Best ink for Epson R series (R200, R220, R300 or R320)

[jonalava]

Hi everyone,

I tried many compatible carts (G&G, Generic, Print-Rite) and was never satisfied with the colors compared to OEM. G&G was horrible with my R220 and Print-Rite was the best, but I still get a green cast on grayscales and unrealistic and dark magenta/blue skin tones. Too bad the pictures got wrong colors, because the print-rite carts performed better than OEM with graphics.

Anyway, I am ready (again) to try some refilling. I already tried Formulabs, Hobbicolors and MIS (Image Specialists) inks when i had my Canon. The only one that was great is MIS. Does anyone here have experience with MIS ink or any other ink used in an Epson? How are the colors compared to OEM?

I know that you can get good color balance with about any ink when you use a profiling equipment. I don't have such a thing, so I need an ink that works well without too much tweaking. Also, if someone has a source for cheap and good-quality Epson R220 refillable carts, that would be great!

Any help is much appreciated!
Thanks!

 

[mikling]

I find Image Specialists to be pretty much spot on as compared to OEM on my R200 without profiling. Make sure you get the EXACT inks as speciified by Image Specialists some vendors sub depending on what they have in stock. Been using MIS ( Image Specialists) since 2000.

 

[Fenrir Enterprises]

The cartridges that MIS currently has in stock right now for $5.50 seem to be quite good. I had /some/ air flow issues that required pushing air through the air vent with a syringe (I used the bottom fill adapters) in order to balance the pressure - the sponge in the cart I used for magenta didn't absorb the ink too well, so I sucked some air out to get the sponge wet, then pushed it back in to get the ink flowing through. No problems since then. Getting good cartridges /really/ seems to be a hit or miss situation, and I'm looking into converting Epson carts into refillables, but it looks difficult. Plus I'm seeing comments lately that even the Epson OEM carts have ink flow issues, possibly due to 'sticky' poppet valves.

Make sure you follow the instructions well, fill slowly through the top, then use the bottom fill adapter to 'pull' the ink to flow all the way through the valve. Once you get it 'primed', and refill before empty, you won't have to do this again.

I've been using the eBay seller 'InkJetCarts' ink in my Epson C88 because it's less than half the price of MIS' ink, is pigmented, and works fine. But I'm only using it for massive color text printing (newsletters), and nothing that's worth keeping. He sells both dye and pigment kits for the R200, but since I don't know if his supplier is Image Specialists, I'd be more inclined to use the MIS ink for archival photos. If you buy dyebased ink though, it won't be all that permanent even using OEM carts. His refillable cartridges leaked all over the place, but if you want auto-reset chips, the full kit /with/ ink and carts and chips is less than the price of /just/ the chips from MIS. The chips won't reset on power-off though, it requires the chip to go down to 'low ink warning', and then pressing the ink-replace button. Thus there's no way to get around doing the ink charging cycle. I lost enough ink that I started recycling the purged ink into the black cartridge and have not noticed any loss of blackness so far (Make sure you use a well sealed container that won't let dust in, just put a tiny hole in one side for the waste tube, and a air hole on the other side - not the top, so dust can't fall in). I would not reccomend this for photo printing. I saw a post on MIS' forums that their newer chips do the same thing. I'm using Epson chips and resetting them since I don't like letting them go to low ink warning, plus you don't get 'incompatible' errors, but I'm only getting one reset for the black chip before it goes bad - I've ordered a different resetter from MIS in the hopes that it won't do this, otherwise it's going to cost a lot in replacement chips. Right now I'm back to using the auto-reset chip again.

Edited to comment that my statement above about dyebased ink wasn't implying that you should buy pigmented ink. I still have yet to hear from more than one or two people who aren't working at an ink company that the pigment ink won't ruin the lower R-series printers. I meant that, since even the OEM dyebased ink isn't going to be that permanent, you might want to buy the cheaper refill ink since nothing you buy will be as archival as the pigment ink. I would focus more on finding out how close a color gamut it has rather than permanence. The cyan pigment for my C88 is a little too intense 'blue' rather than 'cyan', but I don't know if the OEM ink is also that dark since I never used it.

 

[jonalava]

Thanks to both of you for your comments!

Mikling, I am interested in your experience with MIS. Have you tried other brand of inks? How MIS compare to those? Also, I am really picky about skintones and grayscales. How would you define those using MIS (greenish, bluish, pinkish, orangish, or right on)?

Thanks again!