Epson Workforce inks, use EcoTank inks instead?

Peter W

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I’ve just bought an Epson WF-7720DTWF for general home printing, but including quite a lot of A3 photos for personal use (as opposed to exhibitions), mostly because it can do A3+ printing and scanning, is cheap, fairly well reviewed and comes with a 3-year Epson on-site guarantee, which I thought too good to pass up.

So here’s what I’m wondering about.

The inks supplied with the printer are all DuraBrite pigments. Genuine refill cartridges are, of course, very pricey. And I have read that pigment inks are lesser performers than dyes for photo work on glossy or satin paper, though more permanent and better for text and block graphics. Is this true?

All compatible cartridges and CISS seem to use 100% dye inks, so presumably the Workforce printers can work fine with dye.

However, the EcoTank printers use a pigment black and dye CMY colours.

Would it be a good plan to get some refillable cartridges and use them with the surprisingly affordable genuine Epson EcoTank inks, e.g. the 774 pigment black and 664 dye CMY?

Or (assuming I’m never going to be buying genuine Epson cartridges) get the refillables and fill with aftermarket all-pigment inks, or all-dye inks?

I was thinking there are so many suppliers of aftermarket inks out there, with obviously some great inks and some rubbish inks, it might be better to go for genuine Epson inks, and the combo of pigment black and dye CMY might make for better photo quality.

Then again, I read that pigment black while giving a deeper black on some media isn't capable of much subtlety in greyscale photos.

Can anyone give advice or guidance on this?

Many thanks!
 

Ink stained Fingers

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you can get 3rd party cartridges with pigment inks, that should not be a problem, or with dye inks which are more oriented to the budget pricing range.
Photo printing with Durabrite inks - please read this thread
https://www.printerknowledge.com/th...d-for-photo-printing.10972/page-3#post-105353
or a discussion here as well
https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/wf-7110-or.11886/page-2#post-101495
You may even consider 2 sets or refillable cartridges - one set with compatible pigment inks and another set with dye inks for photo printing. Switching inks would just need another cleaning cyle to flush the other ink out of the printhead. The Epson 664 dye inks for other Ecotank printers are an option, but this ink does not have a reasonable fading performance, you would be better off with inks which are offered for the Epson ET-7700/7750 printers - Epson 106 which last significantly longer .
The question about the black level is a matter of ink , ink type and paper type in combination, there is not such a simple answer possible.

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Peter W

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I'm grateful for your input. Empty, refillable ARC cartridges (27) with the larger XXL black seem to be completely unavailable in Europe. All I can find are sets of 4 with the black the same small size as the colours. Not really good. But I did find https://www.ebay.co.uk/372290341238 (which seems to be an XL black) and have ordered a set for pigment inks as you suggested, and I also found, in Germany, https://www.ebay.de/itm/Refill-CISS...0-DWF-3640-DTWF-T-27-XL-kein-OEM/131809258869 which seems to have the huge XXL black cartridge, so I ordered one set of these as well and will use that for dye inks.

I also looked at the Epson 106 inks, of which the black is a dye, but you only get 70ml in a bottle, so it probably won't be very cheap to run. I'm not going to ask what make of compatible dye ink you would recommend, as I've read your comments on this subject, but if I could find a reliable maker might it be as good as the 106 (photo printing, fade resistance)? If I were in the USA I'd go for Precision Colors, but they don't sell here in England.

I don't plan on printing much on glossy paper, as I don't much like the shiny reflections. I greatly prefer satin, and would quite often want to print photos on plain 90gsm paper too (for which, I imagine, pigment inks might be better than dye, though of course neither as good as proper photo paper).

Anyway the printer just arrived a while ago, it is huge (what did I expect?) and I'm surprised how tiny the cartridges are. How many text pages could I expect from the setup cartridges until I get the new ones I ordered?

Thanks!

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The Epson 664 inks come in 70ml bottles as well, there is no difference to the Epson 106 inks. The 106 inks are available as a 4 color CMYK ink set, there is an additional Epson 105 pigment black for matte papers, but I don't know whether that's any better than other 3rd party pigment refill inks.
There are no 3rd party dye ink alternatives which give you a similar fading performance as genuine Epson, Fujifilm inks do. It's up to you what you need, what you expect - it's your choice. Lustre, velvet, satin. silk - there is a wide range of papers available from different suppliers.
I got orders shipped by Precisioncolors to Germany, but transporation charges, customs etc may make their offers less competitive.
 

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If you are concerned by the small cartridge capacities you may consider an unusual step with this
printer - getting a modified firmware which does not use any information from your cartridges - you install a CISS and won't get any 'cartridge empty' interruptions anymore you make the printer chipless:
https://chiplesssolutions.com/support.shtml
The WF-7720 is listed as available for this modification if you plan higher print volume with that unit.
 

Peter W

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Thanks Hat for the input, I'll call Octo tomorrow.

I just spoke to Precision Color in USA. Very nice chap, talked for quite a long time, and told me this:
1. He can't sell me refillable cartridges because the EU versions of the printer take a cartridge with an EU chip (27), and would reject cartridges with US chips (252).
2. His pigment inks are as good as Epson's and won't clog, will not fade over time but the colours aren't as bright and poppy as dye. They don't like glossy paper.
3. His dye inks are a dollar or two cheaper, are brighter and will print on glossy stock, but will fade quite quickly.
4. It doesn't matter if the black is pigment or dye, because the Epson doesn't use it at all for photos, even if the print dialogue is set to monochrome. This is why nice B&W printing might be pretty hard to do.

He advised me to fill my refillables with pigments because the WF-7720 was designed for pigments.

Sounds fair enough, but since the only 27XXL refillables I found, on ebay.de, come pre-filled with dye inks, which I could refill with pigments when they run out, I suppose I'll have a chance to test out both systems. In the end I imagine it'll come down to Epson 1-6 and Precision Color PCDB.

There are a few threads here on the subject of what inks to use in the WF-77xx printers for photos, and no clear conclusions, so down to personal preference I imagine (and what paper is being used).
 

Peter W

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@ISF, thanks for the interesting solution. I'm not sure how it differs, in practice, from a CISS system which does have chips. However, for normal refillable ARC cartridges isn't it good to have an ink level indication to tell you when you need to squirt in some more ink?
 

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yes, Epson (and other companies as well) are regionalizing their products - slightly different firmware, different cartridge type numbers and some other tricks with other printer models to make your life difficult with non-genuine supplies.
ad 4.: the use of the black ink channel depends on the type of paper selected, the black ink channel is in use for normal paper and matte/inkjet paper selections, and not at all for all photo paper selections. That's the work around - select matte paper and print on glossy paper, or silk, satin etc, you get the best blacks because the driver is using the black ink. You are recommended
to get or make yourself icc color profiles - you are not using the Epson standard inks, you are not using Epson papers and not using the typical driver settings but you will be surprised that you get very good prints - with dye inks.
 
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even if you run a typical CISS system the cartridges still use chips which count down, so you get the cartridge empty indications with the same frequency, you don't need to do an actual refill, the CISS does that via the continuous ink supply, and you need to do a reset typically with a reset button. The chipless solution would remove all such interrupts and let the printer work like an ecotank model. I'm not recommending it strongly at this time but point to an option in case your print volume is high enough to consider it.
I would recommend to start with a rather simple setup, getting your refill cartridges working and testing papers and driver settings - specifically the matte paper option and doing this step by step so that you get a feeling for the effects these different options can cause and which you prefer. You may go into testing pigment vs. dye inks and their visual appearance, there is more than the claimed 'pop' of dye inks, it would be the black level influencing the perception of contrast, it could be surface effects with pigment inks - bronzing or gloss which are very different for different paper/ink combinations. And if you have the capability to make your own color profiles you could see how different the acheivable color spaces can be - by ink and paper type.
 
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