Pigment in dye head.

[Ink stained Fingers]

I must admit I cannot follow your explanations,

That is true but pigment ink can not match some photo printer with a dye ink in color fidelity.

Which printers are you talking about ? All higher end photo printers by Canon or Epson like the P800, P5000 by Epson or the series of Prograph 1000 and higher by Canon are all high level printers with pigment inks. They are not identical, they employ a different number of inks, but all create high level print output, there are no dye ink printers in this range.
I'm not sure about the meaning of 'color fidelity', are you talking about the gamut, the color space which can be acheived with a particular printer, with dye or pigment inks ? I can confirm that I can acheive about the same color saturation with pigment inks as with dye inks, but it should be clear that not every printer would reach that maximum. So yes, some dye ink printers can do better than some pigment ink printers. I'm not talking here about other issues with pigment inks like gloss differences.

Also you can not replace dye ink printer with pigment ink since dye ink printer

Epson is doing exactly that since a long time with millions of printers, printers at the lower price range , with a printhead 180 nozzles black and 3x59 nozzles fo CMY, this printhead is used in lots of WF Workforce models for home office applications with Durabrite pigment inks, and the same printhead runs in million of printers in XP 'Expression home models with dye inks, not to mention ET.. and L... series ink tank printers. I'm using both pigment or dye inks in a L310 and L382 at this time, without complications, both modes produce good color output.

dye ink printer is stacking color dots for right tone

There are plenty enough locations for ink dots to be placed side by side in a pixel, the geometric print resolution is a max of 720 dpi, and the printer is doing a max of 2880x5760 dpi within a dot to render the color, that is a matrix of 4x8 (4x720=2880 and 8x720=5760) 32 locations, - plenty enough to render any dolor with CMY, inks will run partially into each other from dot gain, and these colors will mix , they are still wet directly after printing. And don't forget that Epson can print different drop sizes with each nozzle, and Canon uses several nozzle rows for different drop sizes.

 

[INKJET ARTIST]

Just make an test for me.
Take your pigment printer. Print your image on it. Then put it back in input try and print over first print. Do that 4 times

Then take some dye printer and do the same test. 4 pas as well

Now you would see a difference and why pigment printer can not be as good as dye photo printer.

Here is the same test dome on Canon MP 260 just for an different Cromalin application. Printed 4 times with very low ink color intensity just as example of perfect feed system. Nothing else. As you see the colors are more or less acceptable. But in one pass that would be far too flat.
The next example is pigment ink on Canon iX6550 in two pass since this is dye printer. One pass is not good enough with standard pigment ink. But in 4 pass would not made a great difference since nor magenta or cyan pigment or yellow could not be 4 times as dark as 4 times dye ink.

In fact pigment printers use black ink for dark colors. Photo dye printers use mainly cym combination for dark color

Or if you look at these CYM 100% - 0% bars you can clearly see how after 50% - 100% you do have the same pigment color. So 50% == 100% while with dye ink 50% is 50%

 

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There are printers that use dyes for color and pigment for their blacks. They use whichever method to create black in prints depending on what paper is being used. If it's gloss they mix dyes to get black - usually resulting in a color cast. Really good profiling to get a good icc will often make things much better in these cases.
What UV inks do you use and what "water resistant dye inks for Canon" do you mean?

 

[INKJET ARTIST]

I knew that
That is a common thing with black
But this dye black is not water resistant

The water resistant and UV resistant dye ink is something that I have not seen commercially available.
This one is something made for own beta testing. It works perfectly in Cyan on Canon iP 7250 print head. Have printed cca 50 full A4 with 50% cover. Will continue testing as long that channel is not burned

Only what I knew and that is commercially available is UV resistant dye ink for HP plotters. But I am not sure if this ink is water resistant as well

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm reporting to my experience with Epson printers and lots of different inks - dye and pigment. You are experimenting with Canon printers which may give you different results.

Take your pigment printer. Print your image on it. Then put it back in input try and print over first print. Do that 4 times

I don't , I'm happy enough with the prints I'm getting, and I don't see that the paper feed mechanism is accurate enough down to pixel level alignment - 1/720 inch accuracy - for such overlapping prints.
Water resistant dye ink - it is not just a matter of the ink but as much an issue for the carrier paper and coating whether that is water resistant as well. You may have to use plastic foils with inkjet coating instead of paper sheets.

 

[INKJET ARTIST]

Water resistance with Epson printer is a piece of cake. I have at last 4 different ink that are water resistant and suitable for this demand
1. DTG
2. Latex
3, UV
4. standard pigment
And most of them work and are verified on various Epson printheads.

But with Canon the things are complicated for various reasons
1. Polymer ink ink should be compatible with thermal print heads
2. Ink density should be compatible with sponge in cartridge. I most case with some Chinese sponge.
3. Ink density with pigment particles should be suitable for 2 & 10 pictolitter droplets. Therefore Canon likes dye ink for its variable droplet size ink printers.

Plastic foil is different case since all these ink are water based. It can be done with Epson easily. But for Canon you can not have it all. Right now I am looking at water resistance on plain paper.

Take a look at this sample. This is aluminum offset sheet printed with an propriety acyl ink for Canon. It works but it is not Plug & Play solution- I think it is two pass as well not sure for 100% It has been printed direct on aluminum sheath couple years a go. Something like that can not pass trough some consumer Epson printer. Specially not in two passes.
Why?

Because of that droplet speed. The gap between paper and print head on Epson should be very narrow if you want a perfect print. While with Canon and its droplet speed that gap can be some what adjusted without sacrifice of print quality. But you can not choose any ink you want.

 

[INKJET ARTIST]

I don't , I'm happy enough with the prints I'm getting, and I don't see that the paper feed mechanism is accurate enough down to pixel level alignment - 1/720 inch accuracy - for such overlapping prints.
Water resistant dye ink - it is not just a matter of the ink but as much an issue for the carrier paper and coating whether that is water resistant as well. You may have to use plastic foils with inkjet coating instead of paper sheets.

Since you do have only Epson printer and we are talking about difference from Dye and Pigment here is an sample you should consider if you like to transfer your image on various substrate.
This is printed on an inexpensive outdated Epson SX 230 with Subli Pigment ink. If you knew all advantage of pigment ink and if you knew all advantages of dye ink here you have them all in one ink ==ALL IN ONE
You get all half tone of some dye ink and all UV resistance of pigment in just in one ink
Depending on paper, coated or no coated you could need some additional coating and heat treatment.

This is one pass print with two completely different inks Can you see these deep colors and fine transitions

 

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Water resistance with Epson printer is a piece of cake. I have at last 4 different ink that are water resistant and suitable for this demand
1. DTG
2. Latex
3, UV
4. standard pigment
And most of them work and are verified on various Epson printheads.

But with Canon the things are complicated for various reasons
1. Polymer ink ink should be compatible with thermal print heads
2. Ink density should be compatible with sponge in cartridge. I most case with some Chinese sponge.
3. Ink density with pigment particles should be suitable for 2 & 10 pictolitter droplets. Therefore Canon likes dye ink for its variable droplet size ink printers.

Plastic foil is different case since all these ink are water based. It can be done with Epson easily. But for Canon you can not have it all. Right now I am looking at water resistance on plain paper.

Take a look at this sample. This is aluminum offset sheet printed with an propriety acyl ink for Canon. It works but it is not Plug & Play solution- I think it is two pass as well not sure for 100% It has been printed direct on aluminum sheath couple years a go. Something like that can not pass trough some consumer Epson printer. Specially not in two passes.
Why?

Because of that droplet speed. The gap between paper and print head on Epson should be very narrow if you want a perfect print. While with Canon and its droplet speed that gap can be some what adjusted without sacrifice of print quality. But you can not choose any ink you want.

You are experimenting with inkjet inks but the chemistry of your trials is quite complex. You need to find a forum where similar people are experimenting. This forum is mainly for users rather than makers so far as inks are concerned. I am very interested in what you are doing however. The problem of multiple paper passes and accurate registration might be overcome using roll fee instead of sheet.

 

[INKJET ARTIST]

You are right these experimental inks are very complex thing
Something you can not take off shelf.

Roll printer , how much does going to cost you ? How much is going to cost you an new print head if you are going to mess around with some non verified inkjet ink.
But if you are going to do multiple print on single sheet, what you would need for some Cromalin Fotoceremic transfer print for ceramic pictures on graves then I do not knew if would you be able at all to find an suitable adhesive clear ink for it. That is something very popular in Italy. And these suitable Fotoceramics inkjet printers do cost some fortune because of ink research and verification

But in this case you can have an suitable 4 pass printer for €10 plus suitable and verified clear adhesive inkjet ink for 20 € = 100 ml. When you need an new print head you can have it new for 20€ as well. The other one would cost you 1000€
So everything is turning a round that inkjet ink for particular printer. And its verification.

 

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I think what you are doing is similar to dye sublimation printing, (known as "Dyesub"). The applicable forum for that is at https://www.dyesubforum.co.uk/vbforum/forum.php