Epson Pro 3800: latest Inkrepublic.com's IRK4-nano inkset solved it.

[pharmacist]

Those who have followed my quest and test of Epson Pro 3800 cartridges and good refill ink for this magnificent printer. A few years ago I was the first one probably who managed to get the first prototypes of refillable cartridges. It does works, but after a while the ink stopped flowing and ultimately the rubber sealing around the ink outlet port ruptured and helped by the pressure system of the printer it became an inky disaster.

Finally I got these fantastic and very well-made and sturdy cartridges from Inkrepublic.com and after having some problems with a faulty master chips (It took a few weeks having them replaced by Inkrepublic.com) I also have tested a dedicated resetter which was able to reset the original chips. However this resetter was not able to reset the chips if the chip was registered as low by the printer as I have discovered with the LK chip.

Since I still had alot of Image Specialists IM-K4 ink, I continued to use this ink and was pretty happy with the results: the gamut very good and sometimes better compared to the original Epson K3 ink. The only thing it does suffer from a muted look due to a lack of glossiness. Good on (semi) matte and satin/pearl types of papers, but suboptimal on glossy papers.

A few months ago I started -after having the bottles stand for more than a year- to use the supplied bottles of IRK4-nano inks with my Pro 3800 I-Refill system and the first results using this ink was amazingly good...far better in glossiness and better contrast due to the very dark photo black. The gamut seems to very good, not as good as the Image Specialists IM-K4 ink, but in most cases better to the original Epson K3 ink. Most importantly is the much better black (Dmax on most photo papers around 4) and the very good gloss giving the prints an astonishing good overall look and feel. I still do pity I did not use this ink earlier, but what I did not want to waste my large stock of Image Specialists IM-K4 ink, so I used it until I had to refill.

Now the only setback of this rather old IRK4-nano ink batch is the suboptimal reds it produced: it did not produce good saturated reds, making them a rather more orangy red. So I contacted Inkrepublic.com and told them about this problem and they promptly sent me a new batch of their improved IRK4-nano ink and this is the results of the test I made.

I used the following test image I composed of several pictures and using a cheap type of glossy paper (Label Ocean glossy 230 gsm) and a dedicated profile I produced with the old batch for the Epson Pro 3800 printer.

Now this is the test print I made several months ago with the older batch of IRK4-nano ink. Notice the rather orangy reds of the coloured band on the right.

The second picture shows the same picture printed with the same profile with the latest batch of IRK4-nano ink. Notice the red band is now far more saturated and now is a true saturated vivid red.

Whow finally this problem with this fantastic ink has been solved with their latest batch of IRK4-nano

Note: due to the compression by nifty-stuff.com, the quality is unfornately suboptimal, but the difference in the red in the vertical blue/red/green/yellow/magenta/cyan band on the right is visible. Scans are done on my Canon MX850 scanner.

 

[cds]

Good test. The InkRepublic's IRK4 nano's gamut is wider than OEM on some papers. I've used these ink for months now and my prints are indistiguishable from prints using Epson's inks at about 25% of the cost or less. No fade on my prints at all due to its great quality of pure carbon pigment inks.