Ernst:
Yes, I looked at Aardenburg, but they didn't have anything for the Klarifine ink. I did note that the MIS ink I'm presently using shows significant fading and color changing even as low as 40ML years, which is why I'm looking to make a change. I am seeing visible fading in two-year-old prints that are under glass and in a dim room.
It's important to distinguish third party dye from third party pigment. The MIS pigmented ink which is what was tested at AaI&A is not up to the lightfastness durability of the Epson OEM ink due to a poorly performing MIS (aka Image Specialists) yellow ink, and Epson's Ultrachrome yellow pigment isn't anything to brag about,either. That said, if you're seeing easily noticeable fading in just a few years under glass at low illumination levels, you're undoubtedly talking about an MIS dye-based ink that has not been tested. In fact, I have yet to test any good third party dye-based ink set although I'm not saying it doesn't exist. It's just that I mainly depend on AaI&A members to submit "novel" printer/ink/media combinations for testing, and interest has waned amongst the membership in third party inks in recent years. Anyway, if you do end up trying a third party ink that Aardenburg has not tested, you're more than welcome to request a test. As funds become available, I gladly test any commercially available ink/media combinations for AaI&A members. It doesn't matter if they are OEM or third party products. It only matters that folks can easily purchase them and duplicate the printer/ink/media conditions that went into testing.
As Ernst noted, an 85 year claim by Fotospeed is likely to have been a claim only for their pigmented inks, not their dye-based sets, but I found it hard to navigate their site even to find mention of the 85 year archival claim. Also, as Ernst noted, "archival" is a vaguely defined and often abused term, so unless the product has been tested in a way that can truly evaluate the retention of print quality over the duration of the test and then relate that result in some way to a "years of life" expectancy where the print would retain X percentage of original quality, such claims are pretty much meaningless market speak. Prints don't dye like humans do. It's not a clearly defined on-off switch for end of life. There will be a continually declining quality as time goes on until no functional image is left, and most people would be unhappy with print quality long before no useful image information content exists. It's up to you to decide how much change in visual appearance and physical properties is unacceptable for your particular needs.
kind regards,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com