Testing black ink PGI-520

[geocha]

After trying two different inks for my ip4600 i decided to post some macro photos regarding their quality.
The characters below are very small, i think about 6 and i must say that i am impressed with the difference!

This one is from an OCP bulk 50ml PGI-5 ink (awesome quality and the paper is plain w/o colorlok)


the one below is from IS PGI-520 which is really bad and totally grey!



I ordered 125ml of KMP PGI-5 ink from octoink to see if can match the OCP ink!
Let's see and hope

 

[inkoholic]

What is this OCP ink? I'm also having lots of trouble with gray-ish blacks from compatible cartridges. I suspect the manufacturer didn't use real pigment ink!

 

[qwertydude]

I've pretty much never seen pigment blacks feather. Something tells me that IS ink has dyes in it. Try doing the egg yolk test on the IS ink. Take a piece of plastic like a coffee can lid and make a small puddle of yellow dye ink on it. Then place a drop of the suspect ink in the middle of the yellow puddle. If it's a pigment black the two won't mix and resemble an egg even if you shake it a little. If it's a dye ink it'll immediately mix and turn the ink black.

 

[geocha]

it isn't dye ink. Every print is waterproof! Even trying hard with a yellow marker the ink won't smear at ALL!
Uploading the test you asked for

 

[geocha]

by the way, the above is a video file. Just click on the image

 

[qwertydude]

So it is a pigment ink. Perhaps it's just cheap paper.

 

[lin]

geocha, is the pictures for OCP ink (in the first pic) and IS PGI-520 (in the second pic), printed on exactly identical paper (both in terms of type and gsm)?

 

[geocha]

geocha, is the pictures for OCP ink (in the first pic) and IS PGI-520 (in the second pic), printed on exactly identical paper (both in terms of type and gsm)?

It's absolutely the SAME plain paper!

 

[qwertydude]

Well obviously then there are differences in the ink composition. I've never fully trusted IS inks because even in OEM cartridges it made the foam swell pretty fast and wouldn't flow unless I added denatured alcohol to the ink, and the color wasn't that accurate either. Although I do profile my inks with Profile Prism so color matching doesn't matter to me that much. I did get my ink from MIS inks supposedly they're IS.

But I've gotten tired of Canon anyways and have switched to Epson with a CISS and couldn't be happier

 

[The Hat]

qwertydude
Well obviously then there are differences in the ink composition. I've never fully trusted IS inks because even in OEM cartridges it made the foam swell pretty fast and wouldn't flow unless I added denatured alcohol to the ink, and the color wasn't that accurate either. Although I do profile my inks with Profile Prism so color matching doesn't matter to me that much. I did get my ink from MIS inks supposedly they're IS.
But I've gotten tired of Canon anyways and have switched to Epson with a CISS and couldn't be happier

There is an awful lot about Epson printers that I dont like but you never hear me knocking them all the time.
I think you should just lighten up and keep enjoying and sharing your Epson printer experiences with us.
Happy Printing..