Is all canon inks same?

[The Hat]

@The Hat...Well no offence intended and I sincerely hope none taken.

Nope..

It’s not just me here, so I must include the “WE”, you’ve had bad luck using dye ink in the past, and I can understand your reluctance to accept something that does not sit comfortably with you, but it still worked safely for everyone else that we know.

Not everyone gets it right first time, but we still encourage them to give it another go, especially when we know that they will benefit from our suggestions that solve their immediate problem and get them back printing again.

This forum was setup to provide Refillers with a better and safer alternative to OEM ink, and unlike other forums we don’t encourage here say, we endeavour to only recommend things that work, if there is the slights issue with anything then we add a big Caveat to it.

We try to come up with answers for every problems that come our way, even if many of us don’t know, the wider collective may just have the answer, its not perfect but we give it a go, we’re all still learning...

 

[The Hat]

Thank you so much. As soon as my ink runs out i will refill it and see if it works or not. i will definitely notificate you

@cemkalaur, Please don’t wait till the cartridge is empty to refill, do it when the cartridge goes down to ¼ full...

I used dye ink in my pigment cartridges for years and printed thousands of sheets without an ounce of trouble, until one day I was introduced to KMP pigment black.

The reason I was using dye ink was because all the pigment inks I tried were causing trouble and down time to my half dozen printers, back then I purged all the pigment carts and I haven’t had a bit of trouble since, and still recommending and using KMP ink...

 

[Technician]

You see this is the bit I don't get. Dye & Pigment are of course not the same, their chemical make up is different. When my previous printer went skyward I spent a lot of time trying to find out what could have gone wrong and thus avoid it happening again. My conclusions were cross contamination of ink types at the print head causing damage that couldn't be put right by cleaning.
I reached that opinion based on stories I'd discovered during my research online, and although it's all water under the bridge now anyway I'm still very wary of straying from the norm.
I shall go back to refilling again when the need arises because.... well, it's fun isn't it. They'll be no changing of ink types though, once bitten and all that.

 

[cemkalaur]

@cemkalaur, Please don’t wait till the cartridge is empty to refill, do it when the cartridge goes down to ¼ full...

I used dye ink in my pigment cartridges for years and printed thousands of sheets without an ounce of trouble, until one day I was introduced to KMP pigment black.

The reason I was using dye ink was because all the pigment inks I tried were causing trouble and down time to my half dozen printers, back then I purged all the pigment carts and I haven’t had a bit of trouble since, and still recommending and using KMP ink...

its half way now. im not frequent user. i take 3 to 5 pages a week.

 

[The Hat]

You see this is the bit I don't get. Dye & Pigment are of course not the same, their chemical make up is different. When my previous printer went skyward I spent a lot of time trying to find out what could have gone wrong and thus avoid it happening again.

Dye and pigment ink are different, but the small desktop printers use a different formulated pigment ink to their bigger sisters.

Mixing coloured pigment inks together is not recommend either, without first testing it in a cartridge before use, because not all pigment inks are chemically the same, but most dye inks are. (O’ that Yello Gello)

The desktop pigment inks are a more simulated pigment than a full pigment (Cheaper) and OEM pigment can usually be mixed easily with good quality 3rd party dye ink quite safely and is not known to cause clumps.

You can put dye ink into a pigment cartridge, but you then can’t put pigment ink in on top of the dye ink, it only works one way, the cartridge must be fully purged to reuse with pigment ink once more.

But again, as in your case what happened was exceptionally rare, and I can only sympathise with the headaches that it may have cause you, and I reckon you shouldn’t let this one issue put you off refilling for life.

When you run a printer in abnormal way, things can happen, and it can often lead to the loss of the print head and or printer itself, why do you think we’re all here on this forum, me included, we’re hear to learn not to do that again...

 

[Technician]

Yep I'm with you on the Pigment differences, in a professional environment raw materials are very often different from what's generally available to the average user.
I will refill again but I'll start with a clean slate, fresh new cartridge quality ink etc. Any problems that might crop up can then be analysed and put right to prevent them happening again.
As I said in my instance with my own printer everything worked great, I'd refilled a great many times and apart from the occasional minor clog no real problems. Then a certain ink cartridge seller acted in a unscrupulous way and sold me something I didn't ask for, hence trouble.
I vet all sellers meticulously now and only buy from places with a good rep, so no it certainly won't put me off refilling. I'll just be very careful in future.

 

[The Hat]

@Technician, Question: - were you at the time using OEM carts and inks or something else...

 

[Technician]

@The Hat..
Here's the story. My printer was a IP4000 and I'd never had a problem with it, OEM for the large black and compatibles for the other cartridges.
At the time it seemed a bit dumb using Canon's expensive Pigment ink and at the same time cheap compatible Dyes for the colours, so I decided to go for compatible Pigment as well.

I contacted my usual supplier and asked what their ink consisted of and they assured me it was Pigment just the same as Canon's.
Having purchased some I found it worked ok, not as good as OEM I thought but it sufficed. Come the time to replace the cartridge I couldn't be bothered sending off for more so I just bought an OEM locally and shoved that in, that's when I had problems.
At first I put it down to clogging, but after many hours of cleaning using every trick in the book it looked like the print head had bit the dust....but why ? So I did a lot of research and discovered firstly that the large black compatible I'd bought was in fact Dye and not Pigment.
Ok not a problem in itself, as we all know Dye will work in place of Pigment, but then I made further discoveries.

A printer head that is made to deposit Pigment ink is different to a Dye head, a different electrical current flows through it in a different waveform pattern just for starters, there are other differences too.
Now as I understand it when ink types are mixed, which would happen at the print head with residues from previous inks, wear and consequent degradation of the head itself could follow suit. There's plenty out there to read on the subject but much of it is heavy going I have to say.

End of the day it would seem that could, but not necessarily would happen to your print head under the right circumstances, certain ink brands etc. could cause problems, others not.

I personally would never use Dye where Pigment at one time resided, to me at least it just is not worth the risk.
It reminds me of the old saying we all used back in the chemical film days ( used to have a great darkroom, C41 process done it all) that went... ' Don't be afraid to take lots of photographs, the cheapest thing about photography is the film' ..and it's the same thing with printing,
the cheapest bit is the inks.

 

[The Hat]

@Technician, Thank you for the detailed report, at least we know what happened to you when using compatible carts with cheap ink, because cheap ink can do exactly the same thing to any side or colour of a Canon print head.

Epson print heads can handle all sorts of coloured water without damage and can easily use Canon inks too, (Hardy beasts) but you can’t do that with the Canon heads, so only use compatible inks that you know are recommended for use in your Canon printer.

Good quality ink venders will give you the assurance very readily, ah ha, but how do you know who the good guys are, ask before purchasing, most suppliers on EBay will say anything to get you to buy their inks, so beware and their customer feedbacks and reviews are mostly self-generated...

The biggest fallacy out there, its ok to buy the cheapest ink you can get for your printer, well it is till your print head starts to produce odd or poor output, please buy the best inks which are usually more expensive but are still much cheaper than OEM inks, or print heads, even a new printer.

When purchasing a new printer for the first time or a replacing one that has just died, do your homework before purchasing, often the cheapest printers look to be the better buy, but beware the ink costs are usually huge on these models, buy cheap, pay lots more later.

First find out if this new printer can be refilled and or is there a resetter for the cartridge chips or if not can you go with aftermarket cartridges.

Because disabling the ink monitoring on all new Canon printers will ruin the printer very quickly, requiring another new printer, and if you see a complete set of cartridges for your printer for $10 with free delivery, then run don’t walk away...

 

[Technician]

@ The Hat..
Yep spot on with the cheap printer angle, it never pays. I remember once seeing a printer for sale in my local Tesco's for £16..really cheap.
Further down the aisle they had the inks on sale for said printer.....£38 a set Crazy !
So you buy a printer and when it runs out of ink just buy another one ! As I recall it was a Lexmark, good for text but rubbish for colour IIRC.