There are a lot of “researchers” on the Internet. There are not many people how have really tried them and have had issues with them, and are recommending something based on experience – it is mostly based on hearsay or “heard in the forums”….
Using 3rd party inks is one such topic. There is plenty of chatter on pretty much every photography forum out there on this. I think there is about 50% people out there saying “Don’t use it”, while the remaining 50% raving about it. This post is about my personal experience, not research on using 3rd party inks on HPB9180.
Well, unlike many people – I like to try my hand at things. In this case, for the sake of saving a few bucks, I went all the way as much and ordered a bunch of replacement refillable inks from a 3rd party supplier.
First a disclaimer: As I have said many times in the past, I am very happy with the quality of prints coming out of my B9180. In fact, i do routinely compare prints from B9180 against those from Epson 2400 and Epson 2880. I have shown my prints for very critical examination and most people have difficulty identifying which one came from from which printer. For most purposes, prints from any of these printers are just as good. I am not in the market for a new printer.
For HP fine art printers (B series printers in specific) – i found this vendor called “Hefger Media“, a Canadian based print shop that have made this their business. They supply reverse engineered print cartridges and offer refillable inks and continuous flow systems as well. These guys sell 3rd party inks – at a fraction of cost. They even offer bulk inks that you can purchase and fill the cartridges yourself.
HP printer cartridges (B series printers in specific) uses a chip to store some information regarding when the cartridge is first plugged in, expires and such (I found out that the chip actually does not monitor the real ink level; the ink level in shown in the display is actually based on some calculation). Hefger makes their cartridges re-usable, by allowing the “chip” to be reset (via powerdown). This along with their re-fillable cartridges – allows for inks to be filled as needed.
Hefger indicates on their website that they order bulk inks from an undisclosed manufacturer in Germany, and that their inks are almost as good as the original ones. They claim to be a small print shop and cannot afford to do print permanance tests and other tests.
Here is my experience from switching inks to this vendor:
- The vendor indicates that you can change inks from original inks to the new new inks as they deplete. This means – if your Light Gray ink deplete, replace the original ink cartridge by a new Hefger ink cartridge. I did just this – the switch to Hefger inks was great and i did not notice anything. At least in the beginning.
- I started noticing head strikes on one print, and ran a print head clean test. Later did i realize that this was the start of all new problems. The print head clean test resulted in streaks inside color blocks initially, and upon deep cleaning – missing blocks from the print head clean test.
- Somewhere during this time, I replaced all original inks with Hefger inks in the hope that the new inks will fix the issue. No resolution yet.
- I then cleaned the printer NEDD, print heads manually with distilled water, replaced all 4 print heads with new print heads all with not much improvements.
- Finally, contacted the vendor – explained my woes, to which – “Simon” the friendly sales and support person offered to send me a new ink set.
- I replaced all existing inks with new ink set, and voila! a perfect print head clean test! all clean color blocks with no head strikes or streaks!
- I ran calibration successfully, and ran test prints. These were previously printed images – and i know that the prints exactly matched my screen (based on custom printer profile for original HP inks). Unfortunately, the new prints had a color cast – red/magenta color cast. This clearly indicates that there is a color shift between HP inks and Hefger inks.
- I just hope that the color quality control is good between their batches. If not – i will have to end up making new profiles every time i replace or refill every cartridge (or from a new manufacturing batch).
- See an image at the bottom of the post see the differences between the prints before and after profiling. The print on the the monitor is how i see the image on screen, the print on the left is using original HP ink profile, the one on the keyboard is using the same profile as that of original inks – but optimized for new inks. The one of the right is based on a new profile that was created for Hefger inks. It is the one that looks closest to the screen (When viewed straight – they *almost* match).
- Well, the good prints lasted for only about 5 prints. After which, i started seeing print head strikes and ink streaks on the prints.
- I ran the print head clean cycles again – and to my horror – have gotten half the print color blocks missing!
- “Simon” at Heger (An ever helpful guy) – has offered to look into my printheads and inks. I will be sending my inks to him shortly in hope of getting a new working set from him shortly.
- I will update this post as i see progress on this topic – Hopefully, this will educate and inform those that are investigating on using 3rd party inks.
My overall experience on this topic has still been fairly good – I am willing to give the vendor a chance. If the prints coming out of these inks are good enough (based on optimized profiles) – I am willing to stick to this inkset.
Update: 05 April 2009:
After several back and forth communications – I had sent all the printheads and inksets back to Hefger. They have cleaned the printheads and have returned to me a new set of inks. I have taken some sample prints after using the new set. It appears to be better – I have no streaking, all inks show up in the test prints although there still is one thing – I am unable to complete close loop calibration. The test fails unable to complete it. I am yet to re-create a new set of print profiles – however, a few sample prints i have taken so far seems to be better than the last time around. Image 6 in this gallery should provide a good idea as to how the prints look like now. The print on the left most is a B&W print – printed out with a very dark magenta cast. Not usable in any sense. After print calibration (which did not complete) – the prints seems to be better than before. The two prints on the right were done right after this. The B&W lacks the punch i see on the monitor, while the color print has a slight yellowish cast (check out the actual image on the monitor – It is a color calibrated monitor) to the print.
Update: 26 Jun 2009:
Update – The printer has been unusable over the past few months now…I have been using a printer to print my images. My advice: Its not worth it to try 3rd party inks. Just don’t do it.
Update: 01 Sep 2009:
Hefger has sent me their new inks (XL Inks). They claim that these are genuine Vivera inks. I have replaced all 4 printheads with brand new ones before trying it out. After printing out what seems like about 50 test prints of their standard test page (http://www.hefgermedia.ca/files/HP_Colour_Test.psd) – My test prints are still streaking. I am not sure if the print heads are the issue or something else. At this time, I am running low of patience and just don’t wish to continue trying.
- Image 1: Profile variances
- Image 2: Print clean test chart after replacing all original inks with new inks
- Image 3: Print clean test after a few prints and streaks in prints
- Image 4: Print clean test after deep cleaning
- Image 5: Print streaks in profile charts
- Image 6: See updated blog info above for more details.
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