Pixma Pro 100 or Pro 10?

[Artur5]

Having gone from dye (Pro9000) to pigment (Pro10s), here are some thoughts about the later :

Refill is easier. No need to drill a hole in the cart; no possible problems related with sponges; orange clip firmly seated at the bottom of the cart., i.e. no need to use a rubberband that may broke unexpectedly, like the CLI-8 carts. Surprisingly, pigment ink seems to be easier to clean from the skin than the dye ink I used on my Pro1000/IP4000.
Crossing my fingers; not a single clog in nearly three months. Longest time I left it “unattended” has been two days.
Color rendition seems to be on a pair with dye printers as far as pop and sparkle, even in glossy paper. If anything, the Pro10s looks a bit better because of that terrific OEM Red.

Not so good point of the Pro10s: it’s very slow, specially when printing on high quality settings and I mean really snail paced. I don’t know if the reason is that it has to apply a coat of chroma optimizer on top of the regular colors, but even on plain paper, where no CO is applied, it’s way slower than the Pro9000.

Another not so good point, not directly related to the printer, is cost of third party ink. To begin with, non OEM pigment is at least twice as much as non OEM dye. Another factor is that I’m using Octoink ( owned, as you know, by an appreciated member of this forum ). They sell only small bottles (up to 125ml). I used to buy 250ml, 500ml or even 1 liter bottles for my former printers and, in all logic, cost per ml lowers considerably in big bottles. As an example, I paid 2,5 cents/ml with a 500ml bottle of Pro9000 ink and now I’m paying 12 cents/ml with 125ml bottles of Pro10s ink. Of course, longevity of this Octoink pigment is much better than that of the dye ink I used

 

[The Hat]

I would tend to agree the Pro pigment printers are a lot slower then the previous older Dye ink models, but their output is well worth waiting on and so is the longevity you get from the pigment inks.

But cost wise there has been a hefty price shift in all 3rd party inks and not just the pigment inks, yes dye inks do come in bigger bottles but that’s because most users tended to use and print a lot more than a pigment ink user would.

But at the end of the day 3rd party inks are way cheaper than OEM inks by a country mile, and if the suppliers are to stay in business they should be supported by us, EBay purchases should be avoided, especially the free P&P artists, and stick with the known good venders.

The Pro pigment ink printers can be left far longer without use than their dye printer cousins, and printing a nozzle check every two days or so in my opinion is very wasteful and unnecessary, for several reasons.

Each time you wake the printer up it will run a clean cycle even if it’s only for the odd nozzle print, so its better to only wake the printer when you actually want to use it for work, tip:- if cleaning cycles bother you then don’t completely power off the printer from the wall socket, use the button on the front.

P.S. I can leave mine unused for 3 months or more without any problems and it will power up and print and never have a single clog, but it does run a cleaning first..Please don’t use this reasoning with the Dye ink printers..

 

[MarienPhotography]

Well thanks all for your feedbacks. I'm still waiting to buy my printer up to next week at least.

My plan is still to use at least at the beginning OEM ink especially if I cannot calibrate my printer...

Price difference is not big if I use the discount from Procam but otherwise the gap is big...

 

[palombian]

Congrats with your choice.
Starting with OEM will give you extra set(s) of cartridges to refill (don't throw away the clips !!!).

When you want to experiment with paper plan for a Colormunki Photo (called iStudio now), it will pay itself back since you can print with any (=3th party) ink on any paper.

 

[Artur5]

Congrats with your choice.
Starting with OEM will give you extra set(s) of cartridges to refill (don't throw away the clips !!!).

When you want to experiment with paper plan for a Colormunki Photo (called iStudio now), it will pay itself back since you can print with any (=3th party) ink on any paper.

You're right. I own a ColorMunki Photo and it's great for printer profiles, in spite of the rather basic software (although the latest version is a bit improved).

@The Hat :
Leaving a pigment printer untouched for several weeks, let alone months, it’s a risky gamble, IMO. Why do you think that autocleaning cycles of Canon Pro10 /Pro9500 pigment machines are triggered every 60 hours instead of 120 like the Pro100 and other dye based models ?. It must be because Canon technicians are positive that the risk of clogging is bigger with pigments. Otherwise, I don’t see why they programmed the autopurges in this way.
Of course, clogs depend on a number of variable factors, like humidity and temperature, You may have favourable conditions in green Wicklow, but I wouldn’t advice to leave unused your printer for several months if you ever relocated to Arizona.

 

[The Hat]

Leaving a pigment printer untouched for several weeks, let alone months, it’s a risky gamble, IMO.

@Artur5, I have been through this cleaning issue before on another Thread, and its something that pigment printer owners should get out of their heads, because it’s not worth worrying about, they happen, but they can’t happen if your printer is turned off..

I am also sure humidity doesn’t play any part in it at all, because the PGl-9 and PGl-72 carts don’t have vents in them, unlike their CLl-42 cousins and are not affected by local weather conditions.

I reckon you can rule that scenario out, but if you’re still worried then place a small bowl of water on the platen area of your printer, but don’t forget to remove it before you start her up, or that could be curtains..

Canon technicians working on the origin Pro 9500 introduced far to many auto cleans on their first attempt at making this fabulous machine, but soon found most of them unnecessary and discontinued more 50% of them on later models, but they also found they were a real money spinner for the company too.

I mostly take what the Canon techno heads say as rubbish rather than gospel, I can’t believe a word from any of them, on the few occasions that I had dealing with their Company, that was what I found, and I have not had a single clog in any of my Pro printers to date, so are the Canon techies right or am I wrong ?..

I am going purely on my own experience..

 

[Artur5]

You know what? I was expecting that kind of answer from you.

Of course PGI-72/PGI-9 carts won’t be affected by ambient conditions. I was thinking of the printhead. If a machine (dye or pigment ) is left alone for months, the resting pads where the nozzles sit may become very dry and clogging it’s quite possible. It won’t happen in a day or two, but three months in low humidity/high temperature conditions it’s another thing.

Anyway, theory and practice don’t always agree. If you’ve been fine until now, no reason to change anything.

 

[stratman]

resting pads where the nozzles sit

Are you speaking of the purge pads? If so, then you can test them by flooding them with Windex, close the cover, let the machine grind away till quiet (or perform a regular cleaning if you'd like), then lift the cover and see if the fluid is still pooling.

• If the fluid is gone then the purge pads are not blocked.
  
• If the fluid remains then there probably is a clog somewhere in the pads or in the purge system itself (a hose).
  
• If fluid never pools to begin with then the purge system is somehow disconnected and open to the air (a hose?).

 

[palombian]

@Artur5, I have been through this cleaning issue before on another Thread, and its something that pigment printer owners should get out of their heads, because it’s not worth worrying about, they happen, but they can’t happen if your printer is turned off..

I am also sure humidity doesn’t play any part in it at all, because the PGl-9 and PGl-72 carts don’t have vents in them, unlike their CLl-42 cousins and are not affected by local weather conditions.

I reckon you can rule that scenario out, but if you’re still worried then place a small bowl of water on the platen area of your printer, but don’t forget to remove it before you start her up, or that could be curtains..

Canon technicians working on the origin Pro 9500 introduced far to many auto cleans on their first attempt at making this fabulous machine, but soon found most of them unnecessary and discontinued more 50% of them on later models, but they also found they were a real money spinner for the company too.

I mostly take what the Canon techno heads say as rubbish rather than gospel, I can’t believe a word from any of them, on the few occasions that I had dealing with their Company, that was what I found, and I have not had a single clog in any of my Pro printers to date, so are the Canon techies right or am I wrong ?..

I am going purely on my own experience..

I used a MX7600 for 8 years (20.000 pages with the same printhead) - with the PRO 9500 and IX7000 (I owned them all) the first Canon consumer pigment printer generation, all with the same PGI-9 cartridges - first with OEM ink, later with 3th party.

The MX7600 purged so much ink that it flew over from the ink pads (something I discovered rather late and solved with a printer potty), but as long as I used good inks (OEM and Precision Colors) I had no problem with clogs.

The PRO9500 was also known as an ink guzzler, the first type of print head did not live long either.
Both problems were solved in the PRO9500 II, and later models as the PRO-10.

IMO it is a very reliable technology.
The myth that pigment printers clog must come from other manufacturers .

 

[The Hat]

theory and practice don’t always agree. If you’ve been fine until now, no reason to change anything.

I totally agree, I do leave my printers stopped far to long, but it’s of necessity and not by choice, I just don’t have the volume of work anymore to print as regular as I should, but I do still watch over and maintain them, they are my babies..

I also have an Ace in the hole, my Printer Potty’s are an asset for visual inspection of the Capping station (Purge pads) and they help me keep these lovely printers in good condition..