Which Pigment Ink for Epson 1500W?

[Ink stained Fingers]

Oh well, you asked for it .... I did it anyway to take it apart some more. Picture #2 above shows the nozzle plate , the bottom, and I took the metal frame around it away

There is actually not much more to see, this nozzle plate has a width of 3 cm, we are here almost in the range of 1:1 macro takes.

The ink filters are now on the back of this assembly, the printhead sits on a smaller board on top of the wider one, and some electronics are covered behind it, with the flat cable connector.


Now both are separated, the ink filters are on the back side of the right plate, and the ink flows through little gromets into the left assembly with the printhead, here on the backside.
Separating the little pc-board from the left mounting board shows this:

The little pc-board was mounted to the back of the right plastic part, the left is the printhead, with a connector bar broken away - the right board has two slits through which two multiconnector bars, metal, chip, flex pc-board are connecting the nozzles, making the electrical connections from the nozzles to the little pc-board removed above. The L300 uses 180 nozzles for black and 3x59 for the colors.
This image shows one of the connector bars somewhat mutilated, with connector wires connecting into the printhead and with a little flex pc-board with a chip on it, probably an address decoder to drive the nozzles, and there is the name of the company Sharp on this flex-board - on the right side - upside down - which let me assume that the actual printhead assembly is subcontracted to Sharp by Epson, or Sharp is selling them their printheads.




The ink flows into through various gromets into the nozzle assembly which I did not brake apart, that looks pretty much and firmly glued together. This little left over broken part is less than 3 cm wide. It fits vertically into the gap in the nozzle plate in picture #7, and you can see the corresponding contacts at the bottom of that slit.

 

[The Hat]

There are some differentness in both print heads, Epson uses a wire strip and Canon use a paper strip.

Epson uses some sort of adhesive, but Canon use a rubber gasket.

Canon use a Ceramic plate and Epson just use the a plastic base .

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

yes, there are lots of constructional differences, the main info I got from this exercise was that I found those fine filters in the ink paths directly in the printhead, at a location completely unaccessible for cleaning attempts, and there is no way to put the parts back together and apply any sealant around those filters.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

there was a question in another thread how much non-OEM inks would fade - Canon inks. I did a quick test over Easter
http://www.printerknowledge.com/thr...ation-and-submissions.9937/page-43#post-89948

and placed a print with a mix of dye inks into the sun, a mix of lots of Epson type 3rd party dye inks from last years testing, several 'UV resistant' inks from China via Alibaba, or via Amazon from U.S., an ink set from Precision colors EV6, and InkjetMall, and some OCP leftover and I don't know anymore what else. Anyway - I placed the test print into the sun, yes sun - for one day, and another day of overcast and partially rainy weather.



After just 2 days you can see this - the right bar is from the magenta ink mix, the luminance of the exposed and unexposed segments start to separate already.
The left histogram shows the Surelab D6 magenta performance - one firm spike

So much for that for the Easter fading

 

[Nozzle]

@Ink stained Fingers What sort of paper do you use for your testing? Is is plain office paper?

Also would like to share some info I got from Jon Cone a couple of months ago when I discussed with him his InkThrift CL ink, which, similar to Epson's Claria ink, is advanced encapsulated dye ink. I asked him why he hasn't come up with the idea of offering his set with three blacks (at presents it's just standard CcMmYK 6 ink system), so that users of Epson K3 printers could use it. He told me that he had this idea a long time ago and the reason why he decided against doing this was because diluted black was much less stable than full color one, meaning that 'LK' and 'LLk' dilutions produced were fading much quicker, basically making such inkset a lot less archival.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm printing the test color patches on a cheap glossy cast coated foto paper

 

[Nozzle]

Then your findings regarding DL and D6 inks do not necessarily apply to those people who use them with archival papers like high grade acid free RC coated glossy and semigloss + matte, since these papers might behave totally differently with these inks.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Oh yes, you are adding more dimensions to the testing. The impact of the surface had been tested and evaluated in more detail by Wilhelm WIR, Aardenburg and others, microporous/instant dry surfaces give actually the worst performance, swellable papers provide better performance, but they are practically not in use anymore. I used a few other photo papers last year, inks performed alike on those, the faster fading ink did that on all papers, under all conditions. I used a swellable paper, it took longer until the fading became visible, I used Gloss optimizer as an overcoat in a 2nd print pass - that slows the fading as well. I didn't use matte papers, that's not what I'm using with dye inks. I did a test as well on normal paper, o.k. - that's useless for photo printing with such a limited gamut, but it took longer on normal paper that fading became visible than on a photo paper, the inks probably invade the paper more and don't stay on the surface as on a coated paper. And I'm not doing any quantitative measurements, just relative comparisons

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

There is an ink set on the market claiming longevity 'on par' with the Epson Claria inks, and sold via InkjetMall . Inkthrift CL inks:

http://www.vermontphotoinkjet.com/products/ink•thirft-professional-dye-ink
http://shop.inkjetmall.com/About/InkThrift-CL-longevity-and-indoor-lighting/
http://shop.inkjetmall.com/Shop-By-Ink/InkThrift-CL/

This is the first and only ink supplier so far which I have seen publishing detailed information about the longevity testing of their inks

These inks are distributed in Europe via a Polish company Falter

http://inkjetsolution.eu/en_US/c/INKTHRIFT-CL-DYE-INK/90

and are available bottled with 220ml and capsules as a special cartridge insert for the Epson 6 color photo printers R265 and a lot more models. Interestingly they offer as well cartridges for the Epson/Fujifilm Drylab/Surelab printers. Their pricing is pretty close to the OEM ink cartridges

I have black and cyan inks on order, they apparently don't deliver from stock, but o.k., I'll have some ink in a week or two to place into the sun again --- the fading tests must go on....

 

[martin0reg]

Interesting ... previous "inkthrift" sets were not advertised as particularly stable, as far as I remember...