G&G 3e black cart problem

[neilslade]

Thanks for your update on the pigment versus dye cost-- yes, at the gallon level, the pigment cost is greater. But you are the first person in YEARS who has even mentioned to me that he orders ink by the gallon.

I make this abundantly clear on my site, I recommend bargain pre-filled carts for the majority of inkjet users, very few who print professionally- and for those I have NEVER recommended the cheap carts for pro use. For most people, and I would guess this is 99 out of 100 inkjet printer owners, it makes no sense to refill carts or spend a fortune on OEM carts for flyers or photos you are going to stick on your refrigerator for a few months or weeks.

I make it very clear that archival quality prints require the OEM ink. Even MIS ink does not have the lightfastness of OEM ink per the independent non-commercial test results I've seen- although I've had MIS prints on my walls for years with no fading.

I also make it clear that refilling your carts saves about 60% of the cost over pre filled G&G carts, and gives you better lightfastness. I also mention that it can be a royal pain in the butt and a mess. For most people who use their printers for everything but permanent printing, this is more trouble than its worth.

In order to justify bulk ink refill, you should have a need for very lightfast prints, and/or significant volume of printing.

For people who use their printers for professional use or commercial use-- I make it clear what the limitations of third party pre-filled carts are, but it is a small segment of inkjet users, and for these users the options and the dis-advantages and advantages is pretty clear.

This is my opinion on the subject, and of course anyone is free to agree or disagree. But I make it abundantly clear what the options are to everyone, and the limitations of each method of ink use.

Thanks, your opinion is welcome.
Neil

 

[Tin Ho]

Neil, none of your 3 example prints are really crisp but the one in the middle is indeed the worst. The point I am making is you can fill bci-3ebk with dye black ink and print just fine without B and C problems you posted. I am not defending anything. I use dye black ink in my 3ebk all the time and had no leaking nor contamination.

If I were to print a book I would use high quality pigmented ink like you do. I would not even think of using dye ink as you did. Most of my text prints end up in trach. Dye ink is cheap and everywhere. I don't need to defend for using it. It works and easy. I agree with you the print will be fuzzy but not really too bad at all. Maybe my eye sight isn't too great. I really do not see a problem in terms of not crispy enough for my prints.

I have used pigmented ink that contain Chinese, Korean, American and Germany pigments and of course Canon, which who knows where it is made. My experience tells me germany made pigment has the greatest black density and Korean and Chinese have the least. But the formulation that makes the text crispy is not in the pigments used. It is some patented ingredients in the ink that make the ink crispy. Not all pigmented ink will print crispy texts. Not all dye black ink will bleed and leak like the one you got from G&G.

The real reason of smudging of dye black ink printed out of 3ebk nozzles is mainly caused by the the 5-pico liter ink droplet. The same ink printed out of bci-bk nozzles at 1 pico-liter is extremely sharp. If you have a 3ebk and a bci-6bk in your printer you will of course not use bci-6 bk to print test. But you get to see the proof that the dye ink is not responsible for the fuzziness.

I can agree that it is unacceptable especially if it leaks and contaminates the color inks. I won't use dye ink to print a book either. Don't even think about it. But I print hundreds of sheets weekly of text on $2 per realm paper I really have no interest in using $100 gallon ink and risk print head clogging as well. Especially if the text is still fuzzy but a little bit better it's not worth it.

If you sell the book you print you should not have considered dye black ink. But hundreds of sheets of my prints (about the size of a book too) only get posted and then threaded a few days later. When the paper reaches the landfill you can't read the text any more. That's just right for me. Again the point I make is it works well. Serves my purposes not yours. But it does work.

 

[neilslade]

?

Let's see if I've got this straight-- you are putting MIS dye ink in the 3eBK cart and it works, basically--- but not as good as the pigment ink.

My guess looking at the ip3000 and 4000 and newer generation printers is that they have a separate set of nozzles just for the pigment black, and that it is delivered significantly differently than the photo black-- and thus, these printers can crank out the text pages at about 20 pages per minute-- quite important if you have books or large documents- this allowed me to switch from laser printers (which curl pages, and will not print double sided on perforated paper without jamming). And providing you use the proper ink, there is no degradation of print quality on plain paper.

So your results show that you can refill the 3eBK carts with plain photo black (used for 6BCI type carts) it works at a fundamental level.

As far as text and dye ink on plain paper is concerned-- it would be fine for casual use-, but not for something important, nor something I sell and I am selling books, so for me, close isn't good enough-- I only provide my customers with books that are commercial quality. The difference is enough to see easily- the text printed with the G&G carts I've got does not look good-- yes, you can read it, but its like a car with a bad paint job. It drives, but doesn't look that great. Yes, I agree it will work-- and if the carts don't leak, that's cool....BUT.....

The 3eBk G&G carts from my batch leak, so right there, unacceptable to anyone, and that's the main thrust of my observations. My tests showed that when the head is wiped off, the carts can sit in the printer overnight and there is not leakage-- but print as few as 2 pages--- and voila--- ink all over the print head nozzle side. Vely vely bad.

The G&G ink in the batch of 3eBK carts I have is not the proper viscosity for this cart, which has an outlet hole which has probably 3 times the volume of the 6BCI carts (twice the diameter-- I think "pie" R squared will determine volume or something like that.... hahah).

So, I think we've got all the info down... people can experiment and do what works for them. Good luck to all.

Neil

 

[ghwellsjr]

The real reason of smudging of dye black ink printed out of 3ebk nozzles is mainly caused by the the 5-pico liter ink droplet. The same ink printed out of bci-bk nozzles at 1 pico-liter is extremely sharp. If you have a 3ebk and a bci-6bk in your printer you will of course not use bci-6 bk to print test. But you get to see the proof that the dye ink is not responsible for the fuzziness.

Tin Ho, please study my article about the print head in the iP4000:

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1504

Look at the last picture which is a closeup of the light magenta portion of the nozzle check. Keep in mind that the "dots" you see there are made from a pair of 2 picoliter drops, if you can believe the Canon documentation. Compare those drops to the ones in the next picture up, the dark magenta. These are made from a pair of larger drops. Now look at the picture of the photo black dots. Keep in mind that these are made from 4 drops but you can distinguish the individual drops because they are not laid on top of each other. They are at least as large as the dark magenta drops. According to the specification for the MP780, another printer that uses the same print head, the droplets can be either 2 picoliters or 5 picoliters. See this link:

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelTechSpecsAct&fcategoryid=116&modelid=10444

If you look at the Canon documentation for the iP4000 (and others that use the same print head), you will see that they do not claim that all the nozzles for all the colors are 2 picoliter. They merely state, "droplets as small as 2 picoliters":

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelDetailAct&fcategoryid=117&modelid=10239

From my observations, this only applies to the magenta and cyan inks which can also print large droplets from a second set of nozzles. The photo (dye) black and yellow can only print large dots, just like the pigment black nozzles.

 

[Tin Ho]

Ghwellsjr, your post about Canon print head is an excellent one. But keep in mind the closeups are nozzle check print patterns only. They are not necessarily actual patterns in printing text and photos. The 3ebk nozzles, according to Canon specs, have a resolution of 600x600 for text printing and probably everything else as well. But all other colors including BCI-6bk has a resolution of 4800x2400 or 9600x4800 depending on printer models. These are 4 to 16 times higher than that of 3ebk nozzles. The point I was trying to make was this is the main reason why texts are fuzzy if the 3ebk is filled with dye black ink. It is less fuzzy if pigmented ink is used because pigments are 50 to 100 times bigger than dyes. Pigments are heavier and less mobile so pigmented ink smuges less. Based on actual experience smuding of dye black ink in printing text is not that bad except maybe tiny size letters. The ink itself also makes some difference. The ink Neil used looked too watery which was probably the reason he could not tolerate ti.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Tin Ho, thank you for your comment about my post. Now for additional information for the sake of everyone:

The spacing of the nozzles in the Canon print head is 600 nozzles per inch for the pigment black ink and 1200 nozzles per inch for the dye inks. When performing black-only printing on plain paper, the printer does a single pass and uses only the pigment black ink so the vertical resolution is 600 dpi. The paper advances the height of the larger pigment nozzles, a little over a half an inch per pass. The dye black ink from the BCI-6BK cartridge is never used on plain paper.

On photo paper, the pigment black ink from the BCI-3eBK cartridge is never used and the so-called vertical resolutions higher than 1200 for the dye inks are achieved by multiple passes with the paper moved by a fraction of the height of the print head. Since the height of the dye portion of the print head is just over 0.2 inches, the paper advances 0.1 inches per pass for 2400 dpi and 0.05 inches per pass for 4800 dpi.

However, if you look at the placement of dots in my aforementioned article, you will see that even though the nozzles are spaced 1200 nozzles per inch, and there are 1200 dots per inch, the dots on the page are not always exactly evenly spaced in the vertical direction. This is caused by the nozzles not all aimed in exactly the same direction. One of the purposes of doing multiple passes is to even out these slight variations of the placement of the dots. I doubt that Canon even bothered to move the paper so that the second pass of dots would theoretically land between the first pass of dots.

When printing on plain paper, the same problems occur but in addition, it is very difficult to see the individual dots because the paper fibers cause the droplets to spread and blend in a very uneven manner and this is highly dependent on the characteristics of the ink and the paper. The dyes have more of a tendency to spread than the pigment but if the ink in the 3eBK cartridge is a blend of pigment and dye, then this could cause more spreading.

The real purpose of the high resolution placement of dots on the page is not for accuracy in constructing an image, but for fine control of the blending of shades and colors. These high resolutions are way beyond what any eye can render.

Here is a little experiment everyone who has a printer with pigment black ink can try: print a nozzle check on photo paper and on plain paper. Examine the "3eBK" lettering through a magnifying glass. On the photo paper, you can easily see the pixel stairsteps on the curved portions of the lettering. Now compare that to the plain paper. No longer can you see the stairsteps because they are masked by the random jaggedness caused by the spreading of the ink into the fibers in the plain paper. To the naked eye, the lettering looks nice and crisp in both cases but through the magnifying glass, you can see that the image has suffered on the plain paper. The moral of the story is that 600 dpi is more resolution than the naked eye can see and if you can see a degradation of pigment black lettering, it is no doubt caused by ink that is "too watery", as Tin Ho put it.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Here is a little experiment everyone who has a printer with pigment black ink can try: print a nozzle check on photo paper and on plain paper. Examine the "3eBK" lettering through a magnifying glass. On the photo paper, you can easily see the pixel stairsteps on the curved portions of the lettering. Now compare that to the plain paper. No longer can you see the stairsteps because they are masked by the random jaggedness caused by the spreading of the ink into the fibers in the plain paper. To the naked eye, the lettering looks nice and crisp in both cases but through the magnifying glass, you can see that the image has suffered on the plain paper. The moral of the story is that 600 dpi is more resolution than the naked eye can see and if you can see a degradation of pigment black lettering, it is no doubt caused by ink that is "too watery", as Tin Ho put it.

I took some pictures showing the results of this experiment using a microscope.

This is the "3e" from the nozzle check printed on photo paper:

Notice how sharp and clear the edges are and how well defined the stairsteps are on the rounded portions of the lettering.

Now see the same thing on plain paper:

If you hadn't seen the first picture, you would never know that the edges had a stairstep pattern to them. Instead, the absorption of the ink into the random orientation of the paper fibers creates a new edge that totally masks the stairsteps.

Here is another picture showing a portion of the grid pattern on photo paper:

Notice how perfectly straight and sharp the two horizontal lines are.

Now the same thing on plain paper:

The soaking into the paper fibers is abundantly obvious.

Another thing you will notice on the two photo images is random dots on the right-hand edges of the characters. I believe these small dots are caused by the ink breaking up into smaller droplets after the main droplet leaves the nozzle. These very tiny dots are present in all images that my printers produce and although they are obvious on photo paper (under magnification), they just get soaked into the fibers on plain paper and can no longer be distinguished. The main point of all this is that 600 dpi is beyond the maximum that the unaided eye can detect and so if you do see what looks like bleeding, it is probably because the ink has less pigment and more dye or water than it should have.

 

[dsimonl]

Neil:

Do you have an update on the G&G issue? I just got eight 3e black cartridges in the mail, and I don't want to use them until we have more information.