Hello,

I've posted a couple of times about CIS for an Epson R800. Having looked at Lyson and Permajet I was swayed by positive reviews on the Royal Photographic Society website to go for Permajet.

Ordering, Packaging and Delivery
Done on line - but it did take a week for the stuff to arrive.
Delivery - left in the household waste bin (just as well it wasn't bin day!)
Packaging - not what I expected at all. The "kit" came loose in the box (along with the papers I ordered) - so don't expect a packaged shrink wrap kit. The instructions were inkjet printed (and not for my printer) and the CD with profiles and extra instructions were not included (I'm still waiting to hear back from Permajet on that point). A word of warning - my ink bottles came with their lids very lightly screwed on - one squeeze and ink easily came out - luckily I only had actual leakage from one - still a bit of an embuggerance to clear up though.

Set Up
For a product costing circa GBP 250 - I wouldn't expect to do so much of the set up myself. For example connecting the tubes inside the bottle and also splitting out the flexible tubing out in to individual tubes from the strip it came in.

Priming the print heads was surprising easy, as was the installation of the chips which kid the printer in to thinking it had Epson carts still fitted.

The bar which carries the ink tubes to the print head and keeps the tubes clear of the print head whilst in operation was a bit rough and ready - I can picture someone attacking a sheet of plastic with a hack saw and not a precision machine making this. That said it is functional and does as it is intended. The kit does both the 1800 and 800 though the instructions appeared to be for the 1800 only - so I had to guess where I was to place the bar for my humble 800.

What would have been good was an explicit statement saying not to expect the lid on the printer to shut completely after installation. It was Sunday morning and I had spent a little to long contemplating the set up before arriving at this fact.

In operation
After a round of nozzle cleaning I was set to go. Using Permajets own Oyster paper (and appropriate ICC profile from their website) I did a couple of test prints and they were very true to the on screen image. So I was pleased. After that I set the printer to work on 100 happy snaps of the kids over Christmas for the grandmothers. What I did notice was clunking noises coming from the printer when the head went to the far left - this was corrected by adjusting the ink tubes running across the printer. Though it was replaced with a grating noise instead. Fine adjustment of the slack/tautness of the pipes carrying the ink stopped both noises, so that it sounded "like normal"

In General
So far I'm impressed - albeit after 110 prints it is early days. But it was nice to watch the ink levels drop, knowing that I wasn't going to have make a dash to Staples to get more OEM ink.

Best wishes

Alastair
(aka numpty)