Newbie Question

Hello. This is probably the stupidest question of the century but I will ask it anyway. Is there a possibility I can use the paint we use to paint house walls in order to print in an ink tank printer? Has anyone dared to try this? If yes, in what way did he/she dilute/dissolve paint and what was the printer model? Thank you for any answers.

@ antonisgeorgiou, Your question is still a valid one but unfortunately the answer is no, The modern print head must use a special combination and balance of water chemicals and colourant that will pass through the nozzles to make them work properly and correctly.

Epson and Canon both use a different type of print head and therefore must use a different type of ink to make them function, it’s a very fine balancing act and hard to reproduce successfully, but some 3rd party ink manufactures have come close.

If you decide to buy into the inkjet world, please remember it is not cheap to start out, but it’s very rewarding to be able to reproduce the beautiful photos that you took so much time to capture with your camera.

There are many different inkjet printer on the market today, so choose wisely, cheap is not always the cheapest option, running costs play a huge role in your overall cost, so ask yourself first if you want to use dye or pigment ink, and start from there..

antonisgeorgiou said:

This is probably the stupidest question of the century

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Nope, not even close. And I'm pretty sure I hold that distinction.

Welcome to the forum, antonisgeorgiou.

Here's my 2cents. Prior to purchasing a printer here's a little research to do. 1-Check what # cartridges are used. 2-Look for Refillable cartridges with ARC [auto reset chips]. You buy the ink and refill yourself, it's easy. That's the printer to buy. If that's not an option then go for the printer that suits your needs and use remanufactured cartridges, they work as good as the OEM ones and are much cheaper. Ignore the Messages, Counterfeit/ non-OEM etc. DO NOT UPGRADES of printer software messages. Upgrades can sometimes lock your printer until you put in OEM cartridges. That's where the money is........INK. Hope this helps.
BTW, there are NO stupid questions.

Thank you so much for spending time and effort to answer me. What I want is to print around 1.000.000 pages of comic books both B5 and A4 sizes and I needed to know what will be the most economic solution for me. I read for ink tank printers but I don't want dye ink since it's not water resistant. Pigment is expensive, laser printers and their toners etc are expensive too. And because I saw a youtube video where they used pigment ink for dye inktank printers, I thought I could ask about wall paint. Here is an example from Greece: 5 kilos wall paint costs 25-30 euros, 5 kilos dye ink costs 325-350 euros and 5 kilos of pigment ink costs 1400-1500 euros and that is a special price. Imagine that. I will not be able to answer this thread until the end of the month but if someone has a solution please post it here. Again a big thank you for your answers.

@antonisgeorgiou, The best option would be one of the Maxify range of printers and the use of 3rd party inks with refillable cartridges, can’t get cheaper than that…

Why don’t you check out both options…

Thank you.

antonisgeorgiou said:

Thank you so much for spending time and effort to answer me. What I want is to print around 1.000.000 pages of comic books both B5 and A4 sizes and I needed to know what will be the most economic solution for me. I read for ink tank printers but I don't want dye ink since it's not water resistant. Pigment is expensive, laser printers and their toners etc are expensive too. And because I saw a youtube video where they used pigment ink for dye inktank printers, I thought I could ask about wall paint. Here is an example from Greece: 5 kilos wall paint costs 25-30 euros, 5 kilos dye ink costs 325-350 euros and 5 kilos of pigment ink costs 1400-1500 euros and that is a special price. Imagine that. I will not be able to answer this thread until the end of the month but if someone has a solution please post it here. Again a big thank you for your answers.

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@antonisgeorgiou

1 liter of pigment ink for the Maxify costs € 35, coulours € 75.
I use this ink since 2 years now without any problem.
No doubt this very reliable German company will ship to Greece.

https://www.octopus-office.de/shop/...-pgi-2500-schwarz-pigmentiert?number=CP250BKP

https://www.octopus-office.de/shop/...pgi-2500-cyan-pigmented?c=4108&number=CP250CP

@antonisgeorgiou : one million of pages is a really huge amount.
Canon rates the lifespan of their Pixmas at around 20K pages. Maxifys may do better but it’s a long way up to 1.ooo.ooo. I don’t think that any home or semipro office machine is designed to cope with that amount of work. Apart that it would take a very long time to print 1.000.000 pages with a domestic printer, you’d worn out many Maxifys and printheads, not to speak about the ink required. Maybe 50 or 100 liters.
In this particular case, given the huge amount of printing, my advice is to outsource the job to a printing company equipped with the adequate machinery. It will be cheaper for you than investing in a dozen of Maxifys, twenty gallons of ink and two or three tons of paper.

Sincerely a big thank you to all of you for your answers. Not only you try to help but you are very polite, too. Thank you.
Please consider this post closed, I will post a new question in the inks related section.