3rd Party suppliers

[Music Image]

Guys/Ladies,
Can anyone tell me... why it is that suppliers want to get all secretive on you and NOT disclose who manafactures their 3rd party inks .... that is, IF theyve got nothing to hide. Maybe Im missing something here. Right now Im scratching my head as to why a supplier would go to all the trouble of saying on their nice looking website, how our little country has been hit with real bad Quality inks lately and that theirs is the genuine good stuff ... and then not tell you what it is. If their product is good quality then surely the PR would benefit them immensely, as folks would recommend them, and you'd have a win-win situation.

In these forums Ive taken it as a standard practice that people should do this as their "let the buyer beware" approach. And you'd think, rightfully so. Common sense really. Anyone with 1/2 a brain would do this anyway, for example, who would even bother to answer an AD that said "I have a good car for sale, $3,000 ono."

Soooo, please tell me, do you fortunate folks living EVERYWHERE but New Zealand have to encounter these sort of crap tactics often, sometimes, occasionally or never, when you go to buy your inks, or what?

Whilst I'm at it I'll have a good ol' moan about our prices too. From what Ive seen, the 3rd party compatibles are generally between 60 - 75% of OEMs. The refill Kits after working out the added extras like postage, are not far behind. Bulk inks are not even within a "bulls roar" of what you folks can get in the US.

Music Image

 

[CanonPhreak]

This company names their manufacturer at the top of the page for their bulk inks.

http://www.weink.com/ecom/catalog/canon_bulk_ink_446540_products.htm

I use them myself and am very satisfied with quality and longevity of the inks.

Guys/Ladies,
Can anyone tell me... why it is that suppliers want to get all secretive on you and NOT disclose who manafactures their 3rd party inks .... that is, IF theyve got nothing to hide. Maybe Im missing something here. Right now Im scratching my head as to why a supplier would go to all the trouble of saying on their nice looking website, how our little country has been hit with real bad Quality inks lately and that theirs is the genuine good stuff ... and then not tell you what it is. If their product is good quality then surely the PR would benefit them immensely, as folks would recommend them, and you'd have a win-win situation.

Music Image

 

[fotofreek]

Music - Are you using a Canon printer? That's the only one I know anything about for carts and inks. I've read posts from people outside the US who use bulk ink for refills and get the cost per ounce down by ordering more than the minimum size. Shipping, although somewhat proportional to weight, probably works out to be less per ounce if larger quantities are ordered. Your lowest price for ink from a company that ships out of the US is probably hobbicolors. You can contact the owner directly and order different quantities of ink than are shown on the web site. I use MIS inks, but I don't know if they ship out of the US. I know that Alotofthings didn't ship out of the US in the past, but you might contact them to see if they have changed their policy. Their Formulabs inks are quite good. they also have several brands of prefilled aftermarket cartridges and will tell you which one has Formulabs inks. I think it is Procolor carts.

If you go onto the comp.periphs.printers newsgroup there is a participant from NZ named Tony who, I believe, has a printer repair business and also sells OEM and aftermarket carts. In the title of your post direct the question to him. He's very helpful. There are also some participants there from OZ as well and maybe they can help you.

 

[RC]

To Music Image:

Sansient / Formulabs is very high quality ink.

If you logon their web-site at http://www.formulabs.com/ you will be able to email thei representative for Australia.

Just click on ABOUT SENSIENT

And click again on CONTACT US

You can buy directly by the gallon at wholesale prices if you wish.

If you have many friends who use the same ink, you may be able to share, or you may want to start selling ink in Australia.

Good luck
Robert

 

[mcm30114]

Do you know of anyone locally (US) that sells this ink in BCI-6 carts? Would like to try a few before I commit to GALLONS of ink ..

TIA ..

Mike

 

[Osage]

Mike,

A US supplier of formulalabs ink is www.alotofthings.com

I believe they also sell the ink in actual cartridge prefilled form.

 

[Music Image]

Thanks guys for the responses.

CanonPhreak, I'm going to do a search for Weink shortly (when Ive finished here) and see what comes up.

foto, not sure if my settings are right or what but Im sure Ive got my signature at the bottom of my post..... though while Im in this posting area, if I scroll down to the topic review, I cant see it on my post. Anyway, I have a Canon ip4000. I will also check out that newsgroup and see if I can get a hold of Tony. Thanks for that.

Ive found a place that sells Formulabs ink in Auckland which is quite a ways from where I am. As I absolutely WONT trade over the net I have to look at other options, which makes it quite difficult when they limit your choices for payment. Taking all this into account (eg tollcalls if they dont have an 0800 number and so forth) it makes me wonder whether I should just do what I dont want to do. Buy OEM to save all the hassle.

RC "You can buy directly by the gallon at wholesale prices if you wish"

I dont really do enough printing to warrant buying by the gallon, and as there is a shelf life for ink chance are highly probable that it would go off B4 I used it all. I can see the prices drop quite dramatically the more ink you buy though. I live in the country and dont generally touch base with a lot of printer users, so a "pool" of users wanting the same inks would be an unlikely scenario in my case.

"or you may want to start selling ink in Australia."

If you have a wee look on a world map you will see that little ol' NZ is quite a ways from the land of OZ even though they are our closest neighbours. We are indeed a little country down under that is quite isolated.

What Im really wanting is to be at least be able to purchase in my own country otherwise all the added extra costs just make it not worth it.

Id still like to know if you guys have come upon suppliers who wont disclose who manafactures their ink. Is this a common thing or does this only happen in NZ. :/

Thanks for the suggestions and help.
Music Image

 

[fotofreek]

Most of the suppliers don't disclose the MFG of the ink in prefilled carts. Alotofthings does indicate that the Procolor carts are filled with Formulabs inks. They used to indicate that the Arrow carts had Formulabs inks, but the company in China that manufactured and prefilled the Arrow carts changed the ink supplier without notifying Alotofthings! I believe that weink does tell you what inks are in their carts.

MIS doesn't tell you who makes the inks they sell, but Imaging Specialists lists them as one of their customers. That said, however, MIS sells so many inks for different printers that they may have multiple sources, and the Canon inks may or may not be IS. Neil Slade, in his treatise on inks, printers, and papers had noted that this was the source of MIS inks.

I've spoken to the Hobbicolors owner and he declined to state the source of his inks. There is an issue of competition. You may like Hobbicolor inks, find out what his source is, and either arrange to buy it direct from the MFGR or from another vendor with the same source and a lower price. All in all, it is a complicated marketplace for the purchaser/end user.

About purchasing in large volume. These printers have a finite useful life. If your 1p4000 malfunctions after you use four ounces each of a one quart per color order you will have useless ink sitting on your shelf as the newest generation of printers uses different inks and there will soon be no ip4000 printers available to purchase. It would be another story if you had several of that generation printer and did a reasonably large volume of printing. Try to find a local vendor of a good quality ink, buy a reasonable quantity, and enjoy that level of savings.

Question - as fairly close neighbors do NZ and OZ have reasonable shipping costs between them?

 

[Music Image]

"Question - as fairly close neighbors do NZ and OZ have reasonable shipping costs between them?"

Cant answer that Im sorry coz Ive never had need to do this. I guess it would greatly depend on weight and what youre shipping.

Thanks foto for taking the time to answer my question though, which I appreciate, as its put me in the picture a bit more. I know for a fact that competition in the business world is getting more "dog eat dog" all the time. As for the consumer, well, one almost has to go to university to learn in order to not get ripped off.

With the amount of printing I do would certainly not warrant buying too much. I have found a few "leads" Im going to follow up next week, who do say what ink they use. Even though I dont print that much stuff, Id still like to give 3rd party stuff a go if it as at all possible. It kinda irks me with the thought of having to pay around $100 all up for the OEMs. Prices can vary greatly on these though, and it pays to shop around. Seems I can get the OEMs locally for a good price compared to others Ive checked out.

One thing I have been doing as just a point of interest is prepare an excel sheet (When I first got my printer) and made a general log of.... How many pages Ive printed/ Date / Text or photo/ settings etc etc, and Ive printed only a small number of photos, yet my colour ink tanks have gone down very quickly in proportion to what Ive printed out. Even when I take into account that there is a small draw on the colour tanks even when you do mainly text. What I wished I had of done is noted also how many times I powered up, because I think that has made a substantial difference in how much ink has been used in cleaning cycles.

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[fotofreek]

When you are just printing text, be sure to set the printer to "plain paper" and it will only use the pigment based black ink from the BCI-3ebk tank.