Age of ink - old ink

[optimizer]

When should you pitch bulk ink.
I've heard it has a 2 year shelf life.
I presume you should buy new shortly after that?

I've seen lumps (large clogs) in my older inks, but around the lumps there's still liquid ink. Is that liquid ink usable, or is there a strong possibility of it causing problems/clogs/make cart fail?

How old can you safely let your ink get?
How old can you safely keep pre-filled cartridges?

Thanks

 

[websnail]

Usually you're looking at two years... I recently queried this myself with my own supplier as I have some older inks still bottled up..

The information I got back was that:

- Pigment inks don't tend to age so much as dyebase but you do need to agitate them regularly and in some instances it's necessary to run the ink through a coffee filter or similar...

- Dyebase does have anti-algae compounds included but algae does eventually form strings and clumps so you would need to dispose of the older stuff or find a way to remove the algae... I suspect once it's in there it's always going to be an issue though.


From experience I've found that I tend to have more problems with certain inks as they get older than others.. eg:
- Epson cyan dyebase tends to cause odd clogging and jetting redirects after about 18 months
- Canon cyan and magenta seem to suffer from clogging issues more regularly after about 18 - 24 months

In terms of pigments I've generally only had problems with a single bad batch where I think the pigment particle size or concentration wasn't quite right... New batch solved that.

As for pre-filled cartridges, you're probably about the same... it comes down to storage and how well sealed they are...

To be honest my ball park is around 2 years... Someone else will doubtless chip in.. Shame Mike (Mikling is offline for the moment) as he might have more to offer.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Mike is apparently not back yet from the West Coast to help is ailing sister:

Here's his last post:

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=27517#p27517

 

[optimizer]

I read the link. I'm sorry to hear about the situation. Wishing for it all to get better.

I'm glad I asked my silly question - I got a good reply.

I knew about there being a roughly 2 year life for inks, so since hearing that I've always wondered about cartridges in the stores, or especially those ones you see on craigslist etc - they're "new" / sealed, but how long have they had them?
So do the "new" Canon and the generic carts start going off as soon as they're made?
I think they'd almost have to?

WebSnail - thanks for reminding me about Pigment inks (I'm new to it).
What do you recommend regularly doing with a bulk ink bottle of it?
Shake well once a month, week, ? or something else?

Now that I roughly know how much ink I go through I'm ordering much less ink (than all 8oz bottles), so I'll not throw out (waste) as much in 2 years.
I'm going with 8oz of blacks and 4oz of colors. Also 2oz of photo colors for when I find another i960 head - they didn't seem to be used much, at least how I used to print. That might be a good guide for someone wanting to move to refilling carts, but doesn't print that much, and has no idea what quantity of inks to buy.

I suspect I'll be printing more and ordering sooner with all the printers I'm collecting/trying to get working.

 

[ghwellsjr]

The date on my 1-liter bottles of Inktec ink is still over two years away and I bought them well over a year ago. Seems like it was maybe two years ago. So I guess different manufacturers have a different shelf life or maybe could it be that some manufacturers want you to throw away perfectly good ink so you'll buy more?

What can go wrong with old ink? I mean, it's not like we're going to drink it.

Of course if you actually see some clumps in a bottle of ink, I wouldn't use any of it because it probably has shifted its color spectrum and I wouldn't buy that brand of ink again.

Is it that its formulation degrades so that the color spectrum shifts even without any other visible degradation? Then I would say that unless you actually see a difference in your printouts, don't worry about it. It's no worse than your pictures fading which is a very common occurance anyway. Just print your pictures again with better ink if you like.

Let's face it, we all want our prints to last forever and when they don't, have we kept enough records to know what kind of paper and ink we used so that we can try a different combination and see if they last longer?

Just my two cents.

 

[msmart]

Mike is apparently not back yet from the West Coast to help is ailing sister:

Here's his last post:

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewto 517#p27517

Last edited by ghwellsjr (Today 12:07:49 am)

Mike may be back but just not updated the thread. His eBay store has re-opened. When it was closed it said it would re-open on 10/26.

http://stores.shop.ebay.ca/PrecisionColors__W0QQ_armrsZ1

 

[websnail]

Re: Mike (Precision Colors / Mikling) : Chances are he's up to his eyeballs in clearing the backlog before he looks at forums... If he's back then he'll doubtless be about in a few days to a week... assuming he has the time.


Re: Age...

The key things I'm sure of is that dyebase ink in particular can develop an algae which, once it takes hold is obviously growing in the ink.. It can form clumps or strings which are visible but remember that there may be very small clumps developing, none of which are good for your printers nozzles.

If nothing else it's something to consider if you start to get odd/unexplained cloggation issues with your inks.


As for pigments... I tend to agitate them whenever I remember which can be weeks or months later.. Many CIS kits suffer from pigment inks that settle and result in the concentration of pigment particles being overly high as it's drawn out the bottom of the reservoirs. I'm aware a few CIS sellers avoid pigment inks as a result of this...


I'm sure I'm missing some technical details on this so it's not complete info by any stretch...

 

[optimizer]

Hmmmmm, possibly the inks just need a recharge of some additive that stops working after a while, a bit like waterbed conditioner?