ConeColor Inks

[jfcarbel]

Interesting comparison of IJF and Cone inks. Thanks for the links.

I was curious since IJF sources their inks from various sources does anyone know where their dye based inks are sourced from and do they also compare better then Cone or Image Specialists Dyes?
I see much testing online is for pigment based, but I could find little for dye based testing.
My guess is he sources from higher quality import maybe like German OCP and Japanese since he never notes usage of a US formulation except for his use of Image Specialists Black.

sorry to get the thread off topic

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The problem is that there are not many measurable parameters for a 'good' or 'better' ink, you can expect that an ink technically does not cause harm, and damage , short term or longer term , to your printhead, but about no supplier or producer publishes data about the acheivable gamut, the black level, the UV/ozone stability under some typical or industry wide accepted standards. Gamut and black level depend as much on the ink as on the paper used, here particular popular papers, glossy, semiglossy, matt could be used. So I don't really care whether the ink mixer is in Germany or Japan or Korea, most of those companies don't produce the raw materials , the color dyes anway, they get them from Ciba or BASF or who knows, but here I don't really care either. And when you look to the tests done by Aardenburg or WIR, they tested the OEM inks, but only a very few 3rd party inks, probably those companies didn't want to fund such tests, they either didn't want to see not so good results or they assume that their customers don't care anyway. So what is left are some tests by interested users, done different ways, with different materials, so difficult to compare, such tests are a personal opinion.

 

[The Hat]

I would remain indifferent to that and have found the complete opposite because there are tens of thousands of tests done with dye inks every day !

We may not hear of all these tests but we do hear of a few who bother to test, what I am referring too here of course is the end user themselves.

They buy an X Brand of 3rd Party ink and use it on their particular printer and most are very happy with it, so we don’t hear how good or bad that Brand X really is, more to the point do they care !

The biggest incentive of most ink users is to get an ink at a ridiculous knock off price the cheaper the better, that doesn’t damage their printers and after that nothing else seems to matters to them.

The vast majority of these ink buyers also use the cheapest paper to print on and the fact that some of these inks walk off the paper after 30 days is never going to be a problem because they have moved on to printing something else of less importance.

On another note there are others as I said above, that try to use the few good 3rd party ink suppliers that are still out there and some of these users actually test these inks on good paper Brands and publish their own findings.

It’s a known fact that all dye inks fade no matter what the Brand label says, but when you consider the enormous price difference between the OEM Brands and 3rd party inks, then there is no comparison, 3rd party ink will win out every time and the rest fades into oblivion..

 

[martin0reg]

...
It’s a known fact that all dye inks fade no matter what the Brand label says,...

All inks fade, no matter what technology, thats the fact, question is how fast..
Let me summarize some (standardized) fading results from printer reviews by a german magazine "ColorFoto",
first value is fading from UV, second is fading from ozone
canon cli-8 "chromalife100": -5 dLab / -35 Lab
canon cli-521 "chromalife100+": -3 dLab / - 20 Lab
epson claria: -2 dLab / -18 Lab
epson UCK3: -1 dLab / -6 Lab
canon lucia: - 1 dLab / - 3 Lab
So pigment is indeed the winner here - but if you look at the earlier and the later canon dye, you see also the improvement of the dye technology.

BTW Cone offers two different dye ink sets, inkthrift pro and CL...
http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.362672/n.1/sc.29/category.-129/it.C/.f
...the first is "for printing short-term graphics in EPSON large format and desktop printers", the second claims to be "High-definition, fade-resistant, dye inks for printing photographs in Claria compatible inkjet printer".
Would like to compare these with the drylab ink (fuji-epson-noritsu) I'm using for refilling epson..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I don't really see a pricing benefit of that Inkthrift CL ink over the Fujifilm DL cartridges, o.k., they can deliver smaller bottles. As long as they don't put the performance of that ink into perspective to other inks by some testing It's impossible to get an opinion.
Mineral pigments won't fade that quickly .
Getting performance numbers from those OEM inks is not the challenge but about no 3rd party ink supplier would join such test, they may do such testing internally but won't publish the numbers. The last greater test by a consumer magazine which I remember is about 8 years old, covered some 3rd party cartdrige suppliers for several printers and brands, and some time after that test the test lab closed, with a statement on their homepage that they were shutting down because of lack of interest in such testing.

 

[martin0reg]

Speaking about inkthrift CL I have to mention these
http://www.precisioncolors.com/E6B_79b.html
..I would like to put inkthrift, PC/IS EV6 and the fuji DL side by side under my UV-bulb..
http://www.printerknowledge.com/thr...e-ink-reccomendations.10241/page-2#post-85705

 

[The Hat]

Ink testing is only relevant to the individual that does that testing, so if you torture your inks into submission under all sorts of different lighting, then you’ll get the answer you were expecting in the first place.

If you have an ink you specifically like then find a suitable paper that allows that ink to survive with as little as possible fading in your normal everyday environment then that would be a far more genuine and realistic test..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

That would last much longer until you know the outcome, the reciprocity - double light intensity gives half the survival time - stays apparently valid up to pretty high radiation doses so frying some printouts under such a lamp would give some results much quicker, it's all not a real quantitative test but for a personal judgement which ink to use in the future - or not.

 

[martin0reg]

...then you’ll get the answer you were expecting in the first place....

What I expected from my latest, totally unscientific and not a bit standardized, UV-test (link above) was:
- that epson L300 ink would be almost as bad as other 3rd party dye ink - according to the bad results from WRI. But epson L300 turned out much better beside a cheap canon compatible.
- that canon ink from BCI-1411 tanks would be as good as fuji DL - result was: BCI-1411 may be not quite as resistant as fuji DL, but far better than the most other canon compatibles I have used.

Okay, you can't compare these results with other testings. But what can be compared are the 4-6 prints which I put side by side under the UV-bulb...

 

[3dogs]

What I expected from my latest, totally unscientific and not a bit standardized, UV-test (link above) was:
- that epson L300 ink would be almost as bad as other 3rd party dye ink - according to the bad results from WRI. But epson L300 turned out much better beside a cheap canon compatible.
- that canon ink from BCI-1411 tanks would be as good as fuji DL - result was: BCI-1411 may be not quite as resistant as fuji DL, but far better than the most other canon compatibles I have used.

Okay, you can't compare these results with other testings. But what can be compared are the 4-6 prints which I put side by side under the UV-bulb...

I really really enjoy your posts. You work tirelessly to understand inks, pass on good valuable research then open your latest post with such a comment about your methods.
They may no be scientific, and may not be standardised......who cares! I value your findings

Thanks