So, compatible inks, ink level indication and black & white on cheap printer?

[ChrisR]

I have a Canon MG6350 6-ink printer, for which the Canon inks are VERY expensive (£80 from the Canon shop for the non-XL set). Some time ago (I don't use this printer much) I bought a relatively inexpensive set of 6 made by JET Tec that calim to be "High Quality Remanufactured Cartridges". I chose these because I understood (dunno why) they contained the appropriate chip. But when I put them in, the ink levels don't show on my computer.

Is this inevitable? or is it avoidable (ie are there cartridges which will show the ink levels)?

NB this is not about ink quality (though that is clearly important), more about a usability factor...

 

[tijuana taxi]

Have a look at a company called Prink, used them for fifteen years and their inks have always been excellent
Chipped so that the levels show up (see below) and some of the early prints still look good.
My daughter used them all through Uni and printed literally reams with no clogging.
Currently have them in my Canon IP8750 and IP7250, all for about a tenner a set including postage.

 

[Suvv]

I normally get mine from InternetInk and the levels show OK on a Canon and a HP printer. They do warn against installing any printer updates though as, apparently, these can interfere with compatible ink cartridges.

 

[ChrisR]

Have a look at a company called Prink, used them for fifteen years and their inks have always been excellent
Chipped so that the levels show up (see below) and some of the early prints still look good.
My daughter used them all through Uni and printed literally reams with no clogging.
Currently have them in my Canon IP8750 and IP7250, all for about a tenner a set including postage.


View attachment 367641

Ordered two sets of these for two different printers, Rich, and popped one in my MG5250 yesterday. Worked a treat, and ink levels showed up fine. Only a print of some text, but I'll be trying an image soon (probably black and white, though). Thanks for the pointer.

 

[tijuana taxi]

Ordered two sets of these for two different printers, Rich, and popped one in my MG5250 yesterday. Worked a treat, and ink levels showed up fine. Only a print of some text, but I'll be trying an image soon (probably black and white, though). Thanks for the pointer.

That's good news Chris and glad to be of help, just ordered some more myself because they were 10% off at the weekend.

Don't think at my age guaranteed 50 or more years without fading is worth the genuine ink price

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

I have used compatibles in my MG5750 since day one with no trouble.
There are very few Printer dye and Pigment manufacturers in the world. so the chances are that it is the same as the OEM..
The usual reason for blockages is the heads drying out through lack of use.
At least with canon the heads are easily removed without tools to clean them thoroughly. Not that I have had to do so with this printer.
I usually do a cleaning cycle and leave it for an hour or so. By that time the new ink has softened the old, and another cycle solves the problem.
With Epson you are stuffed. or have to pay for a service, which is just another way of being stuffed.

 

[Bristolian]

I have a couple of Epson printers and their cartridges are extortionate but I don't like the results I get from third party brews ... and I have tried soooo many different ones from different suppliers.

The solution I went for in the end was a CISS for each printer and purchasing Epson Ink Tank inks (they come in bottles) instead of cartridges. A set of bottles lasts me roughly a year and cost about £60 rather than £90 per set of cartridges and the print quality is superb because of the genuine inks. Another bonus is that I never get that sinking feeling when the printer tells me it's run out of ink

 

[piper]

Just a comment which I guess most know: it is well worth just getting an injet printing a page or so every few weeks to a month. I habitually use to leave my printer ( currently a Canon TS8051 ) for months and months and found I had trashed the print head ( uncleanable by any method I tried ). This was with inks/compatible cartridges from City Ink Express. Curiously OEM cartridges don't do this - just a clean or deep clean and away they go.
Also, the refillable cartridges and inks from Octopus seem to work OK:

Octopus®

Printer Ink, Refill Ink, Laser Toners, Toner Powders, Cartridges, Refillequipment

www.octopus-office.de

Other people will have different experiences of course....

 

[ChrisR]

Ordered two sets of these for two different printers, Rich, and popped one in my MG5250 yesterday. Worked a treat, and ink levels showed up fine. Only a print of some text, but I'll be trying an image soon (probably black and white, though). Thanks for the pointer.

OK, I'm having interesting results with these Prink inks. I printed some black and white images on cheap matt paper on the MG6350, and they are very nice, definitely black and white.

On the MG5250 it's a different story. Nothing I can do will make a black and white print look anything but green!



Horrible, isn't it!

I have tried printing from Capture 1 Pro, and also from Colorsync with printer-controlled colours and also Colorsync contrlling colours. The results are pretty much the same.

Just to be clear, there are currently 4 Prink cartridges in (the dye black and the 3 dye colours), but the pigment black is still a Canon cartridge.

Last time I printed a black and white image with the Canon cartridges, the results were pretty good. There's always a bit of colour in their, which fades a bit overnight, but it's quite acceptable to me. The above print... is not (but thanks to Northlight for their excellent test image).

I currently take 95% of my photos on black and white film. It's beginning to look like I might have to go back to a full Canon set...

(I asked about Printfab a bit earlier, with no response, and I still might give their demo a try, but a read of the manual suggests to me that if I don't use their profiling service at €20 per paper, it might not be any better... I could be wrong, though.)

 

[steve_lyt]

I use Epson eco tanks , haven’t got any complaints

 

[Don Fischer]

Ya know, for most of us, we don't make a living doing this. But even so I tried after market ink one time and that was it for me. First photo was bad so removed the aftermarket stuff and went hack to OEM ink. Recently got a new color and B?W tanks for my iP100 printer and don't remember the cost seems it was over $20 a tank. Got a full 8 pack for my Pro 9000 MKII and it was $109. That was the best price I found, generally everyone was wanting about $125 for it. Just ordered two new tanks for it and they were $18 each which was the best price I could find.I don't know if you guys call that good or not but I can live with it as opposed to fooling around with more after market stuff. I do this mostly for me and I like to hear people say it's great. If I was selling, no way would I chance anything other than OEM inks. I have no idea the difference in the different inks but on the after market I've heard good and bad! On OEM I have not heard bad at all. None bad wins the coin toss for me. Don't remember what my printer cost me, got it new a number of years ago. But why would I want to risk damage to it by saving a few buck's on aftermarket ink?

 

[Bristolian]

I use Epson eco tanks , haven’t got any complaints

I also use Epson eco tank inks but in a non-eco tank printer fitted with a continuous ink system. No problems or complaints and the saving in ink costs are phenomenal I use a limited number of papers and have custom profiles for each one.

 

[tijuana taxi]

OK, I'm having interesting results with these Prink inks. I printed some black and white images on cheap matt paper on the MG6350, and they are very nice, definitely black and white.

On the MG5250 it's a different story. Nothing I can do will make a black and white print look anything but green!

View attachment 393138

Horrible, isn't it!

I have tried printing from Capture 1 Pro, and also from Colorsync with printer-controlled colours and also Colorsync contrlling colours. The results are pretty much the same.

Just to be clear, there are currently 4 Prink cartridges in (the dye black and the 3 dye colours), but the pigment black is still a Canon cartridge.

Last time I printed a black and white image with the Canon cartridges, the results were pretty good. There's always a bit of colour in their, which fades a bit overnight, but it's quite acceptable to me. The above print... is not (but thanks to Northlight for their excellent test image).

I currently take 95% of my photos on black and white film. It's beginning to look like I might have to go back to a full Canon set...

(I asked about Printfab a bit earlier, with no response, and I still might give their demo a try, but a read of the manual suggests to me that if I don't use their profiling service at €20 per paper, it might not be any better... I could be wrong, though.)

I think it might be a cross contamination issue Chris, Prink work fine on my 7250 and 8750.
Only problem I ever encountered was on my previous 7250 when I used a combination of Canon and Prink cartridges.
Must be something like that because why would the Ink be fine in your other printer and both of mine.
Before anyone asks the old printer had a failed power module, not an ink issue.

Some people always slate non original ink, but I've been using it for fifteen years.
Prints hang on my walls and they haven't faded away, this issue is very strange.
The people at Prink are helpful, have you tried emailing them about it?

 

[ChrisR]

I think it might be a cross contamination issue Chris, Prink work fine on my 7250 and 8750.
Only problem I ever encountered was on my previous 7250 when I used a combination of Canon and Prink cartridges.
Must be something like that because why would the Ink be fine in your other printer and both of mine.
Before anyone asks the old printer had a failed power module, not an ink issue.

Some people always slate non original ink, but I've been using it for fifteen years.
Prints hang on my walls and they haven't faded away, this issue is very strange.
The people at Prink are helpful, have you tried emailing them about it?

Thanks Rich. Sorry I missed this, as it would have been helpful in my recent adventures.

Your cross-contamination suggestion might well be the cause. Point one in favour is that the 6350 had all the inks replaced, and prints look good. One other difference is that the 6350 uses the CUPS/AirPrint driver, with no option (that I can see) to specify profiles (I don't currently have access to this printer to carry out further tests). The 5250 uses a 16.10.0.0 driver that came when I originally installed the printer... in 2011! Neither printer is currently "supported" under MacOS Ventura.

I was, however, under the impression that the pigment ink was used for text and not for photos. I could imagine that the results of mixing dye and pigment inks on one pixel would be... unpredictable; this is why I didn't replace the nearly full pigment ink cartridge.

An obvious test would be to replace the pigment ink cartridge, and try again, but I'm holding off from this just for the moment. I realised a week ago that I had a box of Permajet Matte 240 and a box of Fotospeed Smooth Pearl 290. Both these companies offer free profile services, so I decided to try them. I printed off the patch files and sent them off, got the Permajet profile by email the next day. My test image and scanned test print:





So, different from the previous image, but still a problem.

Now, my theory is that since this profile was made with the existing set of 5 inks. it ought to have worked regardless of the issues you mentioned. I did have a long and rather fruitless conversation with one of Permajet's techy guys, who seemed to want to blame it all on the Mac/Ventura/not being wired to the printer/etc, and asked me to try again from our Windows machine. I did that, and got a different unsatisfactory result (though better), though I had trouble finding an application on the Win machine that would give me enough control to apply the profile.

I thought I would wait for Fotospeed's profile, before ripping out the (expensive) pigment ink.

If I can't get this right soon, I'll have to go back to the Canon inks! On average, that seems to have cost me around £100 per year at today's prices, based on my internet ink orders... :-(

Or possibly, a new tank-based printer... that'll have to get Official Approval however, which I suspect will be a problem ("it looks perfectly fine, look at all these pages I've printed"... "you want to spend HOW MUCH?")! No way to sneak a new printer in through the back door...

 

[tijuana taxi]

Very strange indeed Chris and I don't have any further suggestions or possible reasons for the awful Green print.
I have never encountered any issue with Prink inks apart from just the once with the Canon mix and match
Printed off a photo for my daughter on my IP8750, it hasn't been used for at least a month and the print was really good.
Even stranger that your other printer works well with them, no way i would ever go back to Canon ink
The Pro10 I had cost an absolute fortune to run, i'm not tight, but it was more than I was happy spending for the occasional A3 print.
Hope you get some resolution of this peculiar problem, if not good luck getting a new machine through the door.

 

[ChrisR]

Thanks Rich. Sorry I missed this, as it would have been helpful in my recent adventures.

Your cross-contamination suggestion might well be the cause. Point one in favour is that the 6350 had all the inks replaced, and prints look good. One other difference is that the 6350 uses the CUPS/AirPrint driver, with no option (that I can see) to specify profiles (I don't currently have access to this printer to carry out further tests). The 5250 uses a 16.10.0.0 driver that came when I originally installed the printer... in 2011! Neither printer is currently "supported" under MacOS Ventura.

I was, however, under the impression that the pigment ink was used for text and not for photos. I could imagine that the results of mixing dye and pigment inks on one pixel would be... unpredictable; this is why I didn't replace the nearly full pigment ink cartridge.

An obvious test would be to replace the pigment ink cartridge, and try again, but I'm holding off from this just for the moment. I realised a week ago that I had a box of Permajet Matte 240 and a box of Fotospeed Smooth Pearl 290. Both these companies offer free profile services, so I decided to try them. I printed off the patch files and sent them off, got the Permajet profile by email the next day. My test image and scanned test print:

View attachment 396181

View attachment 396182

So, different from the previous image, but still a problem.

Now, my theory is that since this profile was made with the existing set of 5 inks. it ought to have worked regardless of the issues you mentioned. I did have a long and rather fruitless conversation with one of Permajet's techy guys, who seemed to want to blame it all on the Mac/Ventura/not being wired to the printer/etc, and asked me to try again from our Windows machine. I did that, and got a different unsatisfactory result (though better), though I had trouble finding an application on the Win machine that would give me enough control to apply the profile.

I thought I would wait for Fotospeed's profile, before ripping out the (expensive) pigment ink.

If I can't get this right soon, I'll have to go back to the Canon inks! On average, that seems to have cost me around £100 per year at today's prices, based on my internet ink orders... :-(

Or possibly, a new tank-based printer... that'll have to get Official Approval however, which I suspect will be a problem ("it looks perfectly fine, look at all these pages I've printed"... "you want to spend HOW MUCH?")! No way to sneak a new printer in through the back door...

Apparently I printed the Fotospeed chart with colour management (though I don't remember doing so), so I've had to do it again. I took the opportunity to replace the Canon pigment black with the Prink one; I did several nozzle head cleaning runs and a deep head clean. After printing off the Fotospeed chart (taking GREAT care to make sure it was with No Colour Management), I printed the image above from Capture One Pro with printer-managed colours. Sadly, the result was the same olive green seen in post #9 above (though completely different from the colours in post #14). Hope I'll get the Fotospeed profile next week (sending it to the correct address this time, not the old address in their instructions!).

 

[ChrisR]

I got the profile for Fotospeed Smooth Pearl 290 using Prink inks on my MG5250 back earlier this week, installed it and printed the test image I used in Post #9 from Capture One Pro with the profile. The results are pretty much identical to that post, maybe slightly different colours (actually closer to the results from the Permajet profile in post #14 than I'd thought):



Now I am REALLY confused about this! I had assumed that, whatever weirdness is going on between the ink and the printer would affect the printing of the patches too, and the resulting profile should correct the problem (note, I have a relatively low understanding of how colour management works!). But this seems to be not the case.

So far I’ve had suggestions (some from me) that

a) it’s the paper
b) it’s the MacOS latest version, which is alleged to treat all printers as AirPrint if on WiFi
c) it’s because the printer is no longer supported on MacOS so the driver won’t work
d) it’s because I don’t have the proper profile for the paper I’m using
e) it’s the printer
f) it’s the ink…

I’ve been trying to eliminate these, systematically:

a) the problem occurs with 4 different paper types, two good quality, two cheap, so I don’t think it’s the paper.

b and c) the problem occurs even if I print from the Windows machine with a USB connection (just basic printing; I don’t have any proper photo software allowing custom profiles on that machine), so I don’t think it’s the Mac. Also, there is a proper driver on the Mac (version 16.10.0.0) and no sign of any AirPrint driver.

d) I’ve now tried it with a Permajet profile for their Matte Plus 240, and the Fotospeed profile for Smooth Pearl 290. The Permajet profile did have an effect, but the result was blueish rather than greenish. The Fotospeed profile also made only a difference, but not an improvement.

e) the printer appears to work; it gives good text and plausible colour images on plain paper, though I suspect there is a colour cast in there (definitely for black and white).

f) I guess the ink is a strong candidate, though the (different) Prink ink for amyCanon MG6350 worked very well, and folk on here who have used the ink report good results. Unfortunately, to properly test this, I’d have to fork out around £70 for a set of Canon inks, which would be wasted if it ultimately turned out to be the printer!

I was nearly at the point of buying a new printer (thinking of a Canon G650), but apart from the fact that the MG5250 appears to work for “normal” printing, the paper handling for the G650 (all paper in the rear tray, no cassette) means it will be unacceptable for normal printing (no way are we going to load plain paper every time, nor leave paper sitting exposed in the tray). I don't want to buy another cartridge-based printer, the excellent-looking Epson ET8500 is over £500, so an "investment of £70 or so for Canon inks is now looking more plausible!

EDIT to add: Prink has not responded to a support request, and Fotospeed has also not replied to my request for a bit more information. Permajet was great in giving me a long phone call, but I was really confused by what the techy guy was saying, and some of it seemed just plain wrong (eg he told me that if printing from a Mac on Ventura to any printer, the Airprint driver is used, but I don't have an Airprint driver for this printer, and anyway the problem still occurs from Windows).

 

[Nikon f1.8]

Chris
is this just a B & W problem, does the printer work OK with a colour image ????

 

[ChrisR]

Chris
is this just a B & W problem, does the printer work OK with a colour image ????

I've just printed a test colour image, and it doesn't look good, TBH. It's a DataColor test image from the Northlight Images website (https://www.northlight-images.co.uk/printer-test-images/#datacolor). He says he has permission to reproduce and use the image; not quite sure of the (C) status, so for the moment I've made it a small scan and left it as a thumbnail below:

 

[Nikon f1.8]

Well that does not look good, seems to be rather heavy on the cyan ink.
I have an old Epson XP-960 and have used prink inks for ages now and have not had that problem, I am running Ventura on a Mac Studio and MacBook Pro.
Could it be the printer head is knackered ????

 

[ChrisR]

Well that does not look good, seems to be rather heavy on the cyan ink.
I have an old Epson XP-960 and have used prink inks for ages now and have not had that problem, I am running Ventura on a Mac Studio and MacBook Pro.
Could it be the printer head is knackered ????

It's very possible. Just run some more tests... printed the B&W test image from Affinity Photo with the Fotospeed Profile. Weirdly, although it still has a definite colour cast, it is much less pronounced than any previous version!

I've also now set up Catpure One Express Fujifilm on the PC, and printed the test page for that with profile; looks pretty much like the one in post #9.

I have now ordered some OEM inks, final, final test. If they come out olive too, it's definitely the printer, so then I'll have the dilemma of choosing a replacement!

 

[ChrisR]

So far I’ve had suggestions (some from me) that

a) it’s the paper
b) it’s the MacOS latest version, which is alleged to treat all printers as AirPrint if on WiFi
c) it’s because the printer is no longer supported on MacOS so the driver won’t work
d) it’s because I don’t have the proper profile for the paper I’m using
e) it’s the printer
f) it’s the ink…

I’ve been trying to eliminate these, systematically:

a) the problem occurs with 4 different paper types, two good quality, two cheap, so I don’t think it’s the paper.

b and c) the problem occurs even if I print from the Windows machine with a USB connection (just basic printing; I don’t have any proper photo software allowing custom profiles on that machine), so I don’t think it’s the Mac. Also, there is a proper driver on the Mac (version 16.10.0.0) and no sign of any AirPrint driver.

d) I’ve now tried it with a Permajet profile for their Matte Plus 240, and the Fotospeed profile for Smooth Pearl 290. The Permajet profile did have an effect, but the result was blueish rather than greenish. The Fotospeed profile also made only a difference, but not an improvement.

e) the printer appears to work; it gives good text and plausible colour images on plain paper, though I suspect there is a colour cast in there (definitely for black and white).

f) I guess the ink is a strong candidate, though the (different) Prink ink for amyCanon MG6350 worked very well, and folk on here who have used the ink report good results. Unfortunately, to properly test this, I’d have to fork out around £70 for a set of Canon inks, which would be wasted if it ultimately turned out to be the printer!

I was nearly at the point of buying a new printer (thinking of a Canon G650), but apart from the fact that the MG5250 appears to work for “normal” printing, the paper handling for the G650 (all paper in the rear tray, no cassette) means it will be unacceptable for normal printing (no way are we going to load plain paper every time, nor leave paper sitting exposed in the tray). I don't want to buy another cartridge-based printer, the excellent-looking Epson ET8500 is over £500, so an "investment of £70 or so for Canon inks is now looking more plausible!

EDIT to add: Prink has not responded to a support request, and Fotospeed has also not replied to my request for a bit more information. Permajet was great in giving me a long phone call, but I was really confused by what the techy guy was saying, and some of it seemed just plain wrong (eg he told me that if printing from a Mac on Ventura to any printer, the Airprint driver is used, but I don't have an Airprint driver for this printer, and anyway the problem still occurs from Windows).

Reader: it's the ink!

Loaded the set of Canon inks I've just bought and printed off a test image on cheap matt paper, from C1Pro with printer-managed colours. Definite hint of magenta, but this is MUCH more acceptable (no, it's not GOOD, but it's more like I got before, and at least looks vaguely like a black and white!).



Now I can try again to get profiles to try and improve this...