Epson Eco-Tank carbon v. Eboni-6
2015-10-05 by roark.paul@...
Epson has a line of printers that has just started to be sold in the U.S. market. (Europe and Asia have had the approach previously.) These "Eco Tank" printers have, in effect, a CIS external bulk storage unit built onto the side of them.
Epson sells bulk ink for these printers. Most of the inks are cheap dyes that no serious printer would want to use.
However, one of the inks is a carbon ink. The ET-4550 uses dyes for the colors but a carbon ink for the K. It's an MK (rubs off glossy), and has a good dmax.
One would think that, being made for a setup that will have the ink sitting there for a long time without agitation, Epson would do its best to be sure it would not settle -- thus my interest.
Would this very competitively priced carbon ink be a good input for a carbon inkset?
So, I bought a bottle and have put it through some tests. First, I note that it is just a bit warmer than Eboni v.1.1. (from STS Inks).
Before doing a centrifuge test, I let the mixed Eco Tank dilution (6% MK, 94% generic base c6b) sit for 10 days. This ought to be enough to allow any reactions take place if they are going to. Looking for settlement at the bottom of the bottle, there was none. The difference from top to bottom of the Eco Tank 6% mix was just slightly more than that for Eboni 6% (94% generic base).
The centrifuge test is more likely, I believe, to see which ink is likely to settle the fastest. (All carbon pigments settle.) I'm happy to report Eboni v.1.1 held its own against the Epson Eco Tank carbon MK. The differences from the top of the test tube to the bottom (where more of a difference indicates more settlement) were, with multiple reads at different points of the draw-down: Eco Tank MK (#774) (6%) = 3.25; Eboni MK (6%) = 1.23.
Eboni v. 1.1 wins.
Paul
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