Understanding the Ink Tank printer revolution

Siva Kumar, Senior General Manager of Epson’s Inkjet printers, talks about the Ink Tank printer revolution, which has really taken off this decade and how lowering costs have led to a greater penetration into the overall market with eco-friendliness.

How the ink tank printer took off…

Epson became the first company to introduce the genuine ink tank printer in 2011. Before that we had the ink cartridge model, but the inkjet market was not really growing. We did a survey in the emerging markets including India and found that ink cartridge as a concept was not acceptable mainly because consumers did not have the freedom to print. It was very easy to buy the product, say for Rs 3000, but the cost of printing per page in black was about Rs 1.50 and Rs 5 for colour. People also wanted to avoid the frequent refilling of the ink cartridge.

Based on that feedback we introduced the ink tank printer and its acceptance as a technology has grown well. For example before 2011 if it was 100% ink cartridge version, last year ink tank has taken 71% of the space. There has been a drastic reduction in costs and its just 7 paise for black and 18 paise for the CMY colour now. As far as the ink bottle goes, it gives 4500 pages for mono and 7500 for colour. The combination of high yield ink bottle with low cost of print attracted not only the home user, but also the office customer, that is the commercial segment including SOHO, SMB and corporate segment. Thanks to this we have been able to penetrate these markets and grow our market share.

The success of the mono ink tank printer…

We initially started with colour ink tank, but now we introduced just the mono ink tank printer in 2013. The biggest acceptance of this came from the office segment as most of the printing there happens in black and white. They did not appreciate the colour printer so they wanted us to make the mono version. We currently have 14 models just for that. This has helped us penetrate deeper into the office segment. It was particularly popular with photocopy-printing shops, cyber cafes and students who have to take a large number of printouts for project work.

When compared to a laser printer…

While the ink tank market has grown, the laser printer market has shrunk in the past years. Customers believe laser printers give speed, quality and reliability. But all these factors are covered in the ink tank printers and the prints are water resistant and smudge resistant. But over and above that, ink tank printers have much cheaper printing cost. In fact to cut costs in laser printing, some people go in for a refill toner which leads to a host of other problems. The TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is also much lower in ink tanks.

Why they are more eco-friendly…

They are also eco-friendly for all the above reasons and they also consume less power. There is also less e-waste as a plastic bottle is much simpler when compared to a laser cartridge. When you look at the physical dimensions, the ink bottle gives a 97% space saving. But we are not just talking about the saving in the office space, but the complete supply chain: From packing in the factory, to transportation to reaching the customer. Then the ink tanks last also much longer.

We are giving this message about sustainable development to all our SMB and corporate customers. Epson has already adopted 13/17 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. (Certain goals like No Hunger, No Poverty, Life under water etc we can’t adopt, but all others we can). We have high productivity products that are compact and efficient. They have less e-wastage, less power consumption and less water consumption.

How Epson compares with its competitors on this…

We were the first to introduce the genuine ink tank printer in 2011. Initially everyone thought it wouldn’t be a success but later other brands realized that ink tank was going to be the future and they started developing it. The basic difference between us and the competition is that we use the Micro Piezo Technology whereas the others use Thermal Inkjet.

A Micro Piezo printer is much more reliable and it can have a precise placement of dots. It can produce high resolution prints and it can produce variable dots. This means that it can print high coverage images without reducing speed. Even the smaller or finer details will be covered with smaller dots. When it comes to a solid background, then it covers with a big dot. This is called Variable Sizes Droplet Technology (VSDT).

But in a thermal, if a high coverage and finer details have to be reproduced, it uses only the smallest droplet. So to cover up the solid background, it has to print multiple times. That’s why it loses out on speed. These are all mechanical parts and that’s why the replacement rate is also high in thermal.

On ease of using the technology…

If you look at our latest generation of Ink Tank printers, we changed the ink bottle design and they are now squeeze-free and spill-free. You just have to place the ink bottle on the ink tank and the ink flows automatically. It is easy to remove and shuts automatically even if there is slight space left while placing. Long back with inkjet printers, people felt that if it was not used for long, the nozzle would get blocked. We can use an ink pen analogy. When a pen is used continuously, the ink flow is very smooth. But when it is not used for 45-60 days, the flow is not smooth while writing and we try to shake the pen and end up spilling ink. So when it comes to inkjet technology, the printer knows how long it is idle and it goes for an auto cleaning when you switch it on after 45-60 days. The user may not know, but the nozzles automatically recover and start printing. Even in the worst case scenario of nozzle clogging due to dust accumulation, there is a cleaning provision given in the printer driver to rectify that. We are successful in the educational vertical where they have holidays of 30-45 days. The printer is idle during that time but printing is smooth when work is resumed.

Some of the latest innovations…

Over and above that in our latest model we have introduced three more improvements. One is print head mounted on electro conductive plastic which protects the nozzle by not absorbing dust that may have accumulated on the paper. Two, we developed an advanced tube which minimizes bubble formation. Third, the ink drying itself is changed. On top of that we have things like auto cleaning when the printer is idle. Finally these ink tanks are both economical and eco-friendly.