PC Hardware

Frank · Guest

Alan Justice wrote:

measekite · Guest

Alan Justice wrote:

measekite · Guest

Alan Justice wrote:

measekite · Guest

Frank wrote:

Frank · Guest

Frank wrote:

measekite · Guest

Frank wrote:

Burt · Guest

Alan - you had mentioned in one of your posts about filling up the waste ink
tank trying to clear clogs in you 2200. If you still use the 2200 or decide
to continue with Epson you would be well advised to look up Arthur Entlich's
posts, email him, and request his Epson head cleaning manual. Let him know
what printer you have and what the problems are. He's great at solving
Epson printer problems and is happy to email you a copy of his manual. Last
year I had a head clog with an Epson Stylus Color 900 (using only Epson inks
for the benefit of our resident troll). Arthur's manual provided the
routine for clearing it. You definitely don't want to run more than two
sets of three head cleanings from the Epson software utility screen.

"Alan Justice" <spam@spamspamspam.spam> wrote in message
news:iAraf.5275$yX2.2902@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...

measekite · Guest

Burt wrote:

frederick · Guest

Alan Justice wrote:

Arthur Entlich · Guest

But Davy, you failed to notice (or reply to) his concerns about selling
his work and needing it to be archival.

Canon's inks are not archival. Even their new Chromalife 100 dye ink
formulation that implies 100 years may need to be looked at with a
jaundiced eye. Make sure you are comparing similar testing conditions.
Several inkjet ink and paper manufacturers have gone to much less
rigorous lighting levels to use as their "standard".

Canon's numbers are for Canon special paper and new ink set, and the 100
years they speak of for images kept in a dark photo album. ALmost ALL
inkjet prints will retain that. Canons Chromalife 100 has a 10 year gas
fade expectation, and only a 30 year indoor display UNDER GLASS display.

see:

http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=StandardDisplayAct&keycode=chromalife_index&fcategoryid=103

for details.

Similar conditions with the Epson 2400 and Ultrachrome +K3 pigment inks
(the one to replace the 2200) are showing 34-60 years without glass, and
61 to 118 years with regular glass indoors. The ranges depend on the
papers used. These inks and papers show over 200 years in dark album
storage.

I suggest people look at Henry Willhelm's website before making those
kind of decisions. see: http://www.wilhelm-research.com/

HP has their Vivera printers out, but in order to get those types of
longevity claims you must use their papers, which are swellable polymer
and not waterproof. Inks are quite costly per volume (very small
cartridges), but HP claims large printing yields. I think time will
tell if that is accurate in the real world... it may be, I just haven't
seen enough from users to know.

Willhelm has just released his HP Vivera inkset longevity estimates.

They are showing 3 to 29 years (depending on paper) without glass, and 7
to 108 years with regular glass. This shows just how important paper
chemistry is with dye inks.

Those papers and inks show over 200 years estimated in dark album storage.

Davy wrote:

Arthur Entlich · Guest

All excellent advice and good guidance. The new Ultrachrome inks are
less likely to clog.

Art

frederick wrote:

Arthur Entlich · Guest

I do (agree with Frederick). Swellable polymers are water soluble.
They are slow drying, get sticky in humid conditions, fingerprint badly
and permanently get damaged by them, and some can encourage growth of
bacteria and mold is they get damp. Their surface is softer and can
scratch.

They are fine if they will not be handles once dry and are displayed in
a manner that keeps humidity and hands away from them.

Art

Alan Justice wrote:

Arthur Entlich · Guest

Epson may have their head in a place that the sun don't shine when it
comes to some of their customer service, and even some design issues
with their printers, and certainly in their ink pricing and waste during
cartridge installation and head cleaning, but they basically have claim
to the high end art market right now, because of their ink formulations,
paper choices and color management out of box.

There rae two basic paper formulations, swellable polymer, which uses an
organic water soluble resinous material that captures the ink within it
(which is how it remains archival) or the other which is microporous,
which uses either a plastic or a ceramic porous surface which the ink
goes through and then enters a ceramic (kaolin clay) (the same stuff
used to make porcelain) to hold it.

The problem with microporous papers is that the ink molecules can get
back out easily enough when activated by UV or other energizers or
oxidizers. Dye inks have very small and lightweight molecules that can
easily escape the surface. Swellable polymer locks them in, which is
why they are required for dye inks to be archival.

I already discussed the disadvantages of swellable polymer in a previous
posting.

The way Epson has dealt with this problem in their Durabrite and
Ultrachrome printers is by using pigment inks. These inks do not use
dyes as colorants which work on the molecular level. Instead they use
finely ground pigments which are solid and orders of magnitude larger
than a dye molecule. They are also relatively opaque so the surface
color helps protect the color under it, but the main reason they are
much more permanent is because they are just so much larger and heavier,
are not water soluble, and less reactive to oxidation (in fact some may
be oxides to begin with).

In a nutshell, pigment inks rely a lot more on the ink that the paper to
make them permanent, although paper can and does play a roll, while dye
inks rely on both good dye chemical formulations and even more
importantly in most cases, special paper surfaces to trap the dye.

Now, there are some new dye inks on the way which will have considerably
better archival ability on all papers, and there are new papers coming
out that do not use swellable surfaces that help lock in dyes for any
type of dye ink coming to market, actually using some very old (maybe
even ancient) techniques, but I am not at liberty to speak further about
them at this time. ;-)

As a last comment - pushing pigment inks through a inkjet printhead is
not easy to accomplish. They have a lot of solids in them, and they are
more abrasive and have large particles, they need t have a waterproof
(when dry) binder added so the pigment particles will stick to coated
surfaced papers, and so until the future is revealed, going with pigment
inks will continue to be more problematic in terms of clogs and other
issues.

Art

Alan Justice wrote:

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