Epson ET-8550 - Genuine ink?

[lemons]

I've been happily printing with my SC-T2100, which is great for art prints sized A4 to A1 on matte paper. However, it's very expensive on ink, you can't print on media smaller than A4, and most photo prints on glossy or semi-gloss media are only average. So to plug the gap in the T2100 shortcomings, I purchased, used from Amazon, an ET-8550. It's a good match for the other printer due to it's low print costs and excellent performance on glossy media. However, the printer arrived with the ink tanks full. A nozzle check showed the printer had made 146 prints before being returned to Amazon. My basically ungrounded fear is that the original buyer may have filled the tank with compatible ink to sell the OEM ink. What if I print all my family photo's now and find the ink changing colour a few months or years down the line?

Can anyone think of a way I could establish with any confidence the authenticity of the ink in the reservoirs? By touching the top of the filling nozzle, I'm able to 'harvest' a tiny bit of ink, perhaps by dipping my finger into water after touching the black dye ink, the colour might give away it's origins? Any help from those of you with much more experience than me working with inks would be appreciated.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Can anyone think of a way I could establish with any confidence the authenticity of the ink in the reservoirs?

This would need to be a chemical test for the installed ET-8550 inks - pretty impractical for a regular user. You would have only one option - replacing the inks either by printing them away or sucking them out. When you look to the printhead carriage there is a cover over the cartridge like inserts - dampers to which the ink tubes are connected. The tubes are silicon tubes - and pretty elastic - you can pull them off and pull them onto the nozzle of a syringe and pull all ink out of the reservoir and the tubes this way. You put new inks into the reservoirs and pull the inks up to the end of the tubes and connect the tubes to the dampers again. you need a spring clip to put over the tubes to prevent the ink to flow back during tube handling, or you get plenty of air into the system.
I remember that you can pull the ink out of the tanks directly with a long needle and wiggle it around a little bit at the ink receptable pin. It's overall quite an action.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

We discussed in great detail the capabilities and limitations of the T2100 , the restrictions by the one time chips and their pricing is a limiting factor to do lots of printing on it. And it's not a photo printer by Epson terms - the word 'photo' is nowhere mentioned at all in the T2100 documentation. So it's a good printer for what it is supposed to do.

 

[lemons]

We discussed in great detail the capabilities and limitations of the T2100 , the restrictions by the one time chips and their pricing is a limiting factor to do lots of printing on it. And it's not a photo printer by Epson terms - the word 'photo' is nowhere mentioned at all in the T2100 documentation. So it's a good printer for what it is supposed to do.

Absolutely. And I'm very satisfied with it. I've had some great looking prints. I have two of each colour of high capacity cartridge to get through, and then I'll decide whether to try the Aliexpress inks.