My Canon PRO-10 on refill ink - and what happened to my PRO-9500II

[Borut]

Fellows, I have a problem:

In the grey background above the birds head you can see horizontal bands.
On high quality it is less but still visible.
Strange enough on the cheap Action paper with Hagaki settings everything is OK.
So I don't think it is a paper transport problem.

Any ideas ?

View attachment 9815

Those bands are because your ink flow is not 100% in time you gona burn your print head.


Edit:

 

[palombian]

The ink flow is my concern too, but I wonder why it always occurs on the same place.
I do stress tests with every ink.

By lightening the grey background a bit the banding disappeared.

Interaction with CO, in general a temporary "slippery" condition of the ink can't be ruled out.

Based on what I've read, a blurry or slightly milky appearance of the CO should not be a negative.
Canon designed this coating to absorb stray light, not to reflect it.
Instead of counting on the overlay function to optimize the gloss, IMO it is better to focus on equal gloss of the inks.
Changing to OEM PBK helps a lot as indicated on the Octoinkjet site (it enhances the gloss of my 9500 prints too).

I don't have any Octo CO anymore to test again. It was less effective in covering heavy gloss differences, but from what I can see on test sheets it performed well on the non-black surfaces of glossy and luster papers (I see no blur at all).

Obviously OEM ink on Platinum PRO gives the best results, but refilling means compromises.

IMO in Europe you can find better quality for less money than paying the expensive shipping from the US.

 

[The Hat]

it’s a software related issue, either from the driver or the program that you use to edit/print. If it’s not visible with hagaki paper setting, that seems to leave the driver as the most likely culprit ?

I also reckon that’s the mostly cause, think about it, same ink, same image, different surface, the only change is the driver software..

 

[palombian]

I also reckon that’s the mostly cause, think about it, same ink, same image, different surface, the only change is the driver software..

I did some new tests (plain paper M, Y, R) in Platinum N standard.
Could see one slight band in the R.
Disappeared in Glossy II settings (but the colour was a tad less bright red too).
Also the band was darker, not suggesting a lack of ink.

Driver settings seem to be very important.

You can pay the price for ink from Canon or suppliers who claim 100% compatibility, or do some tests yourself and print cheaper.
Same for paper.

 

[palombian]

I always have printed on Aldi and Sihl glossy paper with Platinum settings for the maximum gamut and won't change at this moment.
Recently switched to standard quality, high doesn't change anything on the colours but has sometimes a tad more details (only visible with a magnifying glass), OTH it is much slower.
Didn't see any banding again.
Nozzle checks are 100% clean, 651-700 pages printed (80% A4, some A3 and 10x15cm).

Since I have 3 inksets I made the best selection with rationalisation in mind (although I will keep one OEM PGI-72 set for reference):

• PM: Octoinkjet
• PC: Octoinkjet
• Y: Precision Colors SE
• M: Precision Colors SE
• R: OEM
• PBK: OEM
• C: Precision Colors SE
• CO: Precision Colors original edition (have SE on stock)
• MBK:Octoinkjet
• GY: Octoinkjet

After expiry of the PC CMY I will continue with C and Y Octoinkjet and M OEM (octo M maybe later).
I had some extra costs for OEM ink and myUS for shipping Precision Colors, and probably will not use some of the inks, but that's a small price for finding a set very close to OEM for a much lower price (in Europe).

The surface of Aldi and Sihl paper (comparable to Canon Glossy II) is not of the quality to justify OEM CO. I don't see a difference with PC CO (what @jtoolman told recently on youtube maybe applies to better papers).

When eliminating the highlight warnings automatic CO settings give a 100% equal gloss, when this is not possible everywhere the full settings work most of the time. In general the gloss is better with this setting and I have enough CO.
It always frustrated me I couldn't reach this with the PRO9500 (although the inks were not as good, I bet loading PRO-10 ink would solve most gloss differences if not all using luster paper).

Compared to the PRO9500 II it seems to me the PRO-10 uses less ink for purging.

Very glad until now to have changed to this printer, I couldn't imagine better.

 

[palombian]

As mentioned in another PRO-10 thread I couldn't print on the PRO-9500 the same deep colours on matte paper as on the PRO-10.

The problem is solved.

On the PRO-9500(II) you need to select a fine art paper of a certain quality to have enough ink on the paper.
"Fine Art Premium Matte" and "Photo Paper Pro Premium matte" settings do this.

"Other Fine Art Paper" not. The latter is the same as "Matte Photo Paper", the only matte setting accepting borderless.
These settings give very flat prints, and this is not only caused by the PBK instead of the MBK.

I made a custom profile with the first settings and obtained the same result as with the PRO-10.
This is only possible with a top and bottom border of minimum 35 mm (30 mm on the PRO-10).
Not such a problem with my box of 50 A3+ PRO-line vibrant mat (€ 24,95 incl shipping).

But this means the trick to fill PBK with MBK to print borderless DOES NOT WORK !
Unless with a non-matte paper selection.

 

[The Hat]

On the PRO-9500(II) you need to select a fine art paper of a certain quality to have enough ink on the paper.
"Fine Art Premium Matte" and "Photo Paper Pro Premium matte" settings do this.

I’ve been hoodwinking the 9500 for years doing just that, select one Media and use another.. Sometimes a little bit more tweaking is also needed to get the desired results..
I’ve was using my Image Specialists inks.. Using the PBK / MBK switch..

 

[Artur5]

Thanks for the info @palombian, that's very interesting to know.

I still haven’t tried true fine art media on my Pro10, partially because of the wide margins restriction or the need to swap inks in the PBK cartridge and also because of the high cost of those papers.
It’s also surprising that ‘other fine art paper’ won’t give results as good as Canon’s specific fine art settings. I downloaded time ago the pdf file of Ilford where they detail the characteristics of each paper and the Canon media equivalent used in the driver for making the profile. For instance, Ilford ‘Galerie Prestige Smooth Pearl’ uses Canon ‘photopaper plus semigloss’ and ‘Galerie Prestige Smooth gloss’ uses Canon ‘Photo paper Plus Glossy II’.
Without exception, all cotton, canvas or rag fine art media of Ilford has profiles made with ‘Other Fine Art Paper 1’ setting in the driver. That explains maybe why the overall gamut of theses profiles is noticeably smaller than the gamut of their RC papers ?.

 

[palombian]

Thanks for the info @palombian, that's very interesting to know.

I still haven’t tried true fine art media on my Pro10, partially because of the wide margins restriction or the need to swap inks in the PBK cartridge and also because of the high cost of those papers.
It’s also surprising that ‘other fine art paper’ won’t give results as good as Canon’s specific fine art settings. I downloaded time ago the pdf file of Ilford where they detail the characteristics of each paper and the Canon media equivalent used in the driver for making the profile. For instance, Ilford ‘Galerie Prestige Smooth Pearl’ uses Canon ‘photopaper plus semigloss’ and ‘Galerie Prestige Smooth gloss’ uses Canon ‘Photo paper Plus Glossy II’.
Without exception, all cotton, canvas or rag fine art media of Ilford has profiles made with ‘Other Fine Art Paper 1’ setting in the driver. That explains maybe why the overall gamut of theses profiles is noticeably smaller than the gamut of their RC papers ?.

Hi @Artur5,

For the same paper names the PRO-10 and PRO-9500 do not use the same driver settings.
Other Fine Art Paper 1 in the PRO-10 gives a good gamut, while the same on the PRO-9500 doesn't, and that confused me.
I suspect there are a limited number of "inkt dosages", and you can recognise them in Chart 1 of the i1Studio software.
No kidding, this chart can be totally different depending on driver settings.
I can imagine to make a table for it.

I just made a profile for my Proline Matte on the 9500 with Photo Paper Semi-gloss High Quality settings and PBK=MBK and I saw the same patches as Fine Art Premium Matte. It returned an even slightly better profile, so I can use this one to print borderless.

As @The Hat said, experiment and find what works for you.

PS: although I can continue my plan to dedicate the PRO-9500 for matte, the profiles are still not as wide as on the PRO-10, but I could not see differences in real prints (as I couldn't on the PRO-10 between Precision Colors, Octoinkjet or OEM ink for most prints).
I can permanently load 2 MBK's in the 9500, and the PRO-10 with CO is best for glossy.

 

[The Hat]

For the same paper names the PRO-10 and PRO-9500 do not use the same driver settings.

It doesn’t matter whether your using a Pro 9500 or Pro 10, you can use any profile that’s loaded in you system, just because it says it’s for a Pro 10 or a Pro 1, that means nothing, a quick trail will tell all… Test in A5 size..

It’s the same regarding the wide margins restriction, and using a different profile will bypass them, the only settings that are set in stone are the borderless sizes..