Ink cartridges is only a $1B global industry [0]. That isn’t a small market, but the global printing industry, with all digital content being transferred onto any 2d mediums through automatic means is probably closer to $1T. Think about every book, every magazine, every coffee mug with a funny saying, every graphic TShirt. In the world.

The ink cartridges are good money, but it’s not where the money is at.

[0] https://www.rfdtv.com/story/42630937/global-ink-cartridges-m...

That actually upsets me more: we're beset by stupid DRM and price-gouging on ink, and it's not even that profitable?

Are we anymore? I've been to an electronics store recently, most printers on display were ink tank models. Even HP ones!

It's not the main source of revenue, but for personal printing most of the money comes from selling ink cartridges. My dad used to work for a printer company and he said that on personal printer sales they usually broke even or sometimes sold at a loss. But all of that was made up with the profit margin on ink cartridge sales.

That model is juuuuuust about dead. Canon/Lexmark/HP are now all pushing megatank/ecotank continuous ink systems. I bought a Canon Pixma G6020 for printing photos and I'm super pleased with it. It comes with enough ink to do 18,000 black and white pages and 6000 full color pages. Refills are around $40 for the set.

Unless the design has changed, there is a pad that absorbs overflow ink from cleaning the print heads. After some time, that pad will be full, and then the printer will refuse to ever print again.

I've now had 2 Pixma G series break that way, with a third well set on that course.

I cleaned one of those overflow pad assemblies once, on an old Epson. I got several more years out of it. But what a disgusting job cleaning it was. It's a great huge tank with many layers of pads. Do they sell replacements? One guess.

They don't sell replacements, although I've heard of people DIY-ing it. However, the far bigger issue in my opinion is that when the printer detects that the absorber is full, it throws an error code (5B00) that prevents the printer from functioning, and can only be reset by the manufacturer.

I have yet to get a full tank out of one, and very much regret buying them.

How is that worth it for them? I pay $40 for a cartridge of about 1/10th the capacity, and the printer isn't even that expensive!

Although I bet I still have to send my document to it six times before it starts printing.