Epson Stylus Photo 1500W/Artisan 1430 with Fujitsu DL ink

[pharmacist]

I sold mine Epson R2000 and went back to the Epson Stylus Photo 1500W/Artisan 1430 printer, because it is much more reliable in terms of clogging.

Because I wanted to use the Fujitsu DL ink and having no light colors, I tried to experiment with the dark colors and I found a surprisingly good clear ink formula to dilute the dark inks into the light inks and by chance it is so good, I did not need to make profiles using the standard Epson printer profiles.

This is the formula for the clear ink base:

5% propylene glycol
30% ethanol 96% denaturated
15% isopropyl alcohol
50% destilled water

All by weight. It produces sharp lines and dries quickly without causing crawling or ink puddles.

For making the light colors: 30 volume parts of the dark ink + 70 parts of the clear ink base.

My first tests on matte and glossy paper are really good with the canned printer profiles and very neutral B&W.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I may try your recipe when I'm running out of my current supply of dilutants. I'm using the Drylab DL dye inks by Fuji/Fujifilm, is Fujitsu supplying the same inks ? I'm using a 1:1 ratio and doing profiles, that puts slightly less dilutant on the paper and is easy to handle during the refill of the L800 - 1x 25ml syringe of ink + 1x25ml syringe of dilutant - I'm not premixing the light colors, but fill them directly into the tanks.

 

[martin0reg]

Hi pharmacist, good idea to make a dilution yourself, because the clear base by Paul Roark is sold by MIS and therefor the shipping to europe expensive, although the base is reasonable priced. There is also the formulation
http://www.inksupply.com/product-details.cfm?pn=PR-CLEARBASE-PT
BTW with more glycerol and less alcohol (maybe in the "Photo Flo"..?.. anyway some ingredients would be difficult to get here..)
My dilution ratio for fuji 4 color DL ink is 1part M/C + 2parts clear base to get LM/LC, which means 33% ink. Good results regarding colors here too.

But like ISF I can't find inkjet printers or drylabs by "Fujitsu"... there is Fuji and there is Noritsu in the drylab market... is it a mix-up of brands? The sample of DL ink I gave you some time ago was fuji..

 

[pharmacist]

Because I don't have Photo Flow to reduce surface tension and the evaporation accelerating butoxytriglycol (which is harmful as well). I tried to mix the optimum surface tension vs evaporation speed. This is the resulting formula. Yes I mean Fuji and not Fujitsu .

Too much glycerol makes drying problematic (becomes sticky). So I went for propylene glycol (less sticky) and adding isopropanol to lower surface tension (instead of Photo Flow) and denaturated alcohol for speedy evaporation.

 

[pharmacist]

Ohh, well I have using some old cartridges (new ones are ordered), but I think those self-priming cartridges have ink feeding problems. Especially the black cartridge seems to clog (ink flows badly) and I have to execute cleaning cycles so much, I have to give up this rather old set and installed the original Epson cartridges for the time being.

Not sure the ones which need priming before installing into the printer are more reliable in terms of ink flow ?

 

[mikling]

In theory the design limitations and physics of how refillable cartridges work would easily point to compromises on those self priming ones. Have we ever seen a situation in which you get convenience without giving up something. This case holds in this situation, they can work but the priming ones are more reliable because it is designed more closely like the Epson OEM in the key physical principles.

 

[Ionlab]

I do not know what kind are mine (priming or not) but I know that I had left my 1500W for 20days maybe more and afterwards I just opened the printer up and the nozzle check came up excellent. I can take a pic if you want....