Gloss optimizer and fading of dye inks

[palombian]

Indeed, dye ink is very cheap.
But if I count the total cost with the photo cheapest paper (of good quality) available here:

A4 paper (Aldi Netbit €5.99/50) 0,12
1 ml dye ink (OCP €20/500ml incl shipping) 0,04
1 ml pigment inkt (Prec Col €32/8oz idem) 0,13

I tend to print my photos with pigment right away

and if you buy a good pro paper in bulk
A4 OLMEC glossy 260g €160/500 0,32

it makes even more sense, not to speak about

Hahnemühle Digital Barite Satin €45/25 1,80 per A4 page

For office work the cost per page varies between 0.01 and 0.023 depending on paper quality and ink

A4 (€3-5/500p) 0,006-0.01
0,1 ml dye ink (estimate 500p/5carts) 0,004
0.1 ml pigment 0,013

So if you print 10.000 pages a year, the difference between throw-away prints and water and fade resistant ones on shiny white paper is €130.

Not counted the usage of printers (printheads), where I tend to believe that pigment printers are on average more rugged.

And when I see that for the Canon Maxify the pigment ink only costs €30/500ml I stop buying (second hand) dye printers.
(should start to look out for deals on the Maxify before this model is phased out or blocked for refills).

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Just image (or calculate) what you would pay for the inks when using the classical cartrigdes for these 10 000 prints - with something like 10-20€ for 10ml........

 

[mikling]

Indeed, dye ink is very cheap.
But if I count the total cost with the photo cheapest paper (of good quality) available here:

A4 paper (Aldi Netbit €5.99/50) 0,12
1 ml dye ink (OCP €20/500ml incl shipping) 0,04
1 ml pigment inkt (Prec Col €32/8oz idem) 0,13

I tend to print my photos with pigment right away

and if you buy a good pro paper in bulk
A4 OLMEC glossy 260g €160/500 0,32

it makes even more sense, not to speak from

Hahnemühle Digital Barite Satin €45/25 1,80 per A4 page

For office work the cost per page varies between 0.01 and 0.023 depending on paper quality and ink

A4 (€3-5/500p) 0,006-0.01
0,1 ml dye ink (estimate 500p/5carts) 0,004
0.1 ml pigment 0,013

So if you print 10.000 pages a year, the difference between throw-away prints and water and fade resistant ones on shiny white paper is €130.

Not to count usage of printers (printheads), where I tend to believe that pigment printers are on average more rugged.

And when I see that for the Canon Maxify the pigment ink only costs €30/500ml) I stop buying (second hand) dye printers.
(should start to look out for deals on the Maxify before this model is phased out or blocked for refills).

There was a time a good pigment ink printer for desktop was hard to get. Today, I use the 3640 and the Maxify for desktops, both with pigment.

However, as for the Maxify....I have warned before and once again. These models are top office printers and for the function of office use, leaves Epsons in the dust....With one caveat. Canon has intentionally crippled this machine so that photo printing is severely compromised. Prints, no matter what setting exhibits grain. It is fine for use as printing pictures on plain paper and graphics but photo printing to someone who has used a photo printer previously is off limits.

The Epson workforce 3640 does a superior job in photo over the Maxify photo printing but again even when profiled, once can see the difference between this output and what a K3 printer will produce. Some will say, it is ok but it is a matter of where you've been before and what you now expect.
Grain also rears its head and they are painfully slow since proper photo printing on this category of machine MUST use the highest quality setting or else the output is kind of like watching an amateur doing a good attempt at something versus a good artist. A deserving applause for a job well done but not the same category as a what a real pro would do.

The Maxify is for high volume output and the Workforces are not even close in speed especially when graphics are involved. The maxify also produces very high quality text output....it's purpose in life is clear.

 

[The Hat]

If I get a chance I might laminate my paint test print in dye ink and leave it to cook for the summer..

Well here it is, and it’s on four different paper types, put in a laminating pouch and is going into my shed window today...

I use plain copy paper, matte photo paper, glossy photo paper and premium office paper, on a iP4500 and all were output at high quality media...

See you in a couple of months...
click to enlarge...

 

[palombian]

There was a time a good pigment ink printer for desktop was hard to get. Today, I use the 3640 and the Maxify for desktops, both with pigment.

However, as for the Maxify....I have warned before and once again. These models are top office printers and for the function of office use, leaves Epsons in the dust....With one caveat. Canon has intentionally crippled this machine so that photo printing is severely compromised. Prints, no matter what setting exhibits grain. It is fine for use as printing pictures on plain paper and graphics but photo printing to someone who has used a photo printer previously is off limits.

The Epson workforce 3640 does a superior job in photo over the Maxify photo printing but again even when profiled, once can see the difference between this output and what a K3 printer will produce. Some will say, it is ok but it is a matter of where you've been before and what you now expect.
Grain also rears its head and they are painfully slow since proper photo printing on this category of machine MUST use the highest quality setting or else the output is kind of like watching an amateur doing a good attempt at something versus a good artist. A deserving applause for a job well done but not the same category as a what a real pro would do.

The Maxify is for high volume output and the Workforces are not even close in speed especially when graphics are involved. The maxify also produces very high quality text output....it's purpose in life is clear.

Thanks for your insights on the Maxify.

I think my MX7600 (I bought in 2008 to print certificates with a validity of 10 years) was Canon's first attempt for an office pigment printer.
It had no success, but it performed very well for me over the years.

I also printed photos with it until I got a PRO-9500 (that shared half of the inks).

When I compare the specs it is not far behind the low Maxify models in speed, that's why I keep the machine (in fact the second one I paid €10) for now.

 

[The Hat]

@palombian, Sure, just get a Maxify and you’ll be very happy, it’s a no-nonsense printer with big cartridges, and it also uses the same inks, but be sure to pick the model that suites your needs.

The only down side with owing a Maxify is, you don’t have to fiddle around with it, it just works, photo quality is nothing to write home about but you’d still be more than happy to send the photos...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm looking again to my fading targets after the 2nd week, dark brown turns into chocolade brown on the unprotected patches, it runs somewhat better under the scotchtape, the color has not reached yet the same brown as the unprotected patches a week ago , this after 2 weeks, so yes, such scotch tape - or lamination - protects somewhat better than a GO overprint which gave about 2x longer fading time to reach the same level of change. It's understandable - a GO overprint does not give complete 100% homogenious coverage on the paper surface, a plastic film does much better in the respect.
I'm running as well a patch set with the Fujifilm DL inks and with/w/o GO in parallel - no fading is visible yet after 2 weeks, these inks do much better.
I'm currently looking only to the black patches with either a no name dye ink mix or the DL inks, it does not look better at all with my current yellow dye ink in this test. I discarded quite some yellow ink with fungus infection, I did something against better knowledge filling up bottles backwards to collect ink into one big bottle again. O.k., I bought some OCP yellow dye ink for my Brother printer, that runs as well in Epson printers but fades fast, very fast in this test, I need to find a better ink, not as pricey as the DL inks but performing better than this yellow ink, it's just useless as this one performs.

 

[palombian]

I have some doubts about some of my inks too.
How do you diagnose a fungus infection ?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

It does not look chemistry related. It appears microbilogical and should not be there in normal cases. It appears to be a biocide resistant fungus/algae. Think superbugs.

https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/i-am-now-tired-of-the-international-business.9735/

You find something like this in your ink bottle, not as big as this detailed image implies but something what was not there in the beginning, something what is growing in the dark. When you look up the safety data sheets of inks you'll find some antifungus/biocide agent in lots of the inks but you don't have that data by lots of 3rd party ink suppliers, and they may save it for cost reasons anyway. There are a few more reports in the forum about this. Spores are everywhere, you open your ink bottles several times , you most likely won't desinfect your syringes etc, so the infection risk is higher during the refill process than with just plugging another cartridge into the printhead.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Based on martin0reg 's experience with the Canon BCI-1411 dye inks I considered to test that ink in an Epson printer, there are not many offers on Ebay with discounted and expired cartridges but I made a good deal - a complete set of 6 BCI-1302 (130ml) cartridges - all colors - for the starting quote of 1€, nobody else was there, +5€ for transport, that's affordable for a test. I need some substitute ink for the poor yellow I got from OCP and the black no-name dye ink I have in some bottles.