mmurph Offline Upload & Sell: On
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · is it worth it to go for remanufactured inks? | |
Most 3rd party inks are very poor quality compared to the manudfacturers inks.
Others are decent. They all represent a trade-off, but in some cases the trade off is worth it.
For example, I run some OCP dye inks in a large format Espon 7600 24" roll printer for **proofing.** I would never sell those prints, but why use more expensive inks for the 100 or more 24x36 "proof"/test prints that I doo prior to the 2 final prints that I would sell.
That said, I do have my own i1 Pro tool (spectrophotometer) to make my own high quality printer profiles. And I compared my prints side by side to the Espon ink prints to be sure of what I was getting before making a commitment to the OCP inks.
The difference for me is that an Epson 220 ml ink cartridge costs $85, while a 220 ml OCP ink cart costs $5, or about 6% of the cost.
I also am going to run some OCP inks in my Pixma Pro 9000. There the Canon inks run $1 per ML - $16 or more for a 16 ml cartridge. The OCP ink is $20 per liter, or $.02 per ML. In other words, the Canon ink is 50 x as expensive as the OCP; the OCP is 2% of the cost of the Canon.
Is the OCP "just as good"? Very, very doubtful on longevity. The Epson inks are archival, 100 year inks. I would expect the OCP to be OK for 2 years.
I'm not sure yet on "gamut", or overall print quality on teh Canon. It was better on teh Epson, because I substituted dye inks for pigment. (you can compare the color space of a profile for each of the two inks to each other to see how they compare.)
Is it good enough for every day proof prints, when I will send final client prints to another printer with OEM inks, or to a pro lab? No question.
But the OCP inks are also one of the very few 3rd party inks that I would use. Most suck.
Some are worse than others. I would never use "just any no-name ink." Even for documents - they can clog up your printer pretty quickly and make printing a PITA. That happened on two Epson Artisan wifi printers taht I was refilling.
Good luck!
Best,
Michael
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