Do you use printer manufacturer's ink cartridges, or 3rd party inks?

[jeremyrh]

I have always used Epson inks thinking that off-brand inks might damage my printer, but it occurs to me that with a set of inks costing £200, and a printer costing about £500, it would take cartridges full of sulphuric acid to cost me money in the long run :-(

[hogloff]

I have always used Epson inks thinking that off-brand inks might damage my printer, but it occurs to me that with a set of inks costing £200, and a printer costing about £500, it would take cartridges full of sulphuric acid to cost me money in the long run :-(

I wouldn't worry about inks killing your printer. I'm more concerned about the quality of the output, the consistency between cartridges and the longevity of the resulting print. Overall, the cost of the ink on the paper is very small compared to everything else that went into the capture of the image and making of the final framed print.

[Louie]

Hi,

I have been using the UltraMax II Wide Gamut inks from American Inkjet Systems (AIS) for my Epson 7800 for a number of years. This is the K3 plug and play replacement set that works with the standard Epson drivers at about half the cost of Epson. These are high quality pigment inks and I cannot tell the difference between prints made on my 7800 and my on my now defunct 2400 (K3 inks) or my P600.

You do have to be careful because there are a lot of cheap low quality replacements inks. I tried some for one of my even older epson printer and had nothing but trouble. I have never had a problem with AIS. Their support has been excellent. I did have a problem early on with the refillable ink carts. They replaced them with no charge with ones that I am now still using.

Unfortunately they do not seem to be supporting the new HD printers. Epson has never made this easy as their business plan is based on the long term sale of expensive inks. But for older Epson printers that AIS supports this seems to be a viable alternative.

-louie

[Paul Roark]

I use both OEM and third party inks.

I doubt that any reputable third party ink seller today is offering inks that will wreck your printer.  From my black and white ink mixing and printing for gallery sales perspective, the longevity can be an easy issue -- a 100% carbon black image beats all else easily.  But. carbon tends to be warm, so color inks are needed to make a neutral black and white image (usually). 

The trickiest issue for formulating a black and white printing approach is matching the fade rates of the color inks/pigments needed to counteract the warmth of the carbon.  The typical problem is that cyan tends to be relatively strong, causing a "green shift" in hue that is particularly bad and visible for black and white.  (We've all seen the old posters that have faded to cyan.)  Bright colors hide the effects of fade rate differential for a while, but if very long term display is a concern, the differential fade rate will end up making an ugly print.  Some OEMs have (or their employees have) noted that they intentionally don't use the strongest cyan possible to help with the differential fade issue.  Third party suppliers, in my experience, are often much less interested in long term color stability than I am.  That is fine for casual use, but if we want the (particularly black and white) image to look good for a very long time, and have a fade path from neutral (like a silver print) to warm carbon (about half way to "sepia") that is relatively straight, does not swinging into green,  and is consistent with the fade "patina" that we are accustomed to in photography, the ink seller needs to have paid some attention to more than just the cost of the inputs and clogging issues.

FWIW

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/  (Ink information page)

[Endeavour]

I'd love to use non OEM ink, or rather I'd love to have a cheaper alternative to HP's, but as I sometimes sell prints as 'archival quality' I'd be reluctant to throw any ink in my printer.

[John Nollendorfs]

I'd love to use non OEM ink, or rather I'd love to have a cheaper alternative to HP's, but as I sometimes sell prints as 'archival quality' I'd be reluctant to throw any ink in my printer.

If you are using A HP Z3xxxx, you could use the 300 ml 772 carts, for some of the most used slots like Lt. gray, and yellow. All you have to do is slit the paper seal on the cap on the bottom, and replace the cap and chip  from a nearly empty HP70 of same color. You won't be able to gauge how much ink you have remaining through the status panel, but you can always remove the big cart and slosh it around to gauage how much ink remains.

Been buying them from Provantage for less than $110, but noticed the price just went up.

[Endeavour]

If you are using A HP Z3xxxx, you could use the 300 ml 773 carts, for some of the most used slots like Lt. gray, and yellow. All you have to do is slit the paper seal on the cap on the bottom, and replace the cap and chip  from a nearly empty HP70 of same color. You won't be able to gauge how much ink you have remaining through the status panel, but you can always remove the big cart and slosh it around to gauage how much ink remains.

Been buying them from Provantage for less than $110, but noticed the price just went up.

thanks

Yeah I use a Z3100

[praja343]

I use an Epson 3880 and I tried third party inks. Though the vendor was supposedly reputable and claimed that there is no discernable difference between their and Epson ink, I noticed a great deal of difference .... the prints with their ink were much darker and color was off. When I took the same images and printed on my friends 3880 which had Epson inks, the prints were fine. So I switched back to Epson and have had no issues. So I would swallow hard and buy Epson inks at their expensive rates than repeat my experience.

[ColourPhil]

Hi,
As someone who makes Custom Printer Profiles I stand to make more income from customers using non-OEM inks, as you absolutely need Custom profiles for them. However, I never recommend them and am usually disappointed when I see profiling targets printed with them!
It's often immediately visible to me that non-OEM inks are being used.
It's also usually apparent in the measurements of the D-max and in the final colour gamut, which is invariably smaller than genuine OEM.
Custom profiles help, but can't put back colour which was never there in the first place, if the ink is the wrong hue, saturation or intensity.
Do I use them in my 3880, never!
Cheers,
Phil

[mkihne]

I have always used Epson inks thinking that off-brand inks might damage my printer, but it occurs to me that with a set of inks costing £200, and a printer costing about £500, it would take cartridges full of sulphuric acid to cost me money in the long run :-(

I have two 3880s, one with standard carts and the other with inkjet mall refillable carts.  I just extracted ink from 220ml carts for the 7880-9880 large formats to fill my 80 ml carts, leaving me enough for nearly two more cart refills. I paid $85 for the 220s vs $55 for the oem 80 ml. carts, so approx 39 cents/ml instead of 69 cents/ml or $85 for nearly 3 carts of ink instead of $165 for the same amount of ink in Oem carts. Of course the initial investment in refillable carts has to be accounted for.  Don’t know what printer you have and therefore this might not apply to you, although printers short of the latest sure colors are largely refillable with similar economies.

[kers]

Have used ink from Inksupply for my  HP b9180 printer.
That printer uses the same inks and heads as the HPZ3100 etc series.

However- it did not work - printheads clogged ... too bad. ( colour are different too, but that was not important in this case)
There is a lot of science in the ink and print cartridge development.
If good quality needs to be garanteed, i would never use third party ink.

[enduser]

Inktec of South Korea is a possibility.  They have an industry building printers and providing many inks for displays and photo work. They are a big company and apparently are the major suppliers in their country. I have some of their ink but haven't tested it yet.