Filling printers with food ink

[madvlad]

I've been experimenting with printing on my IP1500 using food ink rather than chemical ink and it seems to work reasonably except that I'm getting quite a bit of clogging and resultant colour loss. I noticed on one of the posts here that the "worse case senario is using a pigment based ink in nozzles designed to take dye-based ink" and wondered what the difference between pigment based and dye based ink is and where food ink would fall?

Thanks,

Vlad

 

[jackson]

Food ink being food 'dye'?
Which colours do you use and in what proportion to water?

 

[madvlad]

I bought food dye based ink from a supplier of such ink to cake printers.

 

[madvlad]

Oops - colours are magenta, cyan and yellow, plus black.

 

[freddyzdead]

I used plain blue for the Cyan (close enough), yellow for Yellow (of course), and 50/50 Rose Pink and Pillar Box Red for Magenta. These are food colourings made by Queen (available from any supermarket in Australia) I mixed all 3 for black until dripping into running water in the sink produces grey with no tint. I didn't dilute at all, and used it in BCI-21/24 cart in IP1000 Canon printer. Seems to work ok. But printer has sat for 1 year and not printed anything. Doesn't work so well now, but that may be from disuse rather than the food colour. This was more of an experiment, to satisfy my curiosity. I don't know that I'd try it on a "good" printer.

I don't think "Madvlad" knows what he's talking about, since there is no cyan or magenta food dye, and certainly not black.

 

[pharmacist]

Don't use those all-in-one cartridges. Buy a printer who uses the individual BCI-6 or CLI-8 cartridges and have ready to use cartridges with food colouring in them. This is easiest way to go for. All the colours do exist in an equivalent food dye.

 

[freddyzdead]

It's news to me if there's any such thing as magenta, cyan or black food colouring.

I use the all-in-one cartridges because that's what the IP1000 takes. How could I use anything different? The printer was dumped, so it cost me nothing (it had 5 cents stuck in the paper feed) so I have nothing to lose by playing around with food colour.

Actually, the results are amazingly good. And I can buy the dye for about $2.50 for 500 mls. But I'm still not willing to risk trying it in my Brother printer that I actually paid for. Anybody else got experience using food dye as printer ink?

 

[pharmacist]

The food dye must be enhanced with glycerol (must be of pharmaceutical grade and potable) and potable alcohol to make the ink be sprayed evenly on your edible surface. About 5% glycerol and 15 % drinkable ethanol (96 %) should be added.

 

[freddyzdead]

Edible surface? What do you mean? I'm printing photos, not pastry. Just plain generic glossy 4x6 photo paper.