Difference between BCI6BK&BCI3EBK Ink??

[Danny Kiwi]

My Canon PIXMA 5000 has two Black Carts..The Smaller 6BK,and the Larger 3EBK.
Do I use the same Refill Ink for both??
Someone told me that one is for Photos and a different Ink ,but that seems a bit Odd??
Tx in Advance..&Kia Ora from New Zealand..

 

[pete]

larger one...the 3e is for text, and is a pigment based ink.

smaller one....the 6, is for photos and is a dye based ink.

The 3e renders a much deeper black, but is not as good at shades of grey.

I dont think you can put pigment ink through a dye nozzle, or so i have read.

 

[Grandad35]

Danny,

The 6Bk uses a dye based ink that works with the dye based color inks and the 3eBk uses a pigment based ink for regular text printing. Pigment based inks tend to give a dull finish when printed on glossy paper, so the 6Bk's dye based ink is used for color printing to give a glossy surface. I believe that the pigment based ink in the 3eBk prints darker on regular paper (because the dye sinks into the paper) and is therefore better for text printing where gloss isn't important.

My HP 5550 has a similar situation, where the #56 cart (single color) uses a pigment based ink and the #58 (Tri-color) cart uses a dye based ink for photo printing. I fill the 56 cart with dye based ink to print B&W photos in "Print in grayscale" mode and "Black Print Cartridge Only" when I want to print glossy B&W photos.

So the answer to your question is: "The ink that you should use depends on whay you want to print".

 

[Danny Kiwi]

I print both Text and Photos...
Does this mean that I must fill the larger one(3EBK), with a completely different Ink??
IE... When i purchase my Refill Ink I should get two types of Black??
(Pigmented and Dye)
TX

 

[Grandad35]

Danny,

If you are willing to accept a lighter black for your text printing, you could use dye based ink in the 3eBk, but if you want the same dark text that you now get, you need the pigment based ink.

People with photo printers don't have a pigment based black cart, and these printers can also be used to print text, so dye based black isn't a total disaster.

You'll have to decide.

 

[pete]

I did a quick experiment for you, and printed a sheet of text with the #6 black, on normal paper. It came out a mid 50% grey, nowhere near as black as the pigment. I have a ip5000 too.

 

[Nifty]

Pete, How did you selectively print text with the BCI-6 cartridge? With my i860 I haven't been able to find a way to select when to use the dye or pigment black... for that matter, I don't know how to tell for sure if the 6bk is being used verses CMY blend.

 

[Danny Kiwi]

At a Guess I would say Pete just removed the 3EBK from the Pixma 5000 and it used the 6bk by default, Yes???

 

[Nifty]

Good guess Danny. I've wondered how well this would work. Pete... you've got us in suspense! BUT even if he pulled the 3ebk, how would he know if it was the bci-6bk making black vs. the bci CYM mix?

Grandad and I were working on a different issue and he made a great suggestion that applies here. To put a magenta or cyan BCI-6 cartridge into the BCI-6bk spot and do some printing. All the blacks that come out with an odd shade could be determined that they use the 6bk. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

 

[drc023]

The BCI-3ebk is used when in plain paper mode (often referred to as text printing). On my iP4000 I've also tried switching tanks to come up with different shadings of black. As I remember, the black still looked the same and appeared to have been solely from the BCI-6bk tank. I on the four tank models CMY has to be used to create a composite black, but on the five tank models I'm not so sure if they use composite black.