Digital BW, The Print

Bottom line -- They appear to work together and be compatible.

In further pursuit of the B&W options available for the 1400 and Claria inks, I installed a mixed combination of MIS's (relatively) new 1400 carts/chips with the OEM Claria carts.  So far, I've found no incompatibilities.  I say "so far" because there has not been an auto-reset yet on the MIS chips, and I have no idea what other issues might crop up later on.  But, my initial reaction is that they are compatible.  This opens up some interesting combinations and options.

With respect to my Claria/Noritsu dye printing, the following options now appear feasible.

1.  Claria OEM color inkset -- Print with QTR using predominantly black only, but tone with Claria LM and smooth with the light colors, as needed.  This allows full color plus B&W.

Now, the black and dark colors can be replace with Noritsu inks (1/3 the cost) and MIS carts, without any ink mixing.  The light inks can be diluted from the dark ones for those who don't mind mixing.  (See fn 14, page 4 of http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/BW-Dye.pdf for the generic base formula.)  The barrier to the Noritsu colors is that the big 500 ml cars are expensive ($187) and may be overkill for those who do not do lots of printing.  I have the K and M carts, and have found that I print enough to justify buying the K, but maybe not the M.

Since the black is the main ink used for B&W, (K ink limit 17, boost 22, LM toner ink limit 0.5 for the paper I use most) for those who do not mix, the most sensible might be to just buy a cart of Noritsu K.  (See Appendix of http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/BW-Dye.pdf for suppliers.)

2.  Claria light colors plus 3 Noritsu blacks -- For B&W only, the redundancy in the blacks reduces banding, reduces the frequency of refilling, and avoids ink mixing.  QTR is needed for printing.

This keeps the 3 light color inks to smooth the grain of the toned 3-K, as needed.  The 3 blacks, however, takes care of most of the banding issues without the need to use the color inks.

3.  Claria Y and LM, with a dilute K core -- This uses gray inks diluted from Noritsu K.  In addition to very smooth prints, this approach allows the Epson driver to print B&W.  The Epson driver supports a "color managed" workflow with ICCs (QTR's Create ICC-RGB) and is nearly twice as fast as QTR (the rip).  

I've found the dilutions that work best for the grays are 1:1 and 1:3.  Mixing is needed, but it's relatively easy to mix a 1:1 (twice for the 1:3).  I use the cyan channel as the K core, with another 1:3 in the M spot.  To turn on the black, all three channels must go to 100%.  A dark M would probably lead to magenta shadows.  If QTR is uses, this additional gray adds more to the smoothness. 

I'm sure there are other options, but the ones above are what I've tried and know work.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com