Epson L300 - Advice on converting to pigment inks.

Hello all,

I have an older L300 which is still working fine but well past its warranty, breaking it wouldn't worry me as I can get a newer printer. With that in mind, I wanted to "experiment" with some pigment inks. I noticed that some people on YouTube have done it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtPls4eaRWk) and also "Ink Stained Fingers" mentions using pigment inks in an L300 in one of this posts.

I have very low printer usage. Typically once or twice a week I will print a black and white document. Twice a month I will print full color documents and once or twice a year I print around 1,000 pages of full color.

I notice that the new Epson ink tank systems use a black pigment ink instead of the dye ink.

If anyone can answer the following questions it would be greatly appreciated.

• Will pigment ink result in brighter colors and less "bleeding" on standard paper (80gsm as locally I can't get 90gsm+, everything goes from 80gsm to 120/130gsm)?
  
• Is there an issue using the new Epson pigment ink (T7741) instead of the old dye ink (T6641) in an L300?
• What brand of pigment ink would you recommend if using something other than genuine Epson ink? (This question applies to black and colored inks.)
• What sort of clogging should I expect? And is there anything practical I can do, such as perhaps shaking the ink tank every week? I am not really interested in changing to top feeding bottles of ink.

I'll gratefully accept any advice and all suggestions

The L300 is based upon the hardware of the WF-2010W in the body of a XP-30, the WF-2010W runs with Durabrite pigment inks so the printhead as such should be able to handle that. But be aware that not all clogging type issues would be related to clogs in the nozzles, there are very fine wire mesh filters in the cartridge dummies in the printhead carrier, and an even finer and smaller filters in the ink channels in the printhead just before the inks are fed to the piezo elements, these would not be not accessible at all for cleaning attempts.
Pigment inks - black for text - deliver sharper edges at letters on normal papers, that effect is visible, that is one effect.
Separate to that is the question whether you get brighter colors - not really on normal papers to my experience, it is a paper problem. Use Inkjet type papers for better color saturation.
Brand of inks - either the Epson pigment black or other reliable sources such as precisioncolors or octoinkjet or ... whereever you are.
I would not recommend to change anything at the ink feeding system of the L300, just run nozzle checks or print some small image regularly and do not keep the printer idling for too long.
If you plan to print onto photo papers of the glossy type please be aware of subtle differences how Epson handles that .
If the printer is adjusted for dye inks the driver uses the dye black ink as well on glossy papers, if the printer is adjusted for Durabrite pigment inks like the WF-2010W and similar models the driver mixes the black from the colors and does not use the pigment black, that is reserved for plain and matte/inkjet papers.
Some Epson printers - like Canon printers - use 2 black inks - one pigment for normal paper - and another dye black and dye colors for photo prints, and there are the bigger photo printers which use and all pigment ink set and as well a set of 2 different black inks.
So if you plan to use a pigment black in your L300 and plan to print onto glossy photo papers you rather should look for a photo pigment black, and not the Duragrite type black ink

Hi Ink Stained Fingers,

Thank you very much for your insight, especially the explanation of glossy paper and pigment inks. To be honest, the thought of using glossy paper (I have some sitting behind me...) for better looking colors never occurred to me which makes me feel rather silly.

You said "would not recommend to change anything at the ink feeding system of the L300, just run nozzle checks or print some small image regularly and do not keep the printer idling for too long"". I assume that means leave the ink tanks as they are and make sure I print every few days using all 4 inks.

Regarding the process of adding the new inks, does it go as follows?

1. Syringe out the old dye ink (very low at the moment anyway) from the tanks.
2. Once the tank is empty, add pigment ink.
3. Flush the print head a few times to get the pigment ink running through.

Or do I need to use some flushing fluid between steps 1 and 2?

Based on your incredible knowledge that the L300 is based on the WF-2010W, does that mean any ink (pigment or dye) listed as compatible with the WF-2010W is perfectly fine to use in L300?

I think I might try replacing the black with pigment ink. Not sure if I will purchase from octoinkjet, Epson pigment T7741 (easy enough to find locally) or perhaps I can find out what the local print shops are using.

Thank you again for your assistance.

it all depends what you are printing with the L300 and which type of papers you are using. There is another slight difference between the WF-2010W and the L300 - the WF2010W allows you to print borderless on photo papers, the L300 does not, Epson intentionally limits the functionality here and tries to move people to buy the L800 instead if they plan to do borderless and photos.
I ran the L300 just for a short while with pigment inks, it worked but I wouldn't know how it would perform over a longer time.
When swapping inks yellow ones can cause some incompatibility, but otherwiese I just would deplete the black ink tank , fill up with the other ink and run a sequence of 10 or so full black pages to replace the ink in the tube and the damper, the cartridge insert and then monitor printouts for a while for any problems.
I have seen some yellow refill inks not being compatible with each other, and since you don't know that beforehand I would deplete the yellow ink tank , fill it temporarily with cleaner, print yellow pages until the yellow is gone and then follow with the pigment yellow.
The settling of pigment inks is a concern to some, but I have not seen such effects directly or problems which I could relate to that, I'm probably printing too much and don't give my printers enough idle time for that. There are no clear guidelines for that, some supplier states that his pigment ink would not settle within a year in a bottle, Epson recommends to shake cartridges of large format printers once in a while - like 6 months, all that would indicate that there are no adverse effects within days or weeks.

Hi Ink Stained Fingers,

My Epson's print quality has degraded really quickly (since my post) and to such a bad point that I am getting rid of the L300. Because the local shop that sells Epson ink was out of the pigment ink I never had the chance to test it.

If I can find a way to make it work I am interested in getting a Canon Pixma G1000 as a replacement as it includes the pigment black ink and the system is <$150, just there aren't any drivers for Linux available at the moment. The next best option is a Brother T300/T500, again pigment black although not a "straight through" paper path.

Locally to get an Epson ink tank printer with the T774 pigment ink I need to spend significantly more (3x-4x) as only limited numbers of the pigment ink models are available locally and they are all the top of the range ones.

I would consider a replacement Epson L series (they are around the $150 mark) but I never had really good print quality from my Epson. Even at photo quality sometimes there were very fine lines (evenly spaced) where the colour was not quite right. Perhaps I just had a dud printer but here there is no real warranty support and my friend who purchased an L300 had even worse problems after a few months.

Retrofitting a CISS/refillable cartridge system to a standard printer just doesn't seem cost effective given the prices of the ink tank printers. I am very focused on sharp black text and good quality (I wouldn't call it photo quality) graphics for full page colour.

Thank you for your assistance and thoughts above and I'll update this thread with any progress/decision that I make. You never know, I might just have to get another Epson and test using pigment inks...

I regret to hear about such problems with the L300 and that we didn't had a chance to sort them out, possibly. I'm currently running at 40 000 pages with my L300 and going, everything works fine, photo papers are profiled, but the real limitation to photo printing is the missing borderless option. As discussed the WF2010W would be an entry point for a regular printer with pigment inks, running as well with suitable refill cartridges or a CISS if that's really necessary. It is printing slow in photo mode , and the borderless option is available. But you are right, there are more models on the market, try one of them and report your experience here - print quality - refill etc

Good evening Ink Stained Fingers,

Don't know if you saw my update in the Canon thread but I went ahead and purchased a Brother T500W. Brother provide a Linux driver and the install is really good.

I will try to remember to post a review once I have had some "quality time" with the machine.

Thank you for your assistance.

Thanks for your info, and let us know about your experience with this new printer