DSF

John G;42217 wrote:Its been a very long time since I owned an epson printer, but in this day and age of compatible inks, why would you buy full price carts when there's so many compatibles for next to nought.

Ditto.

I use a Brother printer with 80-100ml cartridges. Spent £10 on ink in January 2011 and still have plenty left. I'd never go back to OEM ink unless I required their archival properties for some specific purpose.

I used to spend a fortune on OEM ink and their thimble-size cartridges. Now, £10 for what will probably end up being 2 years worth of printing. That's what they call a "no-brainer".

do you think nome oem ink would be ok
i use the printer for the injet dark paper and thought it had to be durabrite ink
stu

stuart, i use dye ink which is what the durabrite is on my inkjet paper and i have not had any issues with it bought from CISS solutions originally and then re-fil the carts, both my printers are epson, i use the sub ink one only for sub ink, and the dye ink i use as my general printer, if i am doing a large run of black standard printing, i replace the cart with a normal ink cart, but for day to day i dont bother

stuart;42222 wrote:do you think nome oem ink would be ok
i use the printer for the injet dark paper and thought it had to be durabrite ink
stu

I don't use inkjet dark myself. I imagine Durabrite is recommended because it's a pigment-based ink (the poor man's version of Epson Ultrachrome) as opposed to Claria (which is more of a dye-based ink). Pigment-based ink is inherently more fade-resistant than dye-based ink (some dye-based ink can be fade resistant given the right substrate).

There are third-party pigment inks just like there are third-party dye-based inks. They typically cost a little more than dye-based inks, but still a lot cheaper than OEM.

I haven't tried third-party pigment-based ink myself, because I wasn't aware of it when I bought my dye-based ink. It's something I plan to look at whenever (if ever) my £10 worth of dye-based ink ever runs out.

But, to summarise, if you want better long-term fade-resistant properties from your print, a pigment-based inkset would be better than dye-based inkset. If, however, you don't need long-term durability then a dye-based inkset may suffice.

thats really odd, when i first bought replacement inks i bought the pigment inks which came in big 250ml bottles, when i said that i was printing onto the darkjet type papers, and wanted them as a replacement for the durabrite inks they sold me the dye inks which come in 100ml bottles and were quite a bit more expensive.

at the moment they have reduced the cost of their pigment ink to £5.95 per 250ml !! http://www.continuous-ink-systems.co.uk ... acdedda6a7

That's a good price. I was looking on ebay and could only find pigment ink at about £25 for 4x100ml. I'll bookmark the page and hope the special offer is still on when I have £20 spare.

I don't know why you would have been sold dye ink to replace Durabrite. I know the first version of Durabrite was a bit of an abomination - it didn't do well with photographs and it clogged a lot, which led to Epson reformulating it. I think that's when they renamed it to "Durabrite Ultra".

With Durabrite in entry-level printers and Ultrachrome in higher-end printers, Epson were pushing heavily into the pigment market - extolling its fade resistant durabilities over dye-based ink - but then they suddenly came out with Claria, which they then pushed on the grounds that it was better than Durabrite, yet they still sell Durabrite.

Hard to know what's going on in their heads sometimes.

The primary difference between a pigment ink like Ultrachrome/Durabrite and a dye ink like Claria is in the fade resistance. Pigment is inherently fade resistant and so can survive quite well no matter what you print it on. A dye ink can be fade resistant if used with the correct paper - which is why you see names such as Claria (Epson), Innobella (Brother), and Vivera (HP) used on both ink and paper. If you use both together, you'll get good fade resistance. If you use one on its own, then you won't.

But then if the item in question is mostly worn indoors, then even a dye print will last reasonably well. It's usually a weakness to ultraviolet that increases fading.

A good place to read up on the fade resistance of OEM inksets/paper is http://www.wilhelm-research.com/

ought to ask one of the admin, to split this topic off really, as its valuable information

a lot of info to take in there so i will read it again later tonight
thanks for your input
stu