Digital BW, The Print

I'm not here to defend MIS or sell its products, nor am I here to take shots
at any company.  I have no monetary relationships with any. 

Neither MIS nor any other company has perfect products or support.
Clogging, cartridge quality, and customer support seem to be the main themes
in this thread, and each involves slightly different issues.

With respect to clogging, from what I can tell all inkjets can clog.
Pigments are said to clog more than dyes, but my old HP dye printers sure
did clog.

The information I've been able to get indicates that most of the pigment
particles themselves from the various competitors are close to the same
size, and all are so small that the particle sizes are rather irrelevant.
They are way smaller than the nozzles.  The problem is agglomerations of
pigment particles, and that is probably unrelated to the minor differences
in particle sizes among the competing inksets we use.  The base and how well
it disperses the particles is much more important.

(There are a number of factors to clogging that have nothing to due with the
inks, like capping station adjustment, but I'll ignore these here.) 

The chemistry of the base is the main variable in the inks that seems to
affect how prone they are to clogging.  In that respect, all of the
companies appear to have improved their products over the years I've been
involved.  I just do not consider clogging a serious issue with today's
pigments and printers, whether they are Epson, MIS or Piezo inks.

How much an ink may be prone to clogging involves a combination of factors
including the binder used, as well as the solvents and other agents in the
base.  If, for example, a base had no binder, it would probably not clog
very much if at all.  Of course, the pigments would also fall off the paper.
In that respect, I use the MIS "UC" base, diluted 50% with distilled water,
as a cleaning and storage fluid.  It has no binder because the Epson UC pigs
rely on their coatings to stick them to the paper.  Of course, these
coatings can also cause the particles to stick together and stick to the
nozzles.  But I'd guess that the less binder, the less the likelihood of
clogging, all else being equal.

Glossy paper compatibility requires a different binder -- and probably more
-- than matte paper.  I suspect one can make a matte paper only pigment that
clogs less than one that must be able to stick on glossy paper.

Epson's MK pigments have no coating and must, therefore, have a binder in
the base just like MIS Eboni.  On the other hand, both are compatible with
matte paper only.  I'd guess they both clog about equally, but I've never
run any objective tests on that.  I've never had significant problems with
either.

In general, MIS is a reseller of Image Specialists inks, and that company is
a major supplier to many third party companies and industrial users.  That
and the even larger companies above it are where the sophisticated chemistry
is done.


The cartridge issue is mostly a question of what quality MIS can buy.  For
example, the spongeless carts are wonderful when they seal, but a
significant number appear to have problems with their exit port poppet
valves.  A significant part of what MIS does is search for the best carts at
the best prices.  In general they've done a good job, but they -- and we --
are dealing with a quality issue that is not totally within MIS's control.
From what I can tell, they receive a test batch and then have to buy in
quantity to get good prices.  The shipments of production carts do not
always match the quality of those in the initial test shipment.  Not
surprisingly, much of this seems to come from China.  So, the bottom line
seems to be that about 1/3 of my spongeless carts will leak when I pull the
stopper to refill them.  I may just throw the leaky ones away and use
another, new spongeless cart.  Even if it takes 2 carts to find one that is
perfect, the price is still a fraction of what the alternatives are.


I hear a mixed bag in terms of customer support.  The truth is that this
list has more experience with most of the problems than the people at MIS.
MIS is a handful of employees in a small company, and they spend most of
their time searching for products to meet consumer demand, filling orders,
and doing all the other things that need to be done to run a small business.
MIS is not a group of B&W photographers and printer experts.  Frankly, the
appeal of this company from my perspective is based on this.  They simply
provide what the market wants.  That is their business model.  They do not
push any agenda; they simply react to the market.  As such, they have been
an excellent source of very competitively priced inks and accessories.  And,
while I was not active at the very beginning, I believe that MIS was
actually the first commercial supplier of inks to B&W experimenters on the
forums that preceded this Yahoo list.

Regardless of all the above, I'm very aware that our materials are not
perfect by any means.  As I go forward, the workflows I develop and use
reflect not only what I think make the best prints (from my perspective),
but also which workflows are the easiest, including avoiding the problems
that have surfaced regarding our materials, printers and drivers.  Like
most, I want the best for the least -- time and money.  Right now, for what
I do, MIS supplies what I need to accomplish this, particularly with their
Eboni MK.

My main concern is not the minor problems that are reported here with
respect to MIS, but whether Epson will be able to succeed in its effort to
choke off all third party competition.  MIS provides some outstanding inks
at prices that, if one refills carts, are about 1/10th the OEM prices, based
on equal quantities.  This drops to even less if one uses the denser inks
more.  With the 100% Eboni approach, the ink costs simple become trivial.
So, I'm definitely willing to put up with an occasional leaky cart for these
price difference, particularly when the third party products give me B&W
prints that are, from my perspective, better than any Epson inkset can
accomplish.

So, what's with MIS?  I think they are just a small company doing the best
they can at their price point and under the circumstances that include the
huge dominant players trying to cut off all cart supplies.  

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com