Dye or Pigment Ink for 3880 Question

[dan1942]

I recently purchased a Epson 3880 to print on only one type of media a heavy matte paper. I will only be printing full color graphics no pictures. I am not concern about life span but I do want the best colors possible for the paper media. Does anyone have a suggestion for which type of 3rd party inks I should be looking for, Dye or Pigment? I saw that there is Ink Thrift for dye is there any others that make a dye ink?
Thanks in advance for any help!! I am so glad I found this forum!
Dan

 

[RogerB]

I recently purchased a Epson 3880 to print on only one type of media a heavy matte paper. I will only be printing full color graphics no pictures. I am not concern about life span but I do want the best colors possible for the paper media. Does anyone have a suggestion for which type of 3rd party inks I should be looking for, Dye or Pigment? I saw that there is Ink Thrift for dye is there any others that make a dye ink?
Thanks in advance for any help!! I am so glad I found this forum!
Dan

If want nice bright colours and you're not too worried about print life then Cone's InkThrift sounds like it was made for you. No personal experience, but Cone speaks highly of it for short-life work, and I would rather trust him than most other vendors.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I think you should answer yourself a few questions - are you looking for the best print quality on various media surfaces , are you rather looking for more budget type material - inks and papers, would you stick to one combination only or try and test various offers on the market, what happens with the printouts - are they presented for a longer time, at home , exhibitions, sports club whatever or will they be presented only for days or weeks, or will they go into an archive pretty soon. are you aware of color mgmt when it comes to printing photos on third party material , e.g. the use of icc-profiles. So asking all this should indicate that there is not an easy answer to the first question - dye or pigment. Dye would not be available from Epson anyway, only as a third party ink, of which most suffer a rather limited stability against fading. If that's not a problem for your intended type of use it' s o.k., otherwise you may get some surprises. No supplier of dye inks is able to give you reliable fading information.

 

[dan1942]

Thanks for the replies! I do not need them to last more then a few months the graphics printed on them will be temporary. I am thinking about picking up a inexpensive ColorMunki to profile just this printer or maybe pay to have a profile made for the one paper I will be using. I also have 64" wide format printer that has a i1 spectro built into the head which makes the profiling very easy and works great with my Onyx RIP. I think for our purpose and cost per ML the dye inks are going to be the way to go but there also seems to be comparable priced Pigment Inks from Precision Color? With the pigment inks form Precision Color would I loose some of the color saturation that I would get with the Dye based inks on Matte Paper?
Thanks!

 

[berttheghost]

I'm under the impression that the 3880 only supports pigment inks. I'm also under the impression that the firmware that directs the ink droplets is optimized for pigment inks. This implies to me that the 3880's color reproduction with dye inks may suffer relative to that with pigment inks. So I wouldn't assume that dye inks will provide superior colors versus pigment inks on a pigment ink printer. (If I recall correctly, dye inks are translucent but pigment inks are opaque, which affects how the ink dots blend to make different colors. Thus the different firmware.)

Colorfastness of dye inks is actually more dependent on the environment to which they are exposed than the elapsed time since being printed. Strong fluorescent lighting can ruin dye ink prints in a matter of days, not months. On the other hand, dye ink prints can last for years if properly stored.

Or at least that is what I believe to be the case.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Profiling is advised, always, when you are trying to get the most out of non-standard combinations of ink and papers. Running dye inks on 'pigment' printers is not much of a problem besides the switchover of the inks. I'm not familiar with the Colormunki, I'm using a i1Pro/i1iO with X-Rite software, but reports of others appear to be quite positive.
It is not possible to make general statements whether dye inks vs. pigment inks offer a smaller or wider gamut - it all depends - on the inks and on the papers, so profiling is essential.

I'm using and testing/changing inks quite frequently, on desktops and lfp's, I observed over a longer time, years, that some yellow inks don't mix, they react with each other and create some floccy fallout. I never observed that with other colors. So before switching inks I take a few ml's of the old and new ink into a little glass, shake them and wait for any reaction. I saw that with dye inks and as well with a dye ink and a pigment ink. When changing inks you'll need refill cartridges anyway, so a flushing cycle with some neutral head cleaner may be advised before you try to unclog your printhead otherwise
Dye inks, most of them except a few of the OEM inks, tend to be (much) more prone to fading from UV and ozone influence of the environment, and no ink supplier is able to give you relevant information in that respect, it depends as well on the type of paper used, on the surface of the coating, so you may have to run your own tests with different inks. It's typically the black ink first starting to turn into some darker brown, and magenta and cyan are loosing saturation. The origin of UV radiation can be the sunlight, but as well fluorescent lamps, even halogene bulbs with insufficient UV blocking. So I cannot judge the performance of the ink you are referring to, start using it, and if you observe some fading you may come back to this forum, there are other threads running on this subject.

 

[bobjoek]

Dan,

I recently converted an Epson Pro 4000 to dye inks from Cone. Result is great, with more saturated colors. I use a ColorMunki Photo to calibrate all papers used on this printer. Like you, I am not looking for long life prints. An added benefit has been no printer clogs on what previously was a clog queen. Just shoot Jon Cone an email and he should recommend the dye ink combinations for your 3880.

Bob

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Yes, that works without a problem. Long time ago Epson was selling the Pro4000 print engine to Agfa which they marketed as the Agfa Sherpa 24 printer model, with a slightly changed case. The cartridges were Agfa relabeled Epson ink cartridges, and Agfa offered as well a dye ink set for the 4000/Sherpa. You effectively can use an 6 ink set for the 1400/1500W models, and dilute the black for the gray channel. Since you are profiling your ink and papers everything will come out fine. But for pigment inks I cannot confirm that dye inks in general would give a wider gamut than pigment inks. The problem with 3rd party pigment inks is their variance, some have a wider gamut than others, nobody would tell you until you find out yourself during the profiling process. You could e.g. use without problem the Ultrachrome K3 vivid ink set of the newer printers as well in the Pro 4000 - with profiling.

 

[martin0reg]

..
is there any others that make a dye ink?

For epson 6 color printers I'm using a "custom made ink set" from fujifilm drylab ink - because this seems to be very similar to epson OEM dye ink ("claria"), regarding color matching and especially fading resistance.
On glossy paper dye ink is better than pigment, so my next project is to make a set of DL ink for epson K3 printers ..
http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/which-pigment-ink-for-epson-1500w.9323/page-8

Note: until now the DL set for the pro3880 is only a project, while the ink is running fine in my R285, resulting in good and very stable prints..

PS: just saw the very reasonable costs for "ink thrift pro", seems to be indeed like made exactly for your purpose..

 

[Emulator]

Has anyone tried to mix dye and pigment blacks, perhaps reduce the pigment fluid content first (centrifuge) and replace with dye?