Using 502 ink in ET-2650?

[BBBrook]

Hi, I have an ET-2650. I need to refill the black ink and have a couple of bottles of 502 ink, rather than the 664 ink. Is this compatible? Thanks

 

[flyboy]

I was wondering about a similar situation as I have plenty of bottles of ink from other printers and I only use the printer for household printing with my ET-3750.

I have mixed inks previously and had no great problems.

 

[BBBrook]

It might be a matter of dye based inks bs pigment. I don’t know which is which in my case. Hopefully someone will know the deal with these.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The Epson 502 ink is used with ET-2750/3750 printers which use a pigmented black whereas the ET-2650 uses the 664 inkset with a dye black. Both should work since Epson uses dye or pigment blacks on lots of other workforce and home premium models with the same printhead 180 + 3x59 nozzles.

 

[BBBrook]

Thanks, so I WON"T ruin my printer using this ink?

 

[soysauce]

Thanks, so I WON"T ruin my printer using this ink?

The inks do have different viscosities. The 502 ink is a little thinner (lower viscosity) than the 664. Not a huge difference though. Hopefully there aren't any chemical incompatibilities. Let us know if it works.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The inks do have different viscosities.

Why would Epson use inks with different viscosities for the same type of printhead - 180+3x59 nozzles which is installed in millions of printers since prob. 10 years - did you measure it ?

 

[soysauce]

Why would Epson use inks with different viscosities for the same type of printhead - 180+3x59 nozzles which is installed in millions of printers since prob. 10 years - did you measure it ?

I did measure it. I got about 2.1 centipoise for the 502 and 2.5 cp for the 664. 512 was also 2.1 cp, and 774 was about 2.2 cp. These are all for black EcoTank inks. I have found that the viscosities for the XP and WF printers vary too.
I also measured slight surface tension differences in the inks, not big enough fo me to be sure they were not due to measurement error, but enough to make me think the inks could be sightly different in composition from each other.
I'm not sure why Epson would make changes to the formulations. Here are a couple guesses. One is that they intentionally vary the viscosity to keep the 3rd party ink companies off balance, and make corresponding minor adjustments in their hardware and/or drivers so optimum performance is with their inks and falls off with 3rd party inks. But it could be that these variations are all within the acceptable range for their print heads so a few tenths of a centipose difference in viscosity doesn't matter. I hope someone with more knowledge than I can comment.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I don't think those variations are relevant, dye and pigment inks may differ in the dye or pigment ink load or the pigment ink comes with some additional anti-clogging/antocoalgulant additive which is active on the surface and all that could change the viscosity slightly. Epson is running dye and pigment inks in various combinations on this 180+3x59 nozzles printhead since 10 years.