Hi Matus, I have a couple of customers that have gone down this track with bulk ink systems both on Epson, Agfa & HP (not aware of bulk ink for Canon WF yet in Australia). The batch to batch quality of the ink my customers tried was very poor. We found the following: Epson & Agfa - (similar ink & print head so showed same results) Customers tried a few manufacturers of non-genuine ink specific for the printer and with both Dye & Pigment inks they had very regular print head clogging (leading to replacing the print head each time), and others just showed unstable colour with quite a major DeltaE shift on the proof after production. The older printers were easier to load ink into but still not an ideal way to produce colour stable proofs. HP - HP pressurise their tube system and we had a couple of aftermarket cartridges actually explode inside the printer (quite a mess for our tech department to clean up), similar unstable proofs following production to what was seen on the Epson & Agfa printers as a result of the ink. Every customer that tried this gave up and flushed their lines back to genuine ink except one of our signage customers using an Agfa Sherpa 43 that was not concerned about the post production stability as his prints are only for short-term use. We eventually found a non-genuine ink that didn't clog his print heads but he pays double the price for this ink to other ink he tried. I never recommend my customers to try non-genuine ink - it just doesn't seem to be as easy to make this ink as it sounds. If the consumable cost is a concern for my customers then I usually suggest they calculate the running costs of the available printers on the market. The HP5500 & the newer HP 4000 always work out well less than half the running costs of any other manufacturer (especially with their triple packs of ink) & at an absolute minimum of 2 times the speed of it's fastest competitor at similar quality. The other thing I found is that with the latest V8.1.2 of the Colorbus Cyclone rip, the colour engine utilises the internal densitometer in the HP properly to automatically re-calibrate the proofer. I am confident that almost all other rips turn off or ignore this feature. I have customers that have previously run Oris Colortuner, Agfa Apogee, Onyx etc. that all comment the colour has never been this accurate & stable with this combination. I would steer clear of cheaper ink, unless you accept that you will have to trial a lot of brands and replace a lot of print heads. If anyone has found a good quality & colour stable ink I would be curious to know the brand, but doubt there is any "true" savings to be had. Kind Regards, Michael Rooney PT Store (Australia) www.ptstore.com.au -----Original Message----- From: eci-en-admin(a)lists.transmedia.de [mailto:eci-en-admin@lists.transmedia.de] On Behalf Of Matúš Gašparík Sent: Thursday, 19 January 2006 1:52 AM To: eci-en(a)lists.transmedia.de Subject: [ECI-EN] Refilling ink jet cartridges? Hi, has anybody by coincidence concerned himself / herself with the quality and color behaviour of ink jet refills? Is it possible that some of these refills would, in terms of their quality, compare to original inks from such manufacturers as Epson, Canon, etc., or is it not at all a good way of saving money, when one also demands professional color prints. Would you (or would you not) recommend refilling ink jet cartridges? Is there any study on this from the color-management-point-of-view? I'd be looking forward to any comments. Matus Gasparik Aktivujte si neobmedzenu mailovu schranku na www.pobox.sk! _______________________________________________ ECI-EN mailing list ECI-EN(a)lists.transmedia.de http://lists.transmedia.de/mailman/listinfo/eci-en