Surprising fade test results

[ThrillaMozilla]

You all print on paper, right? Here's my test on HP multipurpose paper. I diluted the ink 10x with distilled water (5x for yellow) and spread 0.1 mL on paper with a glass slide. The coverage is not quite even because I attempted to make coverage lighter toward the bottom. I cut the pages into strips and put half in my car window; the other half was stored in the dark in a polyethylene sleeve.

Here are the results after 8 days. The weather was not very sunny. All inks are for HP 564 cartridges (CMY PK dye, K pigment). Fortunately, PK is not ordinarily used on paper. I'll keep this thread updated as I get more data or do more tests.

InkTec (left side stored in the dark)


Image Specialists (right side stored in the dark; from left to right. IS0244C, IS6053M, IS7006Y, IS1008PK, IS1026K)


Besides the fading, there's one other interesting part. The colloids in the pigment inks are unstable when diluted with water. This may have implications for purging cartridges.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Here is a link to the fade test done many years ago that persuaded me to go with Inktec ink. I don't think anyone is surprised that dye inks fade on plain paper. You really should do your test on photo paper and I wouldn't dilute the ink. Why do you do that?

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

There were TWO tests in that reference. One was on photo paper; the other was on a card, which I assume is essentially plain paper. I wanted to test with my inks. I know ink fades faster on paper, but I didn't expect to fade in 8 days.

I diluted it to limit the amount delivered. If you just flood the surface with undiluted ink, it delivers an excessive amount, soaking through in places. It's possible that fading is visible faster in smaller concentrations. Is it your contention that water damages the ink?

 

[ghwellsjr]

I have no idea what the water will do. I would prefer to print the patterns so that they will be identical to the real thing. Unfortunately, Canon printers will not allow you to separately print from just one ink if you specify any photo paper but they will allow you to do this with plain paper if you select the correct quality and color adjustment and put your dye black ink in the pigment ink cartridge. I don't remember the exact settings and I'm going to be away from my setup for a week so I will not be able to tell you the settings until I have a chance to investigate them again.

If you want to experiment, you can make some cartridges that have cleaning solution in them (don't worry about the dye black as you will tell the printer you are printing on plain paper even if you are not). Then put in one real ink cartridge and print four patches of solid cyan, magenta, yellow and black. If you have the correct settings, you will get ink from only the correct color. Repeat for all four colors. Remember, black dye ink goes in the wide cartridge. Actually for this experiment you can use pigment black ink but when you actually do your patches, you need the black dye ink in the wide cartridge.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

Yes, that would be an excellent experiment all right, but for now I'm just going to apply ink directly without the printer. On my printer the wide cartridge holds pigment, not dye.

 

[Tin Ho]

ghwellsjr, the test from your link was so old that the inks tested may no longer exist in the market. I know as a fact that ink manufacturers revised inks faster than you can imagine. They do not necessarily tell you about it. That includes Image Specialists and InkTec.

Why not dilute the ink for the test? It only makes the color lighter when the water vaporizes. This is a good simple test with diluted ink. If it sees fading in 8 days that is an excellent test.

I had good fading result from InkTec ink before. Not sure about their latest inks. I have seen complaints that IS ink faded unfavorably. Glad to see the test revealing that for such an expensive ink.

 

[fotofreek]

As I recall, the tests done several years ago by our forum members demonstrated that the lighter colors faded fastest. Diluting the inks doesn't give a real indication of how the specific inks will fade.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

I summarized what I could find about fading of inks for my particular HP (or at least the same brands) here: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=6247 and here: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=40403#p40403 . The results were quite contradictory.

 

[jopereira]

These results are in line to other tests available on the net.
Inktec always shows good fading results and IS (MIS?) always shows bad results. I'm trying to stay away from IS because of this.

 

[martin0reg]

I think the test should be made with real prints on different papers (at least plain paper, coated ink jet paper and photo paper) because the whole thing - print quality and especially durability - depends on interaction of ink AND paper.
I have heard of inktec ink which faded fast, there is very little or no valid comparison of refill ink and cheap paper..