Digital BW, The Print

I have some 4oz bottles of EB6 ink that are unopened and have been agitated every few weeks or so.  The use by date is 9/13/2011. Do you think they'll still be OK?

Thanks,

Tom

Eb6 with an expiration date of 9/2011 should be fine. Eboni "settles" but it does not flocculate ("agglomerate") (clump and drop out of suspension) any more than the others as far as I've been able to determine.  The electrostatic repulsion holds, but the spacing between the particles becomes less at the bottom.  This is easily remedied by agitation.

I think the expiration dates are relatively conservative.  One thing I do with older inks like this is to agitate them a day before I want to use them.  Then I avoid pulling ink from the bottom.  There are always, apparently, a few "clunkers" (as Bob Zeiss used to call them) that are too large.  They'll settle quickly.  So by agitating the day before using, you allow the clunkers to settle and stay in the bottle.


By the way, I topped off my daughter's Carbon-6 C88+ CIS yesterday, preparing it for its 4th year of college.  The Eboni had a few gaps that cleared overnight with Windex and a single cleaning cycle.  The dilute C6 positions were fine after the summer sit.  I don't bother to pull the old ink from the system; I just top off the CIS tanks.


Paul
www.PaulRoark.com 



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "thusband2003" <tom.husband@...> wrote:

>
> I have some 4oz bottles of EB6 ink that are unopened and have been agitated every few weeks or so.  The use by date is 9/13/2011. Do you think they'll still be OK?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Tom
>