Ink usage of 8 colour-based printers: which colour(s) the most ?

[pharmacist]

Yesterday I purchased a used Canon i9950 wide format printer including a lot of original Canon carts, but I'm wondering (since I never used this type of printer) how much ink of each colour is used in general over a long period of use (let's say: 1000 prints of full colour A4 photo's).

Since I'm planning to use Hobbicolors as my choice for refillling the original carts (using the german sponge penetration method) how much do I have to order of each of the 8 colours to have a statistically balanced amount of ink used from full until empty? For example: photo-magenta and photo-cyan is used 3x and yellow 2x more than magenta and cyan and this on their turns are used 2x more than photo-black. This gives me a order size of about: 6 oz of photo-magenta and photo-cyan each, 4 oz yellow, 2 oz magenta and cyan and finally 1 oz of photo-black. What about the rarely used colours: red and green ? Does somebody have long-term experience how much ink of each of the seperate colours is used from this type of printer (e.g. Canon i990, i9900, i8500, i9950) ?

 

[ghwellsjr]

It will depend on the paper type you use, at least for the green and red. Some paper types, like plain, don't use the red and green at all. But I haven't kept long term records for all the inks. See this link:

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=11541#p11541

 

[Grandad35]

pharmacist,

See (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=11545#p11545) for my ink usage on R/G/K/C/M. PM/PC/Y average about 35/50/50 sheets/cart. These values are purely for printing photos on photo paper.

It will make a big difference whether you print light or dark images - one of the reasons why I prefer darker prints is that they fade less quickly.

Good luck on your 9950 - the colors will be great. Once you start to refill, you might want to look into a custom profile to optimize the colors of your prints.

 

[pharmacist]

So on your detailed account the average usage over a 2 year period using the setting Photo Paper Pro in high quality is approximately for R/G/Bk/C/M/PM/PC/Y : 1/1/1/1/1/3.5/2.5/2.5 making photo magenta the most used colour. For my calculation I'm presuming you are printing dark RAW-based images. That means If I'm ordering 2 oz each of R/G/Bk/C/M and then 7 oz of PM and 5 oz each of PC and Y the chances that I might well end up with the complete set of refill ink used at the end of it should be quite big. Of course: it all demands what type of pictures you are printing, but taken over a 2 year period and thousands of print-outs later this should be quite accurate.