Digital BW, The Print

One huge caveat to reading this thread listed below. There is a TON of information. Think of it as a totally raw un-whitebalanced everything goes historical document. (kindo’f how we roll at IJM forum-land right now). A little over half way through, it changes topics a bit.


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In my 12 years of printing professional with Piezography inks I have had sedimentation issues crop up only once. That was when I left the printer sitting idle for 4 or 5 months (I think the main poster had let his printer sit for 3 months on this thread). A shake of the carts and purge of the lines fixed the issue and I printed the rest of the ink perfectly. I kicked myself and then compared it to if I had let an RA-4 sit for that long.

These inks produce differently than epson inks. What they produce is of higher quality but they are not as adept at lying dormant in a printer "forever" (partly I think this is due to the fact that the carts feed from below instead of wastefully from the middle but this is a research project of mine). They are not far from epson OEM though in my considerable experience. At IJM we constantly tell people to agitate their inks but I can almost bet that more than half of our customers don’t even do this before they pour their ink in their printers! We can only hope the fedex truck did it for them.

So. Agitate and fill. If you’re going away for a while flush your printer so your head doesn’t die (with any ink, oem or not although Piezo ink has a much longer decap time than OEM so frankly it’s safer on the dry-out issue than Epson at this point). Gasoline goes bad in less than a few months and can ruin your engine. Don’t assume ink won’t dry on the head or pigment won’t settle. When dealing with epson oem ink in a professional artist lab you still have to re-profile every few months between ink batches or if the lines have settled for too long of a time. When printing QTR with OEM Epson I re-linearized every single time I did a print run with an 80 patch. Back in the day with StudioPrint I re-lin'd my piezo environments every time a printed a large portfolio (at least once a week) and did the same for color every three weeks. I HAD to. When dealing with a professional print tool, an i1 will quickly become the center of everything. I recommend getting one.

You can do this stuff now with various tools. CreateICC, .quad Linearizer, etc.

Nothing beats preventative maintenance and the correct set of expectations and the tools to maintain calibration.

regards,
Walker




> On Mar 15, 2016, at 9:19 PM, jeff.grant@pobox.com [DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint] <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> A long read on sedimentation issues with a 3880: Swapping inks and dealing with the residual in the lines <http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?1962-Swapping-inks-and-dealing-with-the-residual-in-the-lines>
>  <http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?1962-Swapping-inks-and-dealing-with-the-residual-in-the-lines>	
> Swapping inks and dealing with the residual in the lines <http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?1962-Swapping-inks-and-dealing-with-the-residual-in-the-lines>
> I haven't printed on gloss for a few months, but I have maintained my 3880 properly, and shaken the printer every few days. Yesterday, I decided to test the t...
> View on www.inkjetmall.com <http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?1962-Swapping-inks-and-dealing-with-the-residual-in-the-lines>	
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