Which Printer?

[fish]

I have gone from HP to Canon printers and between my son and myself have the following: 3000, 6000, 9900, MP830. Print quality on my old HP's was very good with InkTec refill inks (56, 57, 96, 97 cartridges). Went to Hobbicolors - photos are fine but text is not nearly as sharp as the HP printers. Paper is the same (Georgia Pacific Premium Ink, Jet 96 brightness). Am considering switching ink back to InkTec or to MIS. Has anyone had similar experiences with Hobbicolors?

 

[leo8088]

Did you buy this Georgia Pacific paper from Costco? I print with this paper a lot. I found Hobbicolors' black pigment ink to be very sharp on this paper. Does your paper have the words "GP Advantage Premium Ink Jet" on the packaging? If your paper is this paper check the ink you are using. Hobbicolors have "pigmented" and "pigment" black ink. Their pigmented ink is not 100% pigment ink and is cheaper. If you got this ink that may be the problem. I use the more expensive 100% pigment black ink and it is very sharp on this Georgia Pacific paper. But if I print on copy machine paper it is not as sharp any more. So when I care about print quality I always choose this Costco paper to print.

 

[Smile]

Did you buy this Georgia Pacific paper from Costco? I print with this paper a lot. I found Hobbicolors' black pigment ink to be very sharp on this paper. Does your paper have the words "GP Advantage Premium Ink Jet" on the packaging? If your paper is this paper check the ink you are using. Hobbicolors have "pigmented" and "pigment" black ink. Their pigmented ink is not 100% pigment ink and is cheaper. If you got this ink that may be the problem. I use the more expensive 100% pigment black ink and it is very sharp on this Georgia Pacific paper. But if I print on copy machine paper it is not as sharp any more. So when I care about print quality I always choose this Costco paper to print.

I don't use Hobbicolors cause it is not available here, but I use InkTec and have no problems, HP dye ink works good in canon printers too, but you need profiles or will have color problems.

 

[fish]

leo8088,
Yes, this is the "GP Advantage Premium Ink Jet" from Costco. I have been using this paper for a few years without problems. Hobbicolors ink is the pigment PMT-BK (more expensive of their two). Photos printed on this paper were sharper with much better definition with my old HP printers with InkTec inks. With HP, colors with InkTec were close to OEM and without any clogs.

 

[leo8088]

You are comparing HP printer with Inktec ink and Canon printer with Hobbicolors ink. The only thing that is the same is the paper. Cotsco used to sell a paper called Pinacle Laser/Typing paper with 25% cotton bond at 91 brightness. With my ip4200 and Hobbicolors PMT-BK ink printed on this Pinacle paper the text is extremely sharp and bold. I do not even print in high quality setup. I actually use a magnifier to examine how the text quality is. It blows the GP Advantage paper away. You can see some bleeding on the AG Advantage paper. But you will see just about none on the Pinacle paper.

I also have a stack of paper with company logo on the top. Don't know who makes this paper. But the text is razor sharp with Hobbicolors PMT-BK ink. I have other paper that are similar. One of them has Guidant word as the brand name of the paper on the packaging. It also prints razor sharp text with Hobbicolors ink. But like I said, when printing on copy machine paper picked up at work you can see some bleeding on the text. If you are comfortable with Inktec ink that's the way to go for you naturally. When I print resume or business portfolio I am completely comfortable with Hobbicolors PMT-BK with quite a few seclections of paper on hand.

I have not used Inktec ink myself so I will not comment about it. But if you look at the bottom of this Inktec web page you will see a comparison between its ink and OEM:
http://www.inktec.com/english/product_info/inkjet.asp?gubun=bulk&t=2
Be careful how you interpret it. I would take it as a grain of salt not much than that. BTW, it seems Inktec does not sell ink for Canon pro 9000 yet.

 

[fish]

Yes the paper is the same, which I have had no problems with in the past, so I assume acceptable paper. My question was meant to se if anyone had a similar experience with Hobbicolors inks - I don't know if I can attribute it to the ink or the printer since the paper is the same. Maybe I need to get a better paper for Canon/Hobbicolors combination? BTW, printing is from MP830.

 

[fish]

leo8088

Just tried Southworth 25% cotton with very good results - razor sharp as you noted with Pinacle paper. I guess that the GP Advantage with the Canon/Hobbicolors, for whatever reason, bleeds a lot more than HP/InkTec. So better paper it is (for now).

 

[fotofreek]

Fish - I'm sure you already know that you need to have the printer set to plain paper to use the pigment based inks. Otherwise you will be printing text with dye based inks combined to make black.

 

[fish]

fotofreek,
Yes, plain paper. One of my old AIO HP's used pigment black while printing a photo on photo paper - never dried.
Interesting to note that the 9900 would use a combination of black and mixed inks for black on plain paper. I printed an engineering drawing in pdf format and while most text was black, other portions were a dark brown tint. This was for a black/white file (no colors at all).

 

[fotofreek]

It has been my experience that neutral blacks are very difficult to get with dye-based inkjet printers. There are some B//W inksets available that range from warm to cold tones. I've seen them on the MIS web site for some Epson printers.