Using Canon printers with pigment

[telv]

I seems that most, if not all, Epson printers can be used with either dye or pigment ink. Is that the same for Canon? Has anyone, for example, tried putting pigment ink in a Pixma model? Thanks for any input.

 

[The Hat]

If you wish to experiment using dye and pigment inks, then your limited to Epson, Canon printers have a very short shelf life if you try swapping the inks, its been done before and is not recommended..
So no and no again, so please don't do it..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Epson with the piezoelectric printheads and Canon with the bubble jet principle use different methods to get the ink through the nozzles, such inks are not compatible. Swapping inks may work on some Canon printers which use pigment inks for all the colors, and it may probably work to switch to other Canon compatible dye inks, but that's pure experimental with all the risk mentioned above. But nevertheless you should be aware that Canon uses in the desktop printers a pigment ink for normal paper use, and a photo dye ink for photo prints. Here you could swap the pigment ink to dye ink, with some worse print quality, so it just would be an emergency measure. Putting the pigment ink into the dye ink cartridge gives an almost immediate print loss - I tried that longer time ago.

 

[telv]

Thanks to The Hat for that very clear advice. Thanks too to Ink stained fingers for sharing your experience and expertise.

Interestingly, a while ago now I did some extensive testing overprinting prints using the Epson gloss optimiser in a Canon (dye based) printer. The optimiser made very little improvement to the prints and the printhead was unaffected and is still in use today. Maybe that is because the optimiser is 95% glycerine and water - so perhaps nothing there to do any harm!

My search continues for something that I can use as a pre-coat or after-coat which will give a more glossy appearance and a greater depth of colour to prints which are printed on uncoated card.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

the uncoated surface is detrimental to a good colorful print, and the gloss optimizer would only work on glossy surfaces to start with equalizing gloss differences between different ink colors and areas with a different ink densities. You may look and test some spray coatings, UV varnish or similar but I don't have any experience with those. And you should check if you can find matte coated inkjet suitable card material - what size and weight are you looking for , and which printer are you using/planning to use ?

 

[martin0reg]

As far as I know, there are some incompatible sorts of inks and printers to differentiate:
- first, like ISF said, ink for canon (and HP) must be compatible with bubble jet heads, no matter if dye or pigment. Using epson ink in canon can damage the printhead by overheating, because the piezo ink woud not build up the ink bubble. I don't know what happens the other way around...
- second, most epson piezo heads can handle both dye and pigment ink which is compatible with epson ink. But there is not only the printhead, also the tubing and ink supply system which has to avoid clogging of the pigment. I don't know if you can use also canon or canon compatible ink... but it maybe less risky than the first.
- third, canon "text black": this is a sort of "grainy" matte black pigment ink, and the dedicated nozzle row in a canon printhead is not as fine as the other rows for dye color ink (including "photo black"). So the color channels could not handle the more "grainy" text black.
- fourth, canon pigment ink, dedicated for canon pigment photo printers ("lucia"), in a canon dye printer. I would not recommend this either... here are the reasons why:
http://www.printerknowledge.com/thr...-pigment-which-black-to-use.10392/#post-87075

 

[PeterBJ]

Thanks to The Hat for that very clear advice. Thanks too to Ink stained fingers for sharing your experience and expertise.

Interestingly, a while ago now I did some extensive testing overprinting prints using the Epson gloss optimiser in a Canon (dye based) printer. The optimiser made very little improvement to the prints and the printhead was unaffected and is still in use today. Maybe that is because the optimiser is 95% glycerine and water - so perhaps nothing there to do any harm!

My search continues for something that I can use as a pre-coat or after-coat which will give a more glossy appearance and a greater depth of colour to prints which are printed on uncoated card.

Here is a thread with links to treating paper with gelatin, Canon gloss optimizer or Image Specialists gloss optimizer.

I had some success in turning a sheet of plain paper into a photo paper using gelatin, but an inexpensive photo paper is better.

 

[telv]

Thanks to everyone for your input and helpful links. Especially interesting results obtained by PeterBJ using gelatin and The Hat using Canon GO. To answer Ink stained fingers, spray varnish works up to a point but is time consuming, the results are not always even and it's messy (the way I do it!)

The challenge is to be able to print on fairy heavy cardstock, minimum 300gsm, with either a pre-coat or after-coat which is applied by using a printer, the way The Hat does it using GO, so that the print will be better than simply printing on the uncoated card. I have Canon dye printers but if pigment ink for the prints could be the answer then more than willing to make an investment!

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Before switching the printer I rather would look for an inkjet matte paper which should be available with 300gr.

 

[The Hat]

That certainly looks like a great experiment and well done to you for pulling it off, however no matter how good it looks this type of printing is unstainable on a Canon printer, even using duel type cartridges

You have broken two golden rules with your printer but I have to admit you have managed to get a satisfactory result on it, (Hats off) and may it continue to preform for as long as it can, I know that doing this type of work on an iP1800 can only cost you a set of cartridges, but seriously how long do you expect it to last.

Secondly using a CISS on any type of Canon printer is a disaster just waiting to happen, and putting pigment ink into the wrong type of CISS system will only result in exactly the same messy situation when you have to clean everything out.

if you intend to continue using your unusual setup, please come back and keep us up to date on your progress, because its fascination to say the least..