Refilling Canon with OEM ink

[stratman]

Smart Ass...

You're too kind, sir.

 

[martin0reg]

Regarding the "non color matching" of lyson XG in my 4 color canon the seller answered, to my surprise: this ink would be original made for epson 1400. And because of the good fade resistance also offered for canon.

This would explain the colors ... but does that really mean lyson / nazdar makes one ink for both epson and canon..? I can only confirm that the ink prints out fine with canon bubble jet ..(disregarding color matching).
https://www.smartink.nl/canon/pixma-pro/pixma-pro-9000-mark-ii.html

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

o.k., that company sells that ink but most likely is not the actual producer of that ink, so how would they really know. But it could very well be that Lyson just uses the same dyes for the Epson and Canon inks, and only changes the recipe for the solvent to suit the different printer models, or they sell the Canon inks as Epson inks as well. But would it matter - just create a profile. That's about the first thing I do when I get a new ink, I never print them just like that and don't even know how far they would be off from the OEM inks.

 

[stratman]

But would it matter

It might since Canon heats the ink before spitting it out and Epson just sprays away without heating.

 

[martin0reg]

I'm no chemist and I don't know what chemical properties or ingredients a bubble jet ink must have that it works, i.e. that it can build up a bubble by "boiling" the ink, and firing the drops without burning or clogging the nozzle. But I suspect that it's a specialty or additive for thermal heads - so that piezo ink without that additive don't work in thermal heads, but bubble jet ink in piezo heads...?
Once I mistakenlly filled epson pigment MK in a canon cartridge for text black (PGI). Soon there was no more text printing, in the nozzle check PGBK was blocked. After realizing the fault and changing the ink to canon compatible PGI ink the channel for text black came back.. fortunately..
A vice versa test would be interesting: filling canon text black ink - which pigments seems to be very similar to matte black - in a epson cartridge for matte black. Or simply any canon compatible dye ink in a epson dye ink printer. I assume the epson will print it out..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

it's more a physical property of the solvent - the specific energy needed to evaporate a particular amount of ink so that it changes into the gaseous state. The energy is fed to the ink via a metal film resistor in the ink channel, in direct contact with the ink, and a short current electrical pulse heats up this resistor to create the bubble which expells a particular amount of ink. It is obvious that various parameters must be tightly controlled, the electrical energy, the amount of ink to evaporate, the physical dimensions of the ink channels so that the ink flies out and not just dribbles out. There are no chemical reactions in this process. This evaporation energy of the solvent is tuned by mixing this and that solvent in a particular ratio so that it just fits into this game.

 

[martin0reg]

As I have no reason to doubt the seller's statement, that nazdar (the manufacturer of lyson inks) delivers only one type of fotonic XG, it must be "universal" regarding the printhead technology and also regarding color matching.
Okay... as long as it prints out without any trouble with printhead, let's go on with fading.

Here is my second comparison, fotonic XG vs. canon BCI-1411 (LFP carts) printed on aldi-sihl semiglossy 280g. One week UVa bulb.

On this RC type photopaper the fading is slower than on plain paper, posted above
http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/refilling-canon-with-oem-ink.10712/page-3#post-92985
The XG ink shows no fading yet, while the BCI is fading very very slightly greenish, visibly in the gray.

BTW the XG prints show a weaker yellow (look at the trees and skin tones) - although both inks were profiled with my colormunki

I will resume both comparisons one week more to increase the differencies, and including canon OEM chromalife.

 

[martin0reg]

Update of testing XG ink on plain paper (mondi smooth 160g), now 2 weeks under UV
first scan: XG vs IS, second scan: XG vs OEM (chromalife+ / CLI-8)



As always I'm regarding fading only:
XG faded (very) slightly to green, IS (quite) a bit more - while the OEM looks unchanged
(in particular take a look at the babies skin tone)

And beside I had two prints of a purging pattern, with 8 colors, on a standard plain paper
folded and exposed to the summer sun, like ink stained fingers tests, about 2 weeks.
To compare my previous best refill ink, BCI-1411, with XG... exposed part is on top:



sorry no OEM here...maybe next week, with a final ranking of all my canon refills:
BCI, XG, GI, MIS IS etc..

 

[martin0reg]

After almost one more week (12 days) I took the comparison prints of XG ink on RC photopaper out of the "terrarium" (UV bulb).

First scan: XG versus BCI-1411 / second scan: XG versus OEM chromalife+
While prints with XG and BCI are (more or less) profiled, the chromalife prints are out of driver - printed on a friends pixma with OEM carts on the same AldiSihl 280g semiglossy paper.




Regarding fading (of all inks used in this thread) in general on different papers:

- the XG seems to be the most stable 3rd party ink I've used in canon A4 pixma's,
with the downside of the worst colormatching, no photo printing without colormunki
- the BCI-1411 (out of canon dye LFP cartridges) is second best
with much better colormatching out of the driver
- the inks from IS, MIS, tintenalarm, arici, etc... including canon's own bottled ink GI-490, are fading all fairly quicker.

For more precise evaluation my tests are not standardized,
but I hope they are of some use, for comparing at least some sort of dye ink versus another.

Building your own UV test rig is easy, you just need a UV bulb for terrarium. Here is mine:
http://www.printerknowledge.com/thr...uting-magenta-and-cyan.7545/page-5#post-80941
And here is a calculation how these tests may relate to real light fading
http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/refilling-canon-with-oem-ink.10712/page-2#post-90350

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Regarding fading in general on different papers

I would assume you have printed your samples with those different Canon inks all on the same type of paper - the Sihl/Aldi one ?
I think youre results are conclusive, printed on the same paper, exposed under the same lamp for the same time period. I know the limitations of this type of testing- you cannot really derive firm numerical numbers to say that one ink is xx times better than another ink. I therefore do the same running several patches under the same conditions, same sun, same time period except varying the type of ink, or the type of paper, and keeping the other variables equal.

The results are interesting indicating there is actually a good UV stable 3rd party ink for Canons available. You are not mentioning price differences - it always comes to the bottom question - is this performance improvement worth the price delta to the other inks ? The user should be aware of these differences and decide what he wants to use but the ink suppliers won't tell the customers.
I would think the price is a reason that this ink is rarely available at ink shops, there are probably only a few shops across Europe offering this ink.

If you can just let the test run under your lamps for a while longer