First Time Refill Hobbicolors, faded prints?

[stratman]

There are several variables at play here that the others have touched.

1) Hobbicolors is typically more saturated than Canon OEM ink. Not every color is more saturated and this may be why certain colors, or mixture of inks, appear less than expected. It could be you bought or were sent the wrong ink, so double check your ink in the bottles as well as what you've put into the cartridges.

2) An ICC Printer Profile can get Hobbicolors to look close to OEM if you want. The profile will be for a specific inset and a specific paper and your printer. Once you use a different paper then you will need a different profile. If the inkset formulation changes enough then you will need a new profile - fortunately this should not happen, at least other than rarely. One person who makes printer profiles is here . It looks like you will need to hurry if you want a profile from him. I have no idea about this guy or his profiles other than what you can read on his web page.

3) Maybe the Hobbicolors ink is diluted. Trying Thrilla's suggestion of putting some ink in the sponged side of the cartridge, draining it, and then refilling with fresh ink would help if dilution from a purge is the issue.

4) Print and post a nozzle check. We can read what you've written but a picture may tell a fuller story. Also, you can print comparison images of pre-Hobbicolors output and Hobbicolors output that displays the issue(s) you are concerned about.

5) In general, Precision Colors Image Specialists inks are closer to Canon OEM inks for your printer than Hobbicolors inks. You may be satisfied with the IS ink output without a printer profile. As you've said, Mikling of Precision Colors has had some printer profiles available in the past. If he has one for your printer and the paper you will use then you should get even better results.

6) Speaking of paper -- maybe it is your paper that Hobbicolors does not like. Have you tried a different photo paper(s)?

7) You talked about manually adjusting your printer's colors. Besides printer profiles, don't forget about the importance of profiling your monitor as well if you soft-proof your images before printing.

 

[Tin Ho]

The grass is lighter and almost pastel colored.
I was able to get the colors pretty close using the manual color adjustment, but then when I printed a different picture of a sunset, the photo came out too dark. So far, I haven't found a way to get all the photos to look as good as they did before I switched inks.

Your problem is not the kind of general impression about Hobbicolors UW8 ink. Hobbicolors UW8 ink is known to be more saturated. I would pay some attention to the cartridges. You mentioned you purged the cartridges. This may be where the problem is. Canon cartridges purged with water can develop a problem in terms of getting the sponge saturated with ink again. I have had this kind of problems a few times. I stopped purging all Canon OEM cartridges except the PGI type that contain black pigment ink. There is an easy cure for the problem. Drain the ink from the cartridge including the ink/water residue out of the sponge. You will need to blow into the vent with your mouth. Yes, the cartridge needs to be in the mouth. Never suck but blow only. Fill the sponge with ink again from the large outlet until the sponge is completely saturated. You may need to repeat it a few times.

You can reuse the ink. I do and never had any problems. I almost do this process for every OEM cartridge that came to me with an unknown condition, except PGI cartridges. I have had trouble free OEM cartridges ever since. This saves the print head. I don't know why you purge the CLI, or BCI-6 in your case, cartridges in the first place.

I have used just about every popular brand names of ink. I don't believe I ever got any ink that was suspected of being diluted. The worst ink I used clog print heads. The not so good one faded fast. The next better one needed more color adjusted. The best needs adjustment still but generally the colors look saturated and beautiful without any adjustment. The problems you see does not seem belong to any of these. Check your cartridges and make sure they are correctly refilled to put your print head in a safe operating condition then figure out what's going on with the colors.

 

[x101xtreme]

There is an easy cure for the problem. Drain the ink from the cartridge including the ink/water residue out of the sponge. You will need to blow into the vent with your mouth. Yes, the cartridge needs to be in the mouth. Never suck but blow only. Fill the sponge with ink again from the large outlet until the sponge is completely saturated. You may need to repeat it a few times.

Maybe the Hobbicolors ink is diluted. Trying Thrilla's suggestion of putting some ink in the sponged side of the cartridge, draining it, and then refilling with fresh ink would help if dilution from a purge is the issue.

I mentioned in my last post that I've already tried this by opening the fill hole, allowing the ink to drain out, and filling it again with fresh ink (this was for all 4 colors: CYMBk), but it didn't make much of a difference.

I don't have a scanner at home, but I'll bring my prints to the library and scan/post them tomorrow so you can see what the prints look like. I'm also ordering a set of precision colors inks to that I can test to see which one I like better.
Thanks for all the advice, I'll report back when I have the scans.

 

[Tin Ho]

I mentioned in my last post that I've already tried this by opening the fill hole, allowing the ink to drain out, and filling it again with fresh ink (this was for all 4 colors: CYMBk), but it didn't make much of a difference.

Did you do anything to the sponge? The sponge is the problematic part of the cartridge. If you only drained the reservoir and refill it again it will not make any difference to the cartridge.

Whenever I purged Canon OEM cartridge with water I always had problems getting the sponge to absorb ink no matter the sponge was thoroughly dried or not. I think there were discussions about this before. There was a treatment that can be done to the sponge with some kind of solution that I never tried it. To me it was quite obvious that the sponge would not suck ink as well as a unpurged cartridge did. The sponge looked like not fully saturated with as much ink as it should. What I had to do was to empty it as much as I could by blowing into the vent to force the ink out of the large outlet and fill ink again from the large outlet and watch the sponge absorbing as much ink as it could absorb. I then emptied it again by blowing into the vent one more time. This treatment was essentially to force the sponge to accept the ink again. I then refill the empty cartridge the usual way. This process worked extremely well for me.

If the cartridge had not been purged with water there would have not been such problems. I don't purge any of the cartridges with water any more with the exception of PGI cartridges.

I am not 100% percent sure your color output problem is caused by the cartridges although it is likely. But for the sake of your print head's safety you may want to rejuvenate your cartridges with ink like what I did. There will be no waste of ink and you will only need to do it once.

As far as the color output problem I tend to believe that it has something to do with the setup when you print. I think Hobbicolors has a lot of customers on this board. If the ink has the problem there would have been others to report it here.

 

[Tin Ho]

I can tell you what I did the first time, before I tested inks. I refilled the sponge with about 4 mL, then I emptied the cartridge and refilled again. I know at least one other person does it that way. It's a cheap way of being certain.

Wow, I just found you beat me by a few posts earlier. That's exactly what I have been doing to my Canon cartridges. Well, I don't do it to every cartridge though. I only did it to cartridges with a sponge that did not absorb ink quickly.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

I forget, Tin Ho. You might be the other one. Or maybe there's a third.

 

[Tin Ho]

I forget, Tin Ho. You might be the other one. Or maybe there's a third.

No doubt that I am not the first in doing that. After been here for a while everyone learned the tricks and don't know who should get the credit.