First try of pigment ink on the Canon 6600D printer

[pharmacist]

For those interested to have pigment ink working on your Canon printer, there is hope........

Today I tried to put pigment ink on the PM-cartridge (used one) to see how the results would be on the printhead. Guess what: it works !!! It was a bit of experimenting. Since I want to test it further, I am seeking after people who have some pigmented colour ink I can purchase from (very small amounts, 10-20 cc should be enough).

I'm looking for pigmented cyan/magenta/yellow/photocyan/photomagenta. NOT those ones for Epson, but HP (Vivera styled pigment) or Canon (Lucia styled pigment) aftermarket ink to obtain results from my experiments. For those who want to help me, they will be rewarded with my secret recipe for this pigmented ink if the experiments will succeed and does not cause clogging in the long term.

Later on I will scan in the pictures from the nozzle test pages to show it works and even after it was completely runned with tap water to run of the dye ink to show you that the pigmented PM-bar is holding on the paper.

 

[pharmacist]

Here some pictures of the nozzle check printout on my Canon IP6600D:

1. This is the standard nozzle check printout on my Canon IP6600D with original Canon ink:



2.This one is done with the PM-cartridge refilled with pigmented black ink:



3.This one is the same as 2, but the ink is washed out under the tap and stained with rubbing alcohol:



The 3rd picture shows the situation after the paper is heavily flushed with tap water and then sprinkled with rubbing alcohol to increase the bleeding of the dye ink. As you can see the pigment black on the PM bars (now black and grey) are very stable and hardly affected by the water/alcohol treatment. This shows the printhead is capable to handle pigmented ink.

 

[ghwellsjr]

What kind of paper are you using for these nozzle checks?

Are you also refilling your black cartridge with pigment ink? It is a BCI-6Bk isn't it? That would normally be a dye black cartridge.

 

[pharmacist]

ghwellsjr,

I used normal printing paper, because some types of photopaper are waterresistant. The IP6600D uses the CLI-8 series of cartridges (6x). Yes the black cartridge (the upper bar is dye ink). Note: the IP6600D prints with 1 pl ink drops !

Now I'm looking for pigmented aftermarket ink to see what the effect are on the longer run and what the printing results would be on microporous photopaper. Therefore I need ink samples of pigmented ink (Vivera or Lucia type of refill ink, not the Epson type, since last one is onely suitable for piezo printheads and cannot be heated up).

 

[rehardwick]

Since there is a growing interest of pigment inks with Canon printers, I just noticed a new model Pro9500. This is a very impressive printer and ink system.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=182&modelid=12414

 

[pharmacist]

Rehardwick,

This is something which is known for about more than a year now on this forum, there is even a pigment based all-in-one printer with clear ink technology. We are trying to tweak the older dye ink printer to work with pigment ink as well.

 

[rehardwick]

Pharmacist, I apologize for not being up to date on all of Canon's printer releases. The point of my comment is that according to Canon's specifications, the ip6600d can place ink droplets with a horizontal pitch of 1/9600 inch at minimum with 1 and 5 picoliters droplets. In contrast, the Pro9500 can place ink droplets with a horizontal pitch of 1/4800 of an inch at minimum with 3 picoliter droplets. That infers that at least some of pigment used in the Pro9500 inks may be milled fine enough to not clog the ip6600d orifices. In addition, the inks are referred to as "PGI-9 series". Without physically looking at the cartridges, and considering that the Pro9500 uses ten cartridges, one would presume that the cartridges would be narrow, like the CLI-8, BCI-3e and the BCI-6. Since the non-chipped Canon printers can accept CLI-8, BCI-3e and BCI-6 cartridges, there is a good chance the Pro9500 inks might physically fit in the ip6600d printer, or the ip6000d printer, which is not chipped. So with an expenditure of $15, one could possibly install it in an older Canon printer and see what it would do.

If my logic is sound, the ip5000, ip8500 and i9900 (and many others) in combination with the PGI-9 inks, could produce true archival prints. Or, if the PGI-9 cartridges are physically different, then the above does not apply. It is just food for thought.

 

[Smile]

You can always extract ink form PGI-9 cartridge and inject it into CLI-8 but that beats the idea to refill. Unless you know where I can buy 1 Liter of OEM ink for a normal price. Otherwise InkTec or other manufacturer Vivera or Lucia type of refill ink should be used.

 

[pharmacist]

Does someone knows if the latest HP 343 cartridges contains vivera pigment ink or not ? I might try to use this ink to have test on the other colours, albeit a bit expensive to do this test......

 

[Smile]

OEM is expensive I agree

I looked at InkTec and OCP ink makers and it looks like they do not have pigment color ink at all, except for EPSON.

http://www.ocp.de/content.php?seite=seiten/ocp_products_selectbox.php&h=3&t=3&d=1212
http://www.inktec.com/english/pdf/crossreference/Bulk_20071016.pdf

BTW I sent you PM did you get it?