Digital BW, The Print

Ben, this is why manufacturers of the highest quality third party inks 
go to great lengths to match the manufacturer's ink viscosities. If 
that's done, then no further calibration or head angles and such is 
needed beyond the normal tasks of setting up to print with 
manufacturer's inks like establishing ink restrictions, linearization, 
ink limits and profiling.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "benjschneider2"

Maybe not a conspiracy.  I read on some forum recently, I read so many, 
that all inks are not created equally, and do not work as well as OEM 
inks in Epson printers.  It has to do with how the inks come out of the 
nozzles and deflections in the spray pattern.  The person who wrote the 
posting said it had to do with testing the heads during the 
manufacturing process, and assigning codes to them, and applying that 
code to the firmware that runs the printer.  This code makes the printer 
work properly with that head, with the OEM inks only which have a known 
quality.  If the consistency of the ink is changed, the head can have 
deflections which can cause banding.

This posting may have been on the Epson WF group.

The posting went on to say that the nozzle check with 3rd. party inks 
will print fine, yet banding will show up in prints.  Also stated that 
no amount of head cleanings will clear this banding.

I found it to be true with my Epson 9500.  Prints great with OEM inks, 
but when I tried the MIS ink, I had micro-banding, and strange patterns 
in the dark smooth toned areas of my prints.  Go back to the OEM and 
everything is fine again.  NUTZ!  I wish it weren't so, but it sure 
seems to be.

As a last note, this posting went on to say that this was the reason
Epson wants to keep control of their printer head sales.  They did not 
want to release the information on how to correct for this code on their 
printers and give other manufactures their secrets.