Epson Claria Standard Ink 502

[Ink stained Fingers]

A recent posting triggered me to look for the bottled inks for Epson Ecotank printers in the U.S., the ET-2850 uses the Epson 502 inks which are named as 'Claria Standard Inks'.

https://epson.com/i/C11CJ63201

This inkset consists of 3 CMY dye ink bottles and a pigment black ink

Claria inks in Epson nomenclature are inks with a very good level of longevity , but is is not visible to the user that a rather wide range of Ecotank printers uses this ink , if you look up the product description of an ET-2850 - or similar - the use of these Claria inks is not even mentioned in the printer product description - Epson is hiding this info for some reason to the U.S. user.
Claria ink sets come in different combinations - this Claria Standard ink set CMY + pigment black - or the Claria ET Premium ink set for the ET-8550 with gray and pigment and dye black - or the Claria Photo HD inkset for the XP1500 with gray and red (in cartridges).


https://epson.com/For-Work/Printers/Inkjet/EcoTank-ET-2850-Wireless-Color-All-in-One-Cartridge-Free-Supertank-Printer-with-Scan,-Copy-and-Auto-2-sided-Printing/p/C11CJ63201

Other quite similar Ecotank printers like the ET-2720 or ET-2800 or ET-4700 and more are using a different type of ink - Epson 522, most likely are the bottles keyed differently.

I cannot find any information anywhere if and how these 502 and 522 inks differ - in regard to the longevity, and it is not clear why very similar Ecotank printers get different inks. The inks of the previous generation of inktankprinters - L300, L350 and similar - came with the Epson 664 inkset which showed a very poor longevity performance in a Wilhelm Research test.
The same Ecotank printer models in Europe come with the 102 or 104 inks - but those are not specified by Epson as Claria inks - European customers don't get the benefit of these Claria inks.
These Epson 502 or 522 inks are not sold in Europe so it is difficult for me at this time to run a fading test with these inks to confirm the performance of this 'Claria Standard Ink' .

 

[ClarenceL]

Maybe some clue in SDS
https://www.epson.eu/safety-data-sheets
102 cyan
https://epson.com/Support/sds/search/?searchText=502
502 cyan
https://www.epson.co.kr/Support/sds/search/?searchText=T03Y
T03Y cyan

http://sds.staples.com/msds/24316213.pdf
T202 Cyan

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Thanks for the tip to look into the safety data sheets, but be aware that requirements what goes into the MSDS vary around the world, and some proprietary substances - e.g. colorants - may not be listed at all or only with a generic name but not with a CAS number. and the chemical name of a colorant does not tell me about its fading/longevity characteristic since that is not safety relevant and not specified.

 

[ClarenceL]

Thanks for the tip to look into the safety data sheets, but be aware that requirements what goes into the MSDS vary around the world, and some proprietary substances - e.g. colorants - may not be listed at all or only with a generic name but not with a CAS number. and the chemical name of a colorant does not tell me about its fading/longevity characteristic since that is not safety relevant and not specified.

Based on the Epson Claria Ink blog, seems like only Claria Premium & Photo HD got better longevity.

Only found T212 might be exactly the same as T522
Try to summary the Ecotank Ink tables.

https://epson.com/For-Home/Ink/Epson-212-Ink/i/T212120-S
With three individual dye-color ink cartridges (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) and one pigment Black ink cartridge, this Claria Ink set delivers vibrant color and sharp text for long-lasting, high quality results.
So, the T522 black most be other dye black.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Thanks for cutting through the maze of Epson part/item numbers, yes - the T522 and 212 appear to be pretty identical, the T522 ink is bottled, and the 212 ink comes in cartridges, Claria inks in cartridge printers are offered by Epson since a long time. When you add up the max. volumetric % numbers for the T212/T522 - 65% + 12.5% + 10% + 3% + 0.25% you get to 90.75% - and where is the rest ? - Is the actual colorant missing ? I can call up other Epson ink MSDS which add up to 103% for the max.% values.

Anyway - I could think that there is a competitive reason why Epson is delivering a 502 Claria ink for a range of Ecotank models in the U.S., and not the poor 664 or 102 ink as in Europe - All HP Smart Tank printers either come with the HP-GT52 or HP31 inks which perform similarly good as the Epson Claria inks, the market share of HP tank printers appears to be very small in Europe - much smaller than in the U.S. , and I had problems to get those HP inks for a recent test.

 

[nertog]

You're not going to find colorant details in the MSDS. If you do want to know what is actually used, I recommend doing a simple search in the EPO or USPTO patent archives. There are tons of patents that detail specific ink and colorant formulations.

The common CMYK dyes are well known and pretty standard. You only have a handful of them play with and the trick here is to trade-off saturation and fugitvity. For example, 2 very common dyes for cyan inks are Acid Blue 9 and Direct Blue 199. Without going into their chemical structure, AB9 is very chromatic but suffers from poor light fastness while DB199 is very lightfast but is really sensitive to ozone. Combine them, however, and you suddenly get an ink that is both highly chromatic and "non-fugitive".

Many of the earlier dye inks, and I suppose current 3rd party alternatives, are formulated using those common dye combinations. You and I can buy those colorants as well...and many of them, such as AB9, are actually food dyes.

Epson Claria , Canon Chromalife and other OEM inks are in a different class. Their dyes are roughly similar in molecular structure to the more common colorants, but are modified on a molecular level to massively improve their robustness. This is a very tricky R&D job...and definitely not just adding a UV stabilizing additive to the ink,

Which specific dyes are used in the different inks Epson is marketing will remain a mystery, I'm afraid

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

If you do want to know what is actually used, I recommend doing a simple search in the EPO or USPTO patent archives.

No, not really - I just was wondering about the 10% volume gap in some of the MSDS - the colorants are typically missing or just mentioned with a rather generic name, and articles like this one is just easier to read than patent documents

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/col.22797

and to a slightly lesser amount this one

https://asset.fujifilm.com/www/jp/files/2019-12/1b2d37910521b09ef8efc0b90cfc9853/ff_rd054_007_en.pdf

But all that is less interesting than the small amount of information - not just marketing blabla like - 'The prints will last for generations to come' Epson or Canon are really giving to the Endusers - a bit of info here and there but no consistent and complete information. HP is not better in this respect providing clear info to the user; I went through a maze of (non)-information last year w/o much success - I got so far that prints may last 100 year or 300 years - so the fun goes on.

 

[bwrobins]

I'd be surprised if US 502 isn't the same thing as UK 102 with different keys on the bottles. I'm certain they never used to call it Claria and the spec sheets for the new printer models only call out the pigment black as "Claria ET". It's silent on the color dye inks.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Yes, Epson does not mention it in the printer product descriptions if the Claria standard ink is used or not, it is only specified in the ink description itself as shown in the entry posting, Epson keeps this information almost as a secret.
I'm trying to get hold of such 502 inks for a test; a friend of mine is buying once in a while some horse riding accessories - leather stuff and such - from the U.S., and he is using some reshipper like myUS.com . I'm asking him to add that ink to his shipment whenever he places an order again.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I got a few days ago a set of Epson 'Claria standard' 502 inks - CMY - since the black is pigmented , and as well a CMY set of Epson 522 inks - both from the U.S. , a friend of mine handled the logistics via a reshipper MyUS since he ordererd some equestrian stuff from there and just added my inks to his shipment.

I started another fading test to run these inks against the Epson 106 and the Chinese Hongsam HLF inks. The corresponding ink to the 502 Claria ink is in Europe the 102 bottled ink for the Ecotank printers, these are not labeled as 'Epson Claria' and were performing pretty weak in some test more than a year ago. This indicates that customers in different business regions are treated differently by Epson delivering a much weaker ink in Europe for about the same price.