How much ink do you routinely throw out?

[jtoolman]

A gent from a printing forum wrote me to offer me a box full of so called "Empty" 350ml EPSON OEM carts T59XX and a bunch of T58 for the 3880 ( I was able to successfully reset only three of them tough ).

All read as empty or near empty.

I paid him a few bucks plus shipping.

All the 3880 carts provided each at least 15-20ml EACH of remaining ink
All the 350 ml carts each provided at least 40-60ml EACH of ink!

All were reported as empty or near empty by the owner!!!

So I got me a small boat load of ink that would have been tossed!
I could refill quite a few sets or R2880 carts with that ink!!
Think twice about tossing out your "Empties"
I Know, of course that only applies IF you use OEM carts!
Joe

 

[Larryb]

Wow. My R3000 carts are smaller, but now I want to see how much I can rescue from my OEM carts. Cone inks are mixable with OEM, so I can just add it to my bottles.

Could I ''bin" the Office depot ink cartridge recycling bins and get free ink?....

Larry

 

[jtoolman]

Ahhhhh, no they are not.
CONE never said they were Mixable!!
You can use carts loaded with CONE inks along with OEM carts. But you should not physically mix the two actual inks. Though they do match very close in the way they reproduce colors compared to OEM they are not physically identical and thus you should not mix them.

This comes straight from CONE!

I used to think you could as well but they set me straight.
As far as your R3000 carts, they would only have a few ML after declared empty.

Joe

 

[Larryb]

OK, I guess I made an incorrect inference here. From the Cone website:

"Another benefit to having similar chemistry and performance is that it is not necessary to flush out Epson inks before installing ConeColor inks. The two ink formulations are compatible with each other."

I inferred that because there would be some mixing of the Cone inks as you switch over, and they stated that the two inks are compatible, that it would be OK to physically mix the two inks in the cartridge. I guess that is not true.

However, as a testament to your reply, even though Cone says you can use Epson profiles with Cone inks, I found I was losing all my shadow detail with them. As soon as I used one of the Cone profiles, all my shadow detail came back. It was like night and day!

Anyway, I'm not that desperate to start binning anyway.

Larry

 

[jtoolman]

I guess having CONE mix a bit during the complete pushing of OEM ink remaining in the ink lines and dampers by CONE inks takes a couple of cleaning cycles or one power clean.
On regular printers with carts riding on the print head carriage, the change over occurs pretty much right after the purge cycle.

I am surprised about the lack of shadow detail but then a custom ICC always is better.

Joe

 

[Larryb]

The fact that you can simply place a new cart and chase the Epson ink out with Cone ink tells me that mixing will do no harm to the printhead. However, given the issue of shadow detail, the prints would be inconsistent, and there may be unwanted chemical interactions if a mixture were to be left in a cart for a period of time rather than being flushed through. The R3000 would take several dozen cleaning cycles to chase the ink through, or about one ink charge. However, Cone never said to run a power clean or ink charge cycle when switching. In fact, on the K3 Vivid ink page they say there's no need to flush the Epson ink out.

I agree that I'd only retrieve a couple of mL of ink from an R3000 cart. The bigger detractor for me is the colour management. I was surprised just how bad the shadow detail was. To this day I'm still not sure if the Epson profile was just that bad, or if the Cone inks were actually that far off for darker tones. I'm not about to experiment, I've got good prints now.
Larry

 

[Walker Blackwell]

In the past few months we have re-engineered PK from the ground up with a stronger carbon pigment that is both darker at the max ink and more translucent at every other amount. This effort took many months (and a complete change in chemistry) to successfully complete but we're happy with the results. After all, we rely on our own ink at our sister company and proving ground, Cone Editions: the first digital print-lab in the world.

The ink will be backwards compatible and enable a greater shadow depth than current ConeColor PK (as well as OEM K3 PK). We are reading pure PK L* values between 2.5L and 4.3L at the base density on Epson Glossy depending on printer model and resolution and driver of course . . .

cheers, -Walker
R&D, InkjetMall (ConeColor and Piezography)