OCP K3 ink set

[jtoolman]

A while ago I was pondering soecial ordering a set of OCP K3 inks to use on my R2400 and two 3800.
I purchased them through the Rjettek.com website over the phone. Nine 8oz bottles of K3 ink set delivered for $73.
Now the catch! They have to be special ordered from the OCP company in Germany by boat container. So the next container will be ordered in three week. Add to that freight time, delivery to the USA, unloading, stocking, packing, and shipping to me. So I might see them by the end of March.
Not a problem as the two 3800s are still pretty much loaded with ink so no problem.

I just wanted to share how affordable these ink were. Even with the wait. The great thing is I am only being charged freight from Colorado to Maryland.
If these inks profile and work well, that is, with no cloging issues, I might buy a liter of each and store in my beer cooler!!!!

Here are the Stock nimbers in case anyone is interested:

IJ BKP 200
IJ BKP 201
IJ BKP 202
IJ BKP 203
IJ CP 200
IJ CPL 201
IJ YP 200
IJ MP 200
IJ MPL 201

 

[pharmacist]

Thanks for the update: I might grab a set of these inks from a german supplier and I find the price very competitive.

Could you make review of these inks and please have a look at the ABW-mode, because all the aftermarket inks tend to have problems to produce good neutral ABW-prints (Image Specialists + Inkjetfly: storng magenta cast and for the Inkrepublic IRK4-nano: slightly greenish cast) ?

 

[jtoolman]

Yes, it's going to be a while as they would not arrive until late March or early April. I plan to use them on my R2400 and one of the 3800s. I will either create ICC profiles with my colormunki or I'll have my buddy do them on his fancy Xrite I1PRO and Pulse Color Elite profiling systems. I too am curious about the ABW performance. I know that there are actual ICC profiles available for use within ABW from Eric Chan http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/index.html but I've never experimented with them. Should prove interesting.


Here is the discussion about ABW ICC profiles

http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/abwprofiles.html

 

[pharmacist]

The ABW-mode profiles are only for linearisation and to enhance details in dark shadows, which otherwise would be muted in one dark area. It cannot remove any colour cast from third party inks. The only thing that works is to tweak the RGB colour wheel, but it just adds a bit of colour to counter the cast. If a third party ink is optimized like the original k3, then you should get perfectly neutral prints by choosing: let printer determine color and than for the ABW-mode: neutral, dark etc.

Nothing should be done with profiles: if the ink is perfect then the ABW-prints most be dead on neutral, if not: you will get a colour cast.

 

[jtoolman]

Ah,, thanks for that information. Well, we shall see what these inks can produce. Hopefully custom RGB ICC profiles will do the trick. Worse that can happen is that I end up using mikling's IS inks for one printer, which gives very neutral B&W in ABS mode and use the 2nd one for color. Before I commit to filling up my second set of empty 80ml carts with the OCP inks, I'll try it on the R2400 and test it is ABS mode.

 

[WolfgangExler]

I'm wondering about that, as I'm in germany and often had the opposite problem when I need stuff from USA. I do not know about the pricing of bulk inks in USA, I use the same OCP ink in my Stylus Pro 4800 (and used it in a R2400). I order these inks from a german dealer

http://www.octopus-office.de/en/info/home/

where I can buy the OCP inks you descibed. But from their delivery conditions I see that the do not ship to USA.

When I'm correct your value of 8oz is little bit less than 250ml. If I buy 9 cans of ink I will pay abou 140 EUR for this. So your source semmd to be extremly cheap from my view.


Wolfgang

 

[jtoolman]

It is Rjettek.com located in Colorado Springs, Colorado USA. They supply practically ALL the USA based refill centers such as InkWorld and are used to selling ink by the gallon bottle.

They get all their inks from OCP and order by SEA-SHIP container ( Huge ). According to the sales rep. there is not enough demand to stock the
K3 ink set so they added it as a custom order to their most recent order from Germany which should come in by late Mrach or early April.
She also stated that even German citizens have a hard time getting these inks. She found that laughable. So the bottom line is I can get a full set of inks for either the R2400 / Pro 3800 K3 - 8 ounces for about $75 US including S/H to my door. Oh and no sales tax.

I also looked up ( at the ocp-de site ) the equivalent sets for Stylus photo 1400 and 2200 R1900 and R2000 and Canon PRO 9500MKII. They do not at thins time carry the Vivid K3 set for the 3880 and it does not look like it's going to change any time soon. I suppose you could use the regular K3 from them and substitute the VIVID magentas from Image Specialist or Cone inks. Then you'd definitely have to run custom profiles. I did not place orders for those other ink sets until I evauate their K3 set.

By the way that comes out to 3 cents ( $0.03 ) per ML.

It would not make sense for you to order from the USA as the shipping and taxes would kill your savings.

 

[pharmacist]

Hi WolfgangExler,

How is the OCP ink doing in your Epson R2400 ? is it glossy enough compared to the original Epson K3 ink and what about the gamut ? I think the source mentioned by you is not expensive at all. Maybe you could comment on this.

 

[jtoolman]

The OCP ink will not arrive until the end of March or beginning of April. So I can not comment on it yet.
Rjettek imports ink from OCP probably by the barrels as they are the main suppiers to most if not all USA ink refilling business.
They sell lots of refilling paraphanelia. Such as plugs, valves, needles, and actual refilling machines.

http://www.rjettek.com/

For exanple, yellow ink for the R2400 T059

http://www.rjettek.com/Epson/T059-480/

The problem is they would have to special order this from the OCP in Germany.

So after going to the OCP.DE site I compiled the stock numbers for the ink sets for the R2400 ( Same as PRO 3800 ) the 1400,2200, R1900/R2000 and depending on how good the K3 inks turn out I would then place special orders for the rest of the inks I just mentioned.

 

[WolfgangExler]

Hi WolfgangExler,

How is the OCP ink doing in your Epson R2400 ? is it glossy enough compared to the original Epson K3 ink and what about the gamut ? I think the source mentioned by you is not expensive at all. Maybe you could comment on this.

I bough the R2400 from a colleague in our camera club, he planned to put them to trash. I bought refill cartridges and OCP ink and get every thing working perfect. But during hugh print session, I had to check the "paper level" and refill the cartridges. So I had the feeling to need a printer with larger cartridge capacity and ended up on a Pro 4800 (I checked which printer is using the same K3 ink). I mostly use semi-gloss or Luster paper and created several profiles for this inks and some papers. I currently prepare a website about my experience, the final will be available also in english at http://r2400.fotoclub-stuttgart.net , the profiles will be also available there for download. If you want to download all my created profiles for Pro 4800 or R2400 with OCP inks and some papers with K3 inks for comparision, I provided the profiles quick and dirty in a 75 MB zip archive at http://www.d-r-f.de/exi/OCP.zip
These profiles are created with an X-Rite Eye-One Pro and i1 Match software. I updated to i1Profiler and new profiles are generated now with the updated software (these profiles have an ICM extension)

Hopefully my naming conventions are self explaining

You can use http://www.iccview.de for comparision of these profiles.

Also, I appreciate comments if anybody is looking at these profiles.

Wolfgang