I'm unhappy with the limited information from my ink suppliers

[Ink stained Fingers]

I was involved with inkjet printing professionally and I'm doing refill since the last millenium - Canon S6000 and such, on lots of various printers by different manufacturers since then. Having decent sources for the inks is very important, there are a range of reputable companies on the market, and as well the Ebay/garage sale etc type offerings competing with extra low prices, not to talk about direct supplies via Alibaba/Aliexpress directly from China. Just to name a few - companies like marrutt.co.uk or octopus-office.de or farbenwerk.com have a wide range of offerings, not just inks and cartridges, but as well CISS systems, support functions, user/installation instructions, icc-profiles for the papers they are selling along with their inks, they have a quick turn around for orders and are overall easy to work with.
But just to give an example where I'm missing information - since a long time,
http://www.octopus-office.de/en/shop/l/c/printer-ink-brother-lc-980-lc-1100/?tx_commerce_pi1 Octopus-office is selling refill inks for Brother - not one type of ink but 4 - OCP ink, Octopus ink, Inktec ink, and PureInk, and this at different prices. I don't know whether I get some 'better' ink for a higher price, or the price difference is caused by a different bulk ink price or discount or something else. And I have this effect with about every supplier - I don't know what I get for the price - o.k. - vivid colors or brilliant colors or pure colors or whatever else, and this is an effect with about every ink supplier - no information what explains the price difference.
I asked several companies for more details - the answers fall into these groups

- we don't have more information, but all inks can be used with the printer in question
- we have more information but don't reveal them
- we have more information but don't do competitive advertising

When companies are offering icc-profiles I checked a few of those - same paper - different ink - for the gamut, the black level, but I didn't see a difference which would justify the price delta for me - in those cases I checked.
When I buy a sun screen there is a protection factor which I can use for a purchasing decision. I know the limits of this type of testing, but it can be of some help, e,g. when I compare various products of the same company with a SPF of 15, 30 or 50 , and I know it won't last for a whole day. But with inks I don't have anything - what about some sun stability factor for inks......
So it's very easy in such situation for some suppliers to make nonsense claims like UV resistant and else.

 

[Emulator]

This is where we turn to experts like you for information.

I think you would have to have a laboratory experienced in ink products running proper tests to evaluate the range to a predefined set of standards.

I think Mikling knows a lot about that sort of thing.

 

[The Hat]

@Ink stained Fingers, you have a very valid point about not having a sun factor for any of the 3rd party inks that are on sale to us Professional geniuses.

But let’s look at like for like, the big two, Epson/Canon do provide us with sun factor values but who amongst us can tell if they are accrete or just marketing gibberish designed to cajole us into a false sense of security.

Yes the OEM inks are far better, but only if applied to OEM paper that we do know, but at what price do we shout stop all this marketing nonsense.

3rd party inks are fair to good at fading that we do know, and suppliers don’t give any sun factors values whatsoever for two very good reasons, one they don’t have the resources to do so, and if they did then we wouldn’t buy their inks, Why ?

Because it would also be to expensive, not to mention every single one of us print on the cheapest paper we find gives us expectable quality, ink supplier couldn’t possibly cover all of there’s different types of paper, the big two certainly don’t either.

Now lets have a closer look at the BIG two’s ink that they say it lasts 100 years, or it's claimed, I for one say that’s porky’s, now at the price that they charge for their inks it darn well should last for a 100 years, under perfect storage conditions who knows it may well make the century.

We have to judge 3rd party inks for what they really are, there very cheap and affordable to all of us, and we thoroughly enjoy their quality everyday and we are very willingly to continue use them.

So to end, like for like there is no point in comparing 3rd party ink to OEM ink, I for one never use OEM ink, I just can not afford to use the darn stuff, but if I could then no one would ever know because I would never be on such a great ink refill forum like this to brag about it.
Happy Printing to you all you good refillers..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I rarely compare to OEM inks either , they are just not affordable for my typical print jobs, but suppliers do - they promise in lots of cases color fidelity with OEM inks - but without further information, how it was measured, what the actual deviations are, that should be an easier job than measuring some other parameters - 'you just can continue to work with your current settings and profiles - no change' . I saw some inks being far off from that claim. It's like with those Brother inks cited above - the supplier would not give any further information whether and how the price deltas are related to differences in ink properties. It's similar with other companies which have several product lines suitable for a particular printer model - what is the difference of a budget to a premium ink if they don't give me some detail beyond arbitrary wordings - true color - vivid color - impressive color - stellar color reproduction - what else - it may be fun to collect all those claims into a little dictionary

 

[turbguy]

It seems all we have is the Blue Wool Test as a recognized standard for lightfastness of dyes. Seems to me that test would be simple/cheap/fast enough for most ink "manufacturers" to perform (or contract out qualified facilities). A standard substrate would have to be used (I would suggest dye suspended in a gelatin layer coating on mylar film).

As for gas/ozone exposure, I don't believe there's any ASTM or ISO standard (yet), is there??

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

the blue wool test is not in use anymore since a long time in the inkjet printing industry. The standardization bodies - ICC, ISO, ASTM etc have worked out in the past much more complex standards and test procedures which make sense and are in use in the printing industry but have no relevance in the consumer/end-user business - we are left out in this respect

 

[turbguy]

Actually, the Blue Wool test IS still referred to/used by ASTM...

http://www.astm.org/Standards/D5398.htm

I hear your frustration...there is a LOT of misleading "noninformation" being used by ink vendors. Without recognized standards being applied, and reported, by these vendors (even the OEM's), we are ALL taking a risk of our output changing..

Even the best of dyes (and pigments) change with time.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

yes, the standard exists, but is not in use in the inkjet printing industry, and one can assume that the Epsons, Canons Pantone X-Rite etc in the ICC, ISO, ASTM etc committees won't have any interest to derive a more consumer oriented parameter, with some limits, but much easier to test which would mainly support the 3rd party ink/cartridge manufacturers and sellers - but some of those would not join that game either...so we just continue to buy those inks with stellar performance....

 

[The Hat]

Speaking of the stellar performance we all get from our inks, a much bigger problem is the many thousands of EBay sellers that just rebottle universal ink and peddle it for genuine quality ink, their printers are liable to fade almost as fast as this ink does.

Then later, the usual howls can be heard “3rd party ink killed my printer”
It’s usually easy to spot these very tempting ink offers, a full set of cartridges for only $8 Inc. P&P, could anyone resist such a fantastic bargain, sure this seller has loads of likes..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

that's not just business practice of Ebay sellers, I ordered some Ultrachrome pigment ink at a company with a rather serious image - they offered the Ultrachrome inks in various versions, the original one, the K3 version, the vivid magenta version and 1 or 2 more, I ordered the K3 version but got the vivid magenta , I called them up for an exchange but they just told me that everybody gets the same ink regardless what they order, and just the bottles are labelled differently - and the pricing varies........o.k., that was the last order with that company