Yet another fading test of dye inks - the last one (?)

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm getting ready for another ink fading test with inks which found the way to me, in this case some leftover refill inks which are just labelled with 'Cenado' on the top of the bottles - nothing else . Cenado inks and cartridges are distributed via Amazon which could be the likely source. I give them a try to see if they can compete with the Tintenliebe inks - the fastest fading inks so far.

Hongsam inks from China were mentioned and recommended in my previous ink test cycle by @BornHappy and @nertog here

https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/canon-bottled-dye-inks.15247/post-134257

I contacted Hongsam to give me a contact to a European distributor , which is inks.pl in Poland, they don't have a distributor in Germany nor in other Western European countries as it appears. The Hongsam inks are claimed to be highly fade resistant. They have a wide range of dye and pigment and other specialty inks, and their wholesale business runs via alibaba.

http://www.hongsam.cn/products/oa_office_application_ink/desktop_dye_ink.html

https://inks.pl/

Gellex/inks.pl is not just selling Hongsam inks but as well 'archival' dye inks by an American ink manufacturer GSC which I ordered as well.

http://gscimaging.com/products.php

Scroll down to the compatible inkjet finder and select a printer brand - Epson or Canon - and you'll get a very long list of inks - they seem to serve about every printer ever made.

http://gscimaging.com/products.php

(If you don't get a long list you may change browser settings - eg. for ad suppression - or use another browser.)

There is no list of distributors selling their inks, you probably have to contact their sales dept.

GSC states that they are doing as well custom ink manufacturing to customer specifications , could this be the source of PC inks ?

http://gscimaging.com/manufacturing.php

I'll start a test with these inks - Epson 106 as a reference to previous tests - Tintenliebe - Cenado - GSC - Hongsam in the next days, it takes a little while to swap that many inks and print the patch sheets; and I hope that this will be the last ink fading test for a while.................

 

[nertog]

Just to be clear, the Hongsam inks I recommend are their "Evernew" series: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2021-HONGSAM-EverNew-High-Light-fastness_1600189325807.html

@Ink stained Fingers: are those the ones you ordered?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Gellex in Poland is renaming the Hongsam products; I'll contact them with the test results

 

[nertog]

Gellex in Poland is renaming the Hongsam products; I'll contact them with the test results

They do offer Evernew dyes: https://inks.pl/p61/atrament-wodny-barwnikowy-hongsam-epson-evernew-7700-9700

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

yes, but I don't need that ink in 500ml bottles - the only size they offer, I don't use dye inks on my Pro7600, and I have already plenty of ink - I guess it's about a lifetime supply in the cabinet..
I tested already dye inks for large format printers in the past - an HP ink - some Canon dye inks for Image Prograph printers - the Epson inks for the T3100x - and Epson dye inks for the Pro7600 - Epson offered dye inks for that printer long time ago, and you had to select in the printer firmware once which ink type you are going to use - dye or pigment, and all these inks didn't fair as good as the Claria dye inks for the desktop photo printers.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

It's already visible after just a few days that the Cenado/Noname ink via Amazon fades as fast as the Tintenliebe ink as reported in the previous test

 

[The Hat]

I have ordered a new bottle of BK black ink from OctoInkjet, but am still waiting on it, because delivery times between the UK and Ireland are at an all-time low. Brexit ?

But when it gets here I am planning on a fade test between this new ink and the old FotoRite BK black that I have been using for the past 13 years. This new Black ink is currently been used for the CLl-42 carts.. (Pro100)

I will print several black strips on plain and photo paper with both inks and place them outside my computer room for 6 months to see how they both fair out against each other.

This is only a black ink test and I am not interested in how the colour inks preform, even dough the two prints will be of greyscale, some colours will be used in their makeup..

I will start a new thread showing the results when the 6 months is up..
So expect the results in October..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

O.k. - fine, that will be interesting if your black inks turn to brown after a while as well - 6 months or whenever .

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

5 days of exposure are gone, and I can report some initial findings at this time; I'm running this test with the 5 inks listed above, and patch patterns are printed on 2 types of papers - a glossy 240gr and a 300gr this time; I was using this 240g paper since quite a while but I'm running out of it ; I tested a similar paper of that supplier with 190gr in the last test, and with a 300gr paper at this time, all these papers are very close together, the gamut is practically identical and the fading performance as well, that makes it easy for me to switch to the 300 gr paper for further tests but keeping some good comparability with previous tests.

inks.pl - Gellex in Poland acts as a distributor for Hongsam Chinese inks and as well inks by GSC from the U.S.

The Cenado inks (distributed via Amazon) fade as fast as the Tintenliebe inks - they only have limited use for prints with short term usage, I cannot recommend them at all.

I'm using the Epson 106 inks as a reference, they gave a deltaE of 3.45 on the Glossy 240g paper in the previous test and 3,72 at this time, such variations are typical and are caused by varying outside conditions - mainly the intensity of the sun and UV - cumulative sunhours etc. The Tintenliebe and Cenado inks run at 15.5 at this point of time, the black patches are medium brown already.

Gellex/inks.pl is distributing inks by GSC in the U.S., and I took the chance and ordered the GSC 'Archival inks' and the Hongsam inks at the same time, the verdict is easy - these GSC 'Archival ' dye inks fade as fast as the other 2 fast fading Cenado and Tintenliebe inks with a deltaE of 16.1 at this time - you just can forget it. (Please be aware that I only tested one ink type of GSC, I cannot comment on the fading performance of all their other inks - dye or pigment).

I got a set of Hexachrome HLF inks from Gellex as well, as they act as a distributor for Hongsam inks from China.
Some of their inks carry a suffix 'HLF' - High Light Fastness' , some other dye inks by Hongsam do not carry that suffix in the description. This Hexachrome name does not refer directly to a particular dye ink product of Hongsam.
https://inks.pl/p2/atrament-xexachrome-high-light-fastness-HLF
(you can use Google Translate if necessary)

This Hongsam/Hexachrome HLF ink shows a deltaE of 11.71 at this time, somewhat better than the other inks but still very far off from the Epson 106 ink. Remarkable is the good stability of the pure black ink , much better than the CMY dye inks, and the black ink is pretty close to the Epson 106 ink performance. This black ist still black and not brown, this keeps very well the perception of contrast of a print even if the other colors are getting lighter.
I'll keep this test running for a few more days but it is apparent at this time that some super-ink does not exist and does not hide anywhere.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm closing this test with these results:

The Tintenliebe ink maintains its first place as the fastest fading ink in several tests so far, but the Cenado ink is pretty close - black turned into a light milk chocolade brown at this time. The GSC 'Archival' ink is disappointing, and the Hongsam HLF ink performs somewhat better than the other 3rd party inks in this test, but does not really reach the performance of the Epson 106 ink at all. This clearly shows the difficulty to buy a 3rd party ink by its fading performance - no reliable data are available but just supplier promises like 'UV resistance' or 'archival' or similar. It's up to the user to find the balance between pricing, assumed performance and availability.
The test ends here, all non-OEM inks of this and other recent tests are collected by color into larger bottles already and will be used up over time for short term prints - internet and such.