HP Photosmart C-6180

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I use HP ink with my HP Photosmart C-6180 all-in-one printer. Usually I simply use it to print documents black and white documents. Sometimes when editing something, or if I'm using a printed recipe card, and the paper gets a drop of water or coffee on it, the black print smears, sometimes so blurry as to be unreadable. Should I use a different ink, or special paper? I'm using a generic ink jet paper.

 

[fotofreek]

I use HP ink with my HP Photosmart C-6180 all-in-one printer. Usually I simply use it to print documents black and white documents. Sometimes when editing something, or if I'm using a printed recipe card, and the paper gets a drop of water or coffee on it, the black print smears, sometimes so blurry as to be unreadable. Should I use a different ink, or special paper? I'm using a generic ink jet paper.

I don't know anything about the HP printers but it appears, from your description, that it uses dye-based inks. Dye-based inks are not waterproof, and the downside is that getting a print wet does exactly what you described. You might try printing on glossy photo paper designed for inkjet printing as the ink tends to lock into the coating a bit better. For something that will be used in a wet environment you can consider a preservative spray that can be purchased at an art supply store. Laminating or keeping it in a plastic sleeve that can be purchased at an office supply story would protect the print as well. I've also seen a lucite cookbook stand that is used in the kitchen to prevent water and food stains from damaging a cookbook.

HP cartridges that are designed for dye-base inks would probably not do well with pigment based inks. I don't know if that printer has both types of ink filled cartridges available.

The two solutions are - buy an inexpensive monochrome black toner laser printer for black text printing or consider one of the Canon five cartridge printers that have four dye-based cartridges for printing photos, plus a pigment black ink cartridge for text printing that tends not to smear when wet.

 

[Fenrir Enterprises]

The C6180 takes those funky little 02 cartridges (if you have a CVS nearby last month they were clearancing these things out at <$4 so you may want to pop in and see if they have any left!). It's intended mainly as a photo printer, so the 02 black is dye. HP office printers usually have more smearproof/moisture resistant pigment black ink.

HP recommends papers with ColorLok to resist smearing, but I'd be skeptical of anything that could keep dye inks from running when they get wet. You may still want to try photo paper, my Epson dye printer on photo paper is actually surprisingly smearproof (and this is the R340, before Artisan inks), I keep spilling water from the ice trays on a photo on the fridge and it's still holding up. I'm using Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper though.