Photo quality on iX7000 and MX7600 printers

[Nozzle]

Thank you all of you for sharing..

The German test that Ink stained Fingers posted, linked to another test of MX7600 printer that had a very nice picture showing how clear ink is deposited:

@palombian - in Australia IX7000 is still for sale from Canon, there's a bunch of them new on eBay for around $400AU (~$300US). I found one for ~$70US, people say it's hardly used, see what happens. I might get it. I need a quick pigment printer for printing advertising material on glossy papers.

BTW - I've found some PGI-9 refillable cartridges on eBay :
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/refillab...920668?hash=item28191b711c:g:GcEAAOSwBPNXRtts
Do you think it might work if I make a CISS from these? I print high volume and would love not having to refill cartridges. My guess pigments will clog sponges over time?

 

[The Hat]

@Nozzle, there are no shortcuts when it comes to refilling, it you try to take shortcuts, then they always end up been long cuts.

Refilling is an art and it has to be done precisely, it’s so easy to refill in fact its child’s play especially with the PGl-9 cartridges, but you still have to follow certain guidelines.

The biggest guidelines are, DON’T ever use a CISS on any Canon, nor attempt to use compatible cartridges either, these two are most certainly long cuts that will lead to misery and even the loss of your printer, not to mention the down time when you can't print, a CISS on a Canon printer is akin to a Galah on a dustbin lid.

Only use OEM cartridges on the iX7000 they are the best cartridges in the world and will never let you down, and if you have one or two spare sets then you’ll never run out of ink either, no matter how big your print run is.

Now if you decide to refill it is expensive to gather all the necessary paraphernalia that is needed to start up, but and it’s a big BUT once you have all the equipment then you costs are minuscule after that.

I can’t tell you where to get good quality pigment inks from in your neck of the woods, but I do know they are scarce and some other members living in Auss, do their shopping in the EU or the US for their supplies, so good luck with that.

The refilling of the PGl-9 cartridges can be done in less that two minutes when you get the hang of it, the best way to explain is with a short video..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1JhgTV0Cw

 

[palombian]

Thank you all of you for sharing..

The German test that Ink stained Fingers posted, linked to another test of MX7600 printer that had a very nice picture showing how clear ink is deposited:View attachment 4252

@palombian - in Australia IX7000 is still for sale from Canon, there's a bunch of them new on eBay for around $400AU (~$300US). I found one for ~$70US, people say it's hardly used, see what happens. I might get it. I need a quick pigment printer for printing advertising material on glossy papers.

BTW - I've found some PGI-9 refillable cartridges on eBay :
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/refillab...920668?hash=item28191b711c:g:GcEAAOSwBPNXRtts
Do you think it might work if I make a CISS from these? I print high volume and would love not having to refill cartridges. My guess pigments will clog sponges over time?

Hey Nozzle, nice to now it is still sold new, this means we can get spare printheads for the years to come.

I certainly would not refill with dye inks, but with 3th party pigments from precisioncolors.com (in the past there was a feed problem with magenta, but as @mikling informed recently, with the new inks this should be solved).

You can reset the carts with a resetter for CLI-8/PGI-5.
CORRECTION: The Photo Black PGI-9PBK cannot be reset with this resetter, you need the more expensive PGI-9 for this one. But you need the CLI-8/PGI-5 anyway to reset the PGI-7BK (and for that you need to place the chip temporarily in a cart that fits in the resetter - as @The Hat learned me).
You fill the 7BK with the Matte Black sold for PGI-9MBK.

And forget a CISS too, you print a long time with the carts.

70 USD is a very decent price IMO.

 

[Nozzle]

The biggest guidelines are, DON’T ever use a CISS on any Canon, nor attempt to use compatible cartridges either, these two are most certainly long cuts that will lead to misery and even the loss of your printer, not to mention the down time when you can't print, a CISS on a Canon printer is akin to a Galah on a dustbin lid.

I hear what you are saying and I know you are speaking from experience. I have two Canon printers right now among many others - ix6860 (about 6000 pages, all photo quality) and ip7260 (about 4500 pages, the same). I'm just beginning a second set of Inktec 1l bottles for these printers, which means they both went through ~3.5 liters of ink. Both run with CISSs with high quality carts. 0 problem so far. But, this is dye. With pigment it might be different. Certainly I wouldn't want to put any felt on pigments way.

 

[The Hat]

@Nozzle, I too ran several of my Canon printers fitted with CISS successfully, but only while they were printing daily, once the work flow slowed down, each CISS became a curse and had to be removed, because of very high maintenance.

I reluctantly changed over to using OEM refilled cartridges and the performance of each of the printers were still on par with using a CISS, they became more reliable with far less down time and disruption, there was life after the CISS.

Now you can run a CISS with pigment inks, again I wouldn’t dare too now, because I know better, but it has to different than the normal Mariotte type bottom feed, here is a good example of a home made pigment CISS..

 

[Nozzle]

It is strange how different people can sometimes have different, even completely opposite experience with the same tech. I know general consensus is that Canon's don't work with CISSs and that if one wants to run a CISS he should get an Epson printer. In the last two years I've experienced exactly the opposite. 1.5 years ago I went through 3 printers with PrecisionCore heads (WF 7620) and one with a 'normal' head (WF 7010). It was a nightmare. PrecisionCore heads were dying like flies, lasting only 2-3 months each - nozzles were failing (not clogging). Complete mystery to me why, it seems these new head are extremely sensitive to what ink you use, which is really the opposite of what Epson heads used to be know for - in the old days I could put almost any ink through my Epson large formats and they handled it fine. I have to mention these are pigment printers and I used pigment inks with them. Even while they worked streaking was a bitch. I just couldn't get the ink pressure right in the systems - ink containers too high - ink dripping on paper, too low - ink starvation. Sometimes I got it right and they would work for a day or two and then atmospheric pressure would change and hell begin.. Freaking nightmare. This put me off Epson WF series completely.

The Canons that I got later (6860 and 7260) have given me completely the opposite experience. From the box I installed these into them filled with InkTec dye ink:

They are the best cartridges I could find on eBay. Very well made (they even have these things inside that rock - not sure why they need them, it's not pigment), this possibly contributed to the experience. Donors are nothing special - the cheapest containers with tubing I could find (most CISS come with the same). As I've said above these printers with these CISSs gave me the best experience running a CISS I've ever had. AND - sometimes they sit for weeks doing nothing. Know what? I've even gotten out of habit checking nozzles with these printers (something I do always with my Epsons). After sitting for weeks I just turn them on, they do their little thing and off we go printing. Zero hustle. I never thought it's possible to have an experience like this with Canons. Quite possible, if these were pigment printers, things would have been very different.

I have to mention one thing - I practically never print on plain paper on these printers, so pigment black never gets used apart from cleaning cycles. Now pigment nozzles on the 6860 head are completely stuffed (have been for a while) - they spray ink in all the wrong directions, while 7260 pigment nozzles are just fine! Can you explain that? The heads are slightly different, but I think the head tech is the same or very similar - same amount of nozzles and so on..

 

[The Hat]

@Nozzle, it’s certainly nice when you can truly buck the system and then give it an extra kick for good measure, there had to be someone who could do it, so congratulations to you and well done and may it continue.

The 550 series printers have to use compatibles and can't use the OEM's (A First) If your not using the pigment black carts, why don’t you fill them with black dye and this would stop them getting completely bunged up on you.

I suppose you could also use dye inks in the iX7000, but you’d lose the quality and longevity output of this printer and you wouldn’t be able to use the plain paper cassette with dye inks, but which ever way you go, please remember the PGl-9 carts are very special and this printer might not take to well to compatibles.
If you ever get to see a PGl-9 cart you’ll then appreciate its pure simplicity, design and complexity, no other carts are like them, I can only advise you, not insist, so please be careful.

 

[Nozzle]

@The Hat Thank you.

Sorry, what do you mean by 'the 550 series printers'? The Canon printers I mentioned above run on 650 carts, if that's what you refer to.

I don't need pigment black channel at all. I didn't realize this at first and filled it with proper pigment. Now on the 6860 it's almost empty - the cartridge itself is about half full. Once it's empty I won't refill it any more, let it run dry. Since I don't use it I think the printer won't give me any error (head overheating or something like that).

The only reason I'm considering buying ix7000 is that I could use it with pigment. I have enough dye based printers to satisfy my needs, now I need a relatively fast and reliable pigment printer for printing on glossy papers. I've researched all office type printers that are on the marked right now and each one has something wrong with it. Epson WF-4630/4640/5190 are awesome printers (large cartridges, built in CISS), but there are no ARC chips for them - you have to buy one time chips with refillable carts for them. One set costs $18. Then there are the new Canon office printers with huge carts, but they don't do borderless, which is a must for me. So, I'm thinking about alternatives. ix7000 is one of them. The problem here is that there's no CISS available or nice spongeless carts for me to make one. I have though about attaching some dampers from large format printers to the head directly, instead of cartridges and make a CISS myself, but it is going to be very difficult because of the prolonged shape of that part of the head that makes contact with cartridges on these heads. I have, of course, researched PGI-9 carts and they seem to be very easy to refill, it's just I try when I can to avoid refilling altogether.

I know it's a difficult question to answer, but how many photos approx. can you print with one set of PGI-9 carts on an ix7000? Just a rough estimation, just to see how long they last.

I appreciate any advice I can get. Thank you.

 

[The Hat]

Sorry, what do you mean by 'the 550 series printers'? The Canon printers I mentioned above run on 650 carts, if that's what you refer to.

@Nozzle, The newer generation of Canon cartridges are not user friendly to refill and here in the EU their numbered 550 in the US their 250 and in Asia their 650, the only difference is the chips.

Now you should fill your pigment cartridge with some ink, any colour will do but don’t run it dry because there is a fair chance that it can effect the rest of the head by overheating, the ink will still remain inside the head even if not used.

You have certainly done your home work on the availability of printers out there, but I’ll say it again, forget about trying to use or fit a CISS on the iX7000, it would be like fitting a propeller to a bike and getting it to fly, but the landing will still be truly spectacular.

Just another anomaly with this printer, it agitates the print head quite viciously back and fourth to maintain the suspension of the pigment particulars in the ink solution, this would cause you all sorts of problems trying to maintain a good seal on the cartridge inlets.

I have no idea how many photos you can get using a set of PGl-9 carts, because I don’t print very many photos, but when printing advertising material I could spend the whole day without having to refill any of my spare cartridges, I usually change any cart that is showing 50% or less when one first shows the low ink notice.

The OEM PGl-9 carts can not be converted for use in a CISS, but you can get sponge less PGl-9 carts in China, I have tried both sponge and sponge less compatibles cart but they could never produce sufficient enough ink to supply the print head properly.

There is an alternative way to refill these carts very quickly and that is by using my freedom fill method, I use it on near empty carts because it faster than the dribble method, all you need is a about half a dozen fill clips, which now come ready made and 30/60 Ml syringes or SquEasy bottles.

No matter which 3rd party pigment ink you use, there will always be some gloss differential and bronzing when printing onto full gloss paper, a better alternative is semi or satin gloss to get a better looking finish.

I very nearly forgot, you will also need two resetters because the chip on the PGl-7 cart uses a different code to the other PGl-9 chips..

 

[Nozzle]

@The Hat

Thanks for the info. Yes, I know about gloss differential - have been printing with it for many years. I've eventually decided not to go with IX7000 because it's a beast and space in my mans cave is extremely valuable - I have 5 large formats (4 of which are 44') 3 Epson 3880 and a bunch of A3 and A4 size printers.

I've decided to go with Epson WF 3000 range, more exactly WF 3620 printer(s) for my advertising material printing with pigment.