thing that depends on environment, they’re in northern CA so not particularly humid or dry.

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Do you leave them “on” 24x7 so they can wander as needed & return to base to charge? I’m trying to figure out how many to plan for with our new house. Was going to do the same upstairs/downstairs but since the MBR wing could be closed off, thought might need another so it’s not banging into the bedroom door when it’s closed :blush:

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I have an older model Roomba upstairs - they use a somewhat random cleaning pattern so I never know exactly where that one is. It goes after we’re all downstairs for the day.
Downstairs I have a Yeedi with base which draws a map so you can program it at specific times to do specific areas of your house (and you can draw box around areas you never want it to go) - it needs light though so it can’t go at night. OTOH it’s SO MUCH quieter than the Roomba so I set it for like 7am where there’s light but no people.

So if you go with one that’s quite and mappable you probably don’t need a 2nd for your MBR wing - but you would need it to run when it’s got light.

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I think they might be a little more expensive right now because of supply chain issues but, I have been very happy with some of Brother’s low-end color laser printers. I currently have an HL-3170CDW for which I paid $194 in 2017 at Amazon. There is a newer model in that range, now.

I have also deployed several similar models to customer sites going back to about 2008 and, they have generated no memorable support issues.

I do envelopes and labels on mine regularly.

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We do leave them on 24/7. You can program what time you want them to come on, which days, etc. We have our downstairs one (named Rosie) set to come on at 8pm, because we’re upstairs by then, except during the summer, when we’ll change the time on it to 9pm. The upstairs one (Roxie) we have come on at noon, because by then we’ve finished our morning routine of having our leisurely cups of coffee and breakfast in the living room or on the deck, and are downstairs doing whatever (me in the craftroom, Marc outside). If I find I’m going to be in the kitchen during the day, I’ll just “dock” Roxie when she starts, either until I’m done in the kitchen, or sometimes she’ll just have to wait until the next day. We used to have Roxie come on 15 minutes before we wanted to get up, so that we’d be sure we’d have the bed made and got the decorative pillows off the floor. Just hearing her start was enough to get us up and moving. :slight_smile:

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I was down almost two years with a smashed hip and when I got back to my office, the only problem with my Epson color printer was the black cartridge was out of ink.

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This was the only issue I had too. I found that all my printing problems from the Epson were thank my cartridges weren’t as full as I thought they were. After refilling the ink, it prints perfectly.

I’m glad to hear others have had good experiences with Epson, but I’ve seen more than enough bad to stick by my statement. They are great printers, but I would never recommend them for someone who doesn’t print regularly.