Purge unit clogs with Hobbicolors pigment black ink

[turbguy]

I have to say that I am totally convinced by the quality of Hobbicolors. I then ordered from their ebay store a large 5 color refill kit for many of my Canon printers. That's when I got those nice little silicone plugs. The one I got are black ones not the white color as pictured. I believe they are the same silicone plugs.

The plugs do work well. Seal perfectly all my cartridges. Just now I started a print job of 40 pages of text documents with about 10% colors. The printer (MP830) has been left on since last weekend. It started right into printing without even doing a cleaning cycle first. The prints are perfect. Very saturated colors and bold black text. The pigment ink is among the best I ever used. Dries fast too. Much faster than Canon OEM pigment ink. Cheaper than Image Specialists ink. I now have a perfect 2nd source of good quality ink. And I will no longer refill with German Method.

This is funny. It started a trend when the German method was first introduced. Now I see a reverse trend.

Better watch out for Hobbicolors Pigment Black. After 6 months of service on my MP730, I experienced SOLID clogs in the purge unit (the type you have to clean out with hard instruments, not flushing) and gelling of the pigment ink on the waste pads.....so much so that they would not absorb waste ink....

Also, ever notice the Hobbicolor plugs are hard to get out/get re-inserted?? I guess that's the price of a good seal. If someone would make a removal/insertion tool for them, that would really help.

Wayne

 

[Tin Ho]

Thanks for the advice. I am well aware of the report by ghwellsjr about InkTec black pigment ink that clogged his purge unit of his and his friend's printers. Ghwellsjr did a test of some black pigment inks including Hobbicolors then implied that the Hobbicolors black pigment ink will have the same problem. Ghwellsjr admitted that he did not actually have a clog by Hobbicolors ink. He did not use the ink in fact. He made the implication from the result of his test.

I think you are the first who reported the problem if I did not miss any by others. Thanks for the report. Are you absolutely sure that your purge unit was plugged because of using the ink? I remember you reported many incredible numbers of refilling for your ip4300. You never mentioned that you had any problems with Hobbicolors black pigemnt ink. Well, one bad experience by an experienced refiller like you is worth some attention by me. I will keep an eye on my printers.

Before I acquired the K3 ink from Hobbicolors I had a long conversation with Dave at Hobbicolors. I wanted to get to know about the company that is local to me. I asked many questions. Dave was kind enough to spend the time with me and I eventually placed my order for the K3 ink. I have no regret, not at all, so far for buying the K3 ink.

During the conversation I mentioned about the above subject to Dave. I was told by Dave that he never heard of complaints of clogged purge units by any customer. He did not remember ever heard of any complaint from anyone named ghwellsjr (George Wells). Well, I theink he wasn't sure about that though. Dave emphasized that Hobbicolors inks are all made by USA based manufacturers. No ink was/is sourced from InkTec, a Korean brand.

I was also told, and this is something to pay attention to, is that their black pigment ink has evolved for many generations through different sources over the years. The evolution was driven by quality improvement. He said to me that their latest black pigment ink is made in Mexico by a US company which set up the factory there. I was assured that the quality of the ink is top rated. Dave said in fact that US company makes OEM inks for printer manufacturers. I could not get details of which ink for which brand of printers. At that point I had reasons to believe the company is Sensient Technologies, a very large US corporation indeed. It is the company that made Formulabs inks in the past marketed by Alotofthings. Of course this is unconfirmed. Dave did not tell me the name of this US company.

Regarding the plugs, they are small so if you have large hands it will be somewhat unfriendly still. But they are the best I have ever used. Mikling had larger ones that were for plugging the original fill hole after the ball plug was removed. They had clearance issue that you will need to cut off some plastic from the printer to clear. Tampering the original hole is messy. Not a good idea. The new plugs Mikling offers now are not much better in my opinion. They look small so if you have big hands you will have same handling problems. The plug can easily fall into the cartridge if you push a little too hard to seal. It will ne impossible to remove once you plug it in. How will you unplug it for refilling?

Have you actually tried their latest ink offerings? Did you try their plugs? I am using them now. I like them. Their K3 inks are particularly amazing product. I have a lot of faith for their Canon inks too. I will report back here if I run into any problems.

 

[jimbo123]

been refilling using hobbicolor inks for nearly 5 years, never purged, never clogged, German method using squeeze bottles.

5 year recap:
- over 350 ink carts refilled
- my four CLI8 carts are original, 5 years old now, each orig CLI8 cart refilled 40+ times
- on second MP830 and second MP830 print head

again carts never purged, never clogged using hobbicolors ink

give squeeze bottles a shot, so much cleaner, quicker and easier

J

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Printers: Canon MP830, IP4500, MX700, MX860, MX870, MP980
Method: German Durchstich Method
Ink: Hobbicolors ink, PMT-BK, UW8
Misc: Squeeze bottles - so much easier than syringes

 

[ghwellsjr]

Thanks for the advice. I am well aware of the report by ghwellsjr about InkTec black pigment ink that clogged his purge unit of his and his friend's printers. Ghwellsjr did a test of some black pigment inks including Hobbicolors then implied that the Hobbicolors black pigment ink will have the same problem. Ghwellsjr admitted that he did not actually have a clog by Hobbicolors ink. He did not use the ink in fact. He made the implication from the result of his test.

I think you are the first who reported the problem if I did not miss any by others. Thanks for the report. Are you absolutely sure that your purge unit was plugged because of using the ink? I remember you reported many incredible numbers of refilling for your ip4300. You never mentioned that you had any problems with Hobbicolors black pigemnt ink. Well, one bad experience by an experienced refiller like you is worth some attention by me. I will keep an eye on my printers.

Turbguy was not the first to report a problem with Hobbicolors pigment black ink. It was ehuesman and there have been several others since then. Even though I saw a problem in my testing with the Hobbicolors ink, I did not report it until after, coincidentally, ehuesman reported that his purge system was clogged and when I asked him what ink he was using, he said Hobbicolors. It was at that point that I revealed the preliminary results of my ongoing test, at least a month after I was aware of the problem. I really don't like reporting a problem like this unless I'm sure that it is real.

This is where ehuesman first reported that he was using Hobbicolors pigment black ink and this is where I included it in my preliminary testing result and here is where I mentioned it again near the end of my testing.

Since the initial report, there have been others who have reported the same problem with Hobbicolors pigment black ink. Here is a thread in which three more people reported the problem and here is where another user reported the problem.

EDIT: the thread I linked to in which I said "three more people" actually only had two more people, one of them was turbguy. I also mistakenly pointed to this same thread in a later post which I will delete. The list of people that have reported this problem with Hobbicolors pigment black ink is ehuesman, turbguy, hachuelo, Harvey and tsu3000.

 

[jondave]

Top-fill for me as well. Easier to clean & purge, no risk of overfilling the carts, and most especially no risk of damaging the sponge.

Just to share my experience as well, I was previously using Hobbicolors UW-8 on my Pro9000 II but had to switch out due to 2 reasons: 1) Dave, although very helpful, adamantly claimed to me that his inks matched OEMs and was totally surprised when my prints clearly showed otherwise. The other brands may not be better but at least they don't make such claims as Dave does. I was using my custom-made OEM profile on the UW-8 and the difference was night and day. 2) My print head clogged after only 1 month of very light use, a clog which I couldn't completely clean and had to subsequently replace the head as a last resort.

 

[turbguy]

I have never had a problem with Hobbicolors dye inks. They are quite satisfactory. If Dave were to be more open with his suppliers, or at least indicated there were some changes to the inks he supplies, we could evaluate the issue.

As to my purge unit issues/experience on my MP730, I can either "blame" Canon or Hobbicolors. Certainly something being discharged from the purge pump wasn't being absorbed into the waste pads. Perhaps it was just a matter of some incompatibility between Canon's ink and Hobbicolor's offering. Ghwellsjr's testing seemed to be a reasonable test of the "absorbancy" qualities of the various pigment black inks available at the time. So I switched to Precision Colors pigment black. I still purchase Hobbicolors dye colors....

I switched to Mikling (or Octoinkjet plugs, can't remember which) plugs as they are far easier to remove and replace for me, and I don't have large hands. I don't have clearance issues on my printers. Seems that'e the only time I get ink in on fingers during refilling.

 

[Tin Ho]

Turbguy was not the first to report a problem with Hobbicolors pigment black ink. It was ehuesman and there have been several others since then...

George, thanks for responding to the thread. I did follow to some extent about your test and report in the past. To be honest with you I did not and do not agree with you still today about your conclusion about Hobbicolors pigment black ink. There are others who did not agree with you either. See Jimbo123's post. It is a real life case of using the ink without the problem and it is quite convincing to me because of his tremendous number of refills with the ink. You admitted that you did not use the ink yourself. In comparison to Jimbo123, he not only used it he used a lot of it. I will give Jimbo a lot more credit than to you. Sorry, if you used a lot of the ink you would have been otherwise more credible. Granexp debated with you on the subject matter too. He too was a heavy user of the Hobbicolors ink. He presented much stronger technical reasons and I tend to agree with him. The 3 (maybe a few more as you said) who had problems seemed to be novices on the other hand.

So, there are a few people who had problems with the ink. How many customers Hobbicoors have? There are probably 10s of thousands. A few of them having problems can not be conclusive of anything. Think about others who never have their purge unit clogged. There are thousands of them.

I talked to Dave personally and I am completely confident in their products. That's why I made my purchase. So far I am completely satisfactory.

 

[Tin Ho]

been refilling using hobbicolor inks for nearly 5 years, never purged, never clogged

Same experience here;

Here is another successful case from using the Hobbicolors black pigment ink, George. You did not even use the ink and you made a completely opposite conclusion about the ink.

 

[Tin Ho]

Just saw this thread. This looks like a printer with a clogged purge unit too. But this one uses ink from Precisioncolors.
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=7904&p=1

 

[ghwellsjr]

Just saw this thread. This looks like a printer with a clogged purge unit too. But this one uses ink from Precisioncolors.
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=7904&p=1

Apparently you did not read the thread. It was not a clogged purge unit but rather a disconnected tube. Here's post #19 from the thread you linked to:

Deepest appreciation to turbguy for sending me a picture with directions for screw locations. I've got it apart and find that the tube which I believe to be for the black ink is totally disconnected and there is black ink all over everything. The bottom layer of foam looks to be saturated and about a third of the top layer. What should my next move be? Do I clean those pads, and if so, how, and do I assume that the problem was not a clog but a disconnect? Or do I still assume that it's clogged? Any input will be appreciated.

I think you should understand that when I did my test with many popular pigment black inks, I had no vested interest in the outcome. I was looking for an ink to replace the Inktec that others reported before me was causing clogs in the purge system and which I was getting in many printers that I supplied refilled cartridges to. I had not used any of those other brands of ink and I didn't want to find out by clogging a bunch of printers that I had taken apart and cleaned up that a second random choice had the same problem. So I devised a test that clearly showed a difference between Canon ink and Inktec ink and applied it to all the other inks.

The only issue for me is whether I should have preliminarily reported the bad performance of the Hobbicolors ink prior to the completion of the test. I was going to report my final results at the end of the test no matter what they were but after learning that someone actually had a problem with the Hobbicolors ink, I felt it prudent to report it early. Are you suggesting that I should not have reported the findings of my test?

I recognize that since Hobbicolors is secretive about their suppliers, it is possible that I just happened to have gotten some that was from a bad supplier and others that have never had a problem have only gotten good ink but that just means that there is a risk. I wish Inktec had come out and said why they pulled their ink off the market. Actually, I was told that there was no more market for it, but I'm sure they just didn't want to incur any liability for damaging a lot of printers.