Ocbestjet Epson K3 compatible refill ink (aliexpress.com)

Today I tried this cheap refill ink from aliexpress.com in my Epson Pro 3880, which unfortunately suffered from a faulty PK/MK switch causing leakage of ink when PK is chosen, so I had to use MK permanently now.

For the moment I tested in the Enhanced Matte Paper setting, even on glossy photo paper.

The first test shows the ink has a surprisingly good gloss, even on the most critical colour: magenta and light magenta. The black is unfortunately MB, because of the setting, so I have to figure out how to test the PK, maybe I have to swap the cartridges and chips, and print several pages of black to flush the channel with PK.

I could use the standard Epson Enhanced matte paper and the colours were strikingly similar as with the original Epson K3 vivid. Even black and white prints with the Enhanced matte paper profile were very neutral, but strangely enough when using the ABW-setting, the prints yield a rather strong magenta/sepia cast, unlike the Inktec Powerchrome K3 refill ink, which prints very neutral like the original Epson K3 Vivid ink.

The ink has a slightly faint glycol smell, but not pungently repulsive like OCP K3 ink does, which really forces you to open all doors and windows to ventilate the room.

Despite the sepia/magenta cast on the ABW print and the inability to test the blackness of the PK, my first impression is very good for this ink.

I have to figure out the faulty PK/MK switch, which leaks when set to PK.

can't you just fill some of your PK ink into a MK cartridge ?
There are a myriad of ink sellers on Aliexpress, and I tested quite some of them some time ago when I was testing inks for the R800 and P400, I can confirm your experience that some of these suppliers deliver very good inks - good gloss, good black level, good gamut for a very low price . This applies to pigment inks, I'm quite happy with inks from Aomya, but be aware if you look for dye inks, all those inks from very cheap/almost free to a medium price fade very quickly, including all those which are called 'UV resistant' or even compatible with the DX100/D700 Surelab/Drylab printers. If that's not a relevant criteria for you can get very good bargains.

@pharmacist

Found this

https://youtu.be/97XomNjdLHA

No need to buy a new one

Just an update: I managed to switch cartridges with changing the chips (PK on MK and vice versa), so the printer thinks MK is active, but the cartridge is loaded with PK.

After printing 7 pages with black to purge the lines and fill it with PK ink, I did some tests with this Ocbestjet PK ink. Actually the results are not so good as I would expect: despite a very good black, the glossiness was a bit dissappointing compared to other colours. I am not sure if there is a overcoat with LLK when printing in the setting with glossy paper. Because my second Epson Pro 3880 (in which this refill ink is being tested) suffers from a leaky PK valve, forcing my to use the MK setting.

Inktec Powerchrome K3 has a much better gloss and low gloss differential and the ABW prints are really 100 % neutral, not a sepia teint as with this Ocbestjet ink, but strangely enough using the standard printer profiles of Epson, the results are surprisingly neutral when printing black and white pictures.

The rest of the colours are vivid with good gloss and good gamut, but the PK -despite good blackness- lacks enough glossiness to neutralise the gloss differential with the other colours.

I als tried to rub with my fingers how good the pigments adhere to the paper and it seems to be ok: not stains on my finger tips and no damage to the printed area.

The key thing to remember about flushing out inks in tube printers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminar_flow

First sentence in the EXAMPLES. A common application of laminar flow is in the smooth flow of a viscous liquid through a tube or pipe. In that case, the velocity of flow varies from zero at the walls to a maximum along the cross-sectional centre of the vessel.

The ink remaining at the walls will need to slowly diffuse over time. Patience and time to allow diffusion to the core is important.

@mikling
That is an importent observation to remember when changing inks sets.

Read my other "total clog" using Octopus head strong cleaning/preserversion fluid to clean and totally purge the 3880.
Fiasko - however in the end a totally polished 3880 inside. Ended luckily thought.

This observation of yours and mine here:
https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/changing-inksets.13493/

is that changing inkset for testing new inksets are no more in my feeling no more than about 90 % (?) correct. The dampers and inner linings of the tube set takes very long time to be replaced by the new ink to be tested.

I'm thinking of a safe way to overcome that problem. The best practical way that might do the thing for now is using @pharmacist conserving/cleaning fluid for some days and often printing YMCK bars and doing the head cleang thing.

That is - there are no quick way to totally clean up a printer from old/used inks in a printerers tubes, dampers and head.

That might in a more scientific way practically give one the wrong impression of how a tested new ink set acts in a longer term.


Perhaps also dedicate a printer for just testing inks - and after that direct cleaing it out being instant ready for the next test.

However - my thinking - if you just want inks or colored solutions - alibaba is the way to go. Cheap is cheap. Your colored spreadsheets might even look better than mine.... and who cares of ozon/UV and longlivity and that other shit. That's just a academic rant.

However admire Your alibaba buys and tests - giving me a hint - feeling good that you are trying to find the wholy ink grale crossway - however convinced that Epson and Canon are far ahead. They are forced to more than that - they should fit their superinks to their next generation of printers. A perfect simple inkset would kill the other print brand.
Alibaba is just guessing whats going on and tries to immitate whats allready been done.

Good luck alibaba to find a ink set better than Epson/Canon OEM.

/berserk (Senior M. Sc)

mikling said:

The key thing to remember about flushing out inks in tube printers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminar_flow

First sentence in the EXAMPLES. A common application of laminar flow is in the smooth flow of a viscous liquid through a tube or pipe. In that case, the velocity of flow varies from zero at the walls to a maximum along the cross-sectional centre of the vessel.

The ink remaining at the walls will need to slowly diffuse over time. Patience and time to allow diffusion to the core is important.

Click to expand...

I know this principal, but the same problem occured in my new Epson P800, where I mistakenly put MB in my PK cartridge, where I did the same flushing (printing 8 pages of black pages in the glossy paper setting to flush out the MB from my tubing) and the results where immediately visible in a deep glossy black and not the matte and muted black previously, when printing the first test picture with a few black patches. So this method should work in practice, unless there is a possibility that in the PK setting the black patches are overcoated with a layer of LLK improving blackness and glossiness, which I cannot test, because of the faulty PK.

Your flushing fluid accelerates the diffusion. When you put in a similar ink diffusion is not as fast.
The effects of Matte verus Photo is masked a lot by the dominant ink and Epson uses this aspect in a changeout. With Black the masking is quite effective. On other colors, depending on which and how critical the eye is not so as well. The other thing to consider as well is that immediate testing after, to see the difference will use most of the core. Let it rest and diffuse and then the results could be different.

Even on an R2880, without tubes, the diffusion aspect messed up my testing and development. I learned a lesson there.

Hi Michael, thanks for the tip. I will test it next week again, because I am now in my weekend house for the moment. Hopefully the result will be better next week.

Just an update about my experience with cheap Aliexpress.com ink from Ocbestjet and also from Aomya, which I also purchased to test its quality and both inks seems to be from the same manufacturer as I can interchange the same printer profile for both inks and also the same magenta cast when using the ABW setting in neutral setting. But the problem with the muted photo black remained with both inks. It looks both ink sets uses a black that is more matte than PB.

So today I tried an experiment by mixing this very matte PB from Aoymya/Ocbestjet with the very shiny (almost metallic sheen) PB from OCP. This way the gloss is enhanced from the Aomya/Ocbestjet PB and at the same time muting down the metallic sheen from the OCP PB. I mixed 1/4 Aomya/Ocbestjet PB with 3/4 OCP PB and the result is much better than I expected: the mixed PB finally has a nice gloss without the metallic sheen from 100% OCP PB. Looked from an angle the gloss is similar to the other colours, unlike previously I could see the black matted spots clearly from an angle.

Next experiment is to increase the Aomya/Ocbestje LB darkness to neutralise the ABW prints.