First try of pigment ink on the Canon 6600D printer

[Tin Ho]

If you can make the ink flow equal or close to that of dye ink in the cartridge the pigmented ink should work as well as dye ink does, provided the pigmented ink also has a high enough boiling point. If you already saw that the pigmented ink flows slower your print head will be clogged in a matter of time. It will probably not take too many photos to print to clog. Printers with larger nozzles will help. I9900, ip8500 and i960 all have 2 pico-liter nozzles. These printers will probably have a better chance than mp780 (ip4000) to print with pigmented ink. But even if it works the cost of pigmented ink is so expensive. I can't afford to print snap shots with a Canon printer loaded with pigmented ink.

 

[pharmacist]

Tin Ho, the MP780 has 2 picloliter nozzles as well. I tried this on the 1 picoliter IP6600D with black pigmented ink the light magenta cartridge and it works, but I don't want to ruin my IP6600D on the long term, therefore switching to the MP780 with larger nozzles.

However there are some refillable cartridges available without the sponge (which may trap the pigmented ink in the cartridge to much finally). Maybe do a cleaning cycle with dye ink everytime after printing with pigmented ink to rinse the nozzles.

 

[lin]

I have been looking for spongeless (or those with lesser sponge material) canon cartridges for quite sometime as the viscosity & density of pigment ink are higher than dye. With larger sponge in OEM Canon cartridges, it's making it harder for the pigment ink to feed into the printhead as readily at the rate the printhead demanded. And since feb, I managed to tried out those spongeless canon cartridges for the CLI-8 & PGI-5BK series. But unfortunately those spongeless cartridges which I discarded, does not work so well.. Which is why in my pictures at #20, I refilled them into the OEM canon cartridges as I couldn't wait for a more reliable & stable canon spongeless cartridges to be finally available in the market.

I believe canon must have realised this issue which is why their PGI-9 pigment ink cartridges are without sponge. Of course, there must have been many other consideration as well when they implemented the pigment series.

If you are able to find a workable spongeless cartridges (with better design), I believe it will be helpful to you and you should be able to see better result with your dye-pigment mixture experimentation.

 

[Smile]

I think feed problem is because of metal filter on print head intake, it is too fine.

The sponges in PG-40 black cartridges have no problem with pigments either, it's different sponge but no problems. I refilled these a dozen of times no problem.

 

[pharmacist]

Smile,

I did look at the metal filter of the Canon Pro 9500 printer and they seem to be 3 times larger (and oblong, not round like the BCI-6/CLI-8 metal filters). I think this is made to ensure the ink is flowing fast enough towards the nozzles. The print head craddle does not look different from the one in my Canon i9950 printer. It is still based on the bubblejet technology, meaning that the ink is partially boiled until evaporation to drive the ink to pushed out of the nozzle onto the paper.

Lin,

did you use pure pigment ink for printing ? or did you mix pigment with some dye ink to make the ink flow better ?

 

[lin]

pharmacist, didn't realized you asked the question at #25. I was looking back at some of my old posts and came across this thread again. Sorry for missing out on your question last time.

Though this thread was so long ago (2 years ago) and you had since stop the pigment experimentation. This is just to answer your question at #25.

I did the pigment test on canon 3 months before you started on yours. And the adhesive problem was what I noticed which is why I asked you to peform the 'gentle rub test'. And of course, when pigment ink printed on plain paper and matte paper, the pigment ink do not gets "rubbed" (brush) off surface surface of the media.

The ink I tried were HP pigment ink as well as Epson pigment ink. Epson pigment ink was what I tried first. I didn't intend to use Epson pigment ink but that was what I could find here and what I had first-hand and then followed by HP pigment ink when I managed to get hold of the HP pigment ink. And I did not mixed the ink at all for both experimentation (as they are already very 'liquidility' and visicosity is not thick like some of the durabrite ink in the market) and all tested on Epson glossy photo paper that accept epson durabite ink. At post #20, the picture of the Set A is HP pigment ink while the Set B is Epson Pigment Ink. On glossy photo paper, the set A (HP pigment ink) has the adhesion problem and the color is very light )virtually very pale color) while the set B (Epson pigment ink) do not have adhesion problem and color is slightly off from the original softcopy of the picture (which could be corrected by color profile I supposed). But both inks had clog issue on canon printer as I tested on 2 printers where one has the minimum 1 pl nozzles while the other printer uses 2 pl. Probably the small nozzles might be too demanding to use pigment ink and as canon printer works by capillary action unlike Epson, the canon printhead inklet port might be too small since as we know the printhead that uses PGI-9 has larger inklet port.

 

[thanhhuy123]

I tried InkTec Epson black pigment ink on my HP printer with 13pl black pigment printhead. Result: Print in "Normal" mode (which is much slower than Fast Draft): the first few pages came out okay. After 4 pages, things get fader and fader and at page 6 everything came out completely blank. Luckily my printhead didn't died!

BTW, the InkTec Epson colours dye ink worked kay on my HP with slight colour shift (I don't mind since I print documents).

Anyone can explain why pigment doesn't work?

 

[Tudor]

The ink was made for Epson printheads... That means it's not made to be boiled (that's how your printhead ejects ink). Get some ink made for HP or Canon before you ruin your printhead, if you didn't already...

 

[thanhhuy123]

But the dye ink CMY works okay. Only the pigmented black ink cannot. Can anyone explain??

P/S: My printhead is 13pl for pigmented black and 2pl for dye colours. I don't see any Epson use as large as 13pl, so InkTec for Epson should be able to flow through the head of 13pl? As for the different in eject ink, why the dye ink works and the pigmented doesn't?

Anyone live in Vietnam that can tell me where to bye pigmented InkTec for HP please???

 

[thanhhuy123]

Tudor, in my country they only have InkMate for HP Designjet 500/800 printer. Can I use it for my HP Deskjet? 99% rest are ink for Epson! >.<