Z3100 + Hongsam ink from ink4you.com

[Thomas Krüger]

Just curious after discovering the link to ink4you.com I asked them about tests of lightfastness from an independent institute like the german www.image-engineering.de or Wilhelm Research.

Answer: There is no test available, but the inks were tested with the printer and from a chinese institute about chemical stability. They state also that they are service center and dealer of HP Z series printer. Now they sell the printer with their compatible ink, and HP China recommends their pigment ink to other HP dealer in China.

Links:
http://www.ink4you.com/english/xiangcp.php...%20Plotters-%3E

However, without any serious test results I won't put that ink into the printer since I can't answer my clients questions about the lightfastness of prints done with Hongsam ink. So, anybody in the western world has used this inkset?

UPDATE: Ink4You will be at the Photokina in Cologne this year with a Z3100 for demo printing.

[Ernst Dinkla]

Now they sell the printer with their compatible ink, and HP China recommends their pigment ink to other HP dealer in China.

[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

The other activity is the distribution of Vista pirated copies with a recommendation of Microsoft :-)


Ernst Dinkla

Try: [a href=\"http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/]http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/[/url]

[rdonson]

Even if there were light fastness tests available I'd never consider putting them in my printer.  The money saved wouldn't be worth the risk to the printer.

[DotCom Editor]

I'm not about to put knock-off ink into my $6,000 printer. No way, no how.

[DLS]

I wouldn't touch this stuff for any reason.

The Z3100 is amazingly frugal with ink use. I just printed 28 large pieces (up to 20x45) for a show and I can't believe how little ink I used. In fact I bought a whole ink set in anticipation of running out and I only had to replace 3 cartridges by the time I was done. These were the original smaller carts that come with the machine and I printed plenty on those before this show.

Why bother with a potential disaster? It's not worth it.

On a side note: the Z3100 was flawless. The gallery director was definitely impressed with the prints.

DLS
www.imagesbydom.com

[mmurph]

I just printed 28 large pieces (up to 20x45) for a show and I can't believe how little ink I used.

Does the HP give you a status report with the actual ml used?

I agree 100% on the inks.

Every non-OEM manufacturer makes these wholly unsubstatiated bs claims about gamut and longevity. It is really time that they step up to the plate and publish some test results!  

Plus provide a decent set of ICC profiles so that you don't have to create all of your own profiules (the claim is often that thses are a direct switch, no new profiles required. Wrong!)

Even I know how to do the testing in my basement. It doesn't cost more than $100, and the procedures are pretty well documented by now.  They would all rather market based on pure bs than do the work to establish the truth.

There is really no reason to accept that nowadays with 100,000 other ink providers out there ....

Best,
Michael

[Mussi_Spectraflow]

I don't see why some fly by night company cant come up with an inkset just as good as HP's billion dollar R&D machine came up with....oh wait.

In many ways printers are about as interesting as coffee machines, it's the coffee that your really paying for, or in this case ink. 3rd party ink is like making a latte on a 3K espresso maker using foldgers coffee. I've tested some DECENT 3rd party inks and some awful ones. Read Willhelms report on office refill inks if you really want to be scared. It's also not that hard to make an inkset with a decent gamut or decent archival ratings or decent media compatibility but to get all of those things in one packages takes a lot of work. I also suspect that the claims made by 3rd part manufacturers mean very little. Accelerated testing is as much art as science and there are only a few people who I think posses the knowledge to do this in a way that returns meaningful results. Epson and HP both have and work with experts in this field, they also I will venture have a lot more to loose by misrepresenting claims. I really doubt a small foreign company is going to loose much sleep over their claims of print longevity. Aside from the special ink sets designed for monochrome, screen printing or fabric printing I'm not a big fan. Just my 2 cents.

[rdonson]

Does the HP give you a status report with the actual ml used?

Best,
Michael
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=206482\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Yep, it does with the the Printer Utility, Jobs.

[mmurph]

Yep, it does with the the Printer Utility, Jobs.

Thank you Ron!

Very interesting. I have ink monitoring turned off on my older Epson 7600, because I am running non-standard inks.  But, I use 1.2 ml per square foot as a "planning" number.

That is fairly accurate for the first set of images in your job report.  The ones on the High-Gloss.

But the second set on the Hahnemuhle Smooth Fine Art are using significatnly less ink!  More like .3 ml per sqaure foot. That is very interesting!

Hard to tell about image content, coverage, etc. just from the report. Thank you for the number though! I appredciate it.

Best,
Michael

[rdonson]

You're welcome, Michael.

Don't forget that on the high gloss paper I'm using the Gloss Enhancer on the entire image.  That makes the ink consumption a little skewed compared with your 7600.  I suspect that if I subtracted the GE it might look more like what you see on the Hahnemuhle.  The Hahnemuhle has an ink load of 42 vs the high gloss with an ink load of 46.  

Hope this helps.