Digital BW, The Print

Hi Folks,

After many attempts I've finally accepted the fact that my 2 year old R2000 printer is clogged and nothing I have done has made a bit of difference to the clogs in the Cyan and Red heads. I've looked into replacing the head but the cost of that is $300 - $500 which is a bit too much to swallow right now.

The Yellow, Magenta, Matte Black, Orange, GO and Photo Black heads are still working so the question to the group is: what B&W ink set would work in this printer? I have a 1400 with the B&W dye inks and use QTR so driving the printer shouldn't be an issue.

I'd like to use a pigment type ink for longevity and if I need to sick with matte papers then I will but is there any way to get both matte and glossy?

Thanks,

Richard Cooke
Highlands Ranch, CO USA

I will comment on Piezography - I assume Paul will comment on Eb6.

In a standard R2000 you would run K7, so shades 1-7 and Gloss optimiser in the eighth channel. This required swapping the shade 1 for matte and gloss whenever you switched papers - effectively just like the MK/PK swap in many Epson printers. My solution to this was to use Warm Neutral shade 1, as it performed well on matte as well as gloss, i.e. a universal shade 1. This came to an end earlier this year, when WN1 was reformulated and no longer worked as well on matte. Recently it has been reformulated again, and it is claimed that it does now work well on matte, although I've seen no proof.

If you wanted to run separate shades 1 for matte and gloss without having to do the MK/PK swap, the solution is to run what is known as Piezogaphy 2. This has shades 1-6 in the usual slots, the gloss shade 1 in the Yellow slot in place of shade 7, and GO. So in effect it is just K6 with both shades 1 installed simultaneously. The bad news is that it isn't officially supported on the R2000. The good news is that it works anyway, if you edit and reorder the P2 .quad files. For more discussion of this see: http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?1983-P2-and-the-R1900-R2000&p=8804&viewfull=1

So .... in your case you can run K6 for matte papers since you have six working channels. To be able to do so you'd need to edit the P2 quad files so that it's using the correct channels for the correct shades. You can use the spreadsheet posted in that IJM thread to do this, although you'd need to edit it for your particular case, so that cyan and red are mapped to yellow and GO.

I don't see how you can print Piezography gloss. You need seven working channels - for shades 1-6 plus GO. I don't recommend printing on gloss without GO.

Thanks Paul,

Since my R2000 has 2 (possibly 3) misbehaving heads I won't be able to use the full 6K-Plus setup. I can use the matte, PK, LK and LLK of the K4 inks. What tone would they give? I like a warmer tone so I don't necessarily need a pure neutral tone.

Thanks,

Richard Cooke
Highlands Ranch, CO USA

Hi,

For several years I've been using a 3MK setup with my Epson 1410 printer, courtesy of Paul.

With this setup, only one ink (Ebony) is used in three cartridges. This has saved my printer as I have two heads hopelessly clogged up. The beauty of this setup is that I can use any three carts I wish and put cleaning fluid in the other carts.

Don't know if Paul has made 3MK available for your R2000 printer or if he has continued with developping this printing solution.

Paul,

As you know I had excellent results with my long-in-the-tooth R1800 and the 3MK approach, but it was clogging pretty badly toward the end and I sent it on its way. Now I have a 1400 and a 1430 and the 1400 is set up with the Eb6 inkset. (The 1430 is still on its original color carts.) If memory serves, I was getting richer blacks with that 3MK setup. My first run with the 1400-Eb6 combination was quite good but my second batch of ink, which I just mixed up, has however rather anemic blacks. Hard to match the intensity of three carts, all using 100% Eboni! I mix my own inks, and I think I lost control of the plunger and added a ml (at very most) of base fluid in two of the carts. But that should clear up in the linearization final step, shouldn't it? Maybe my pint of Eboni 1.0 is aging, not much left. Perhaps I should pitch it. I do have a fresh pint of Eboni 1.1, which has yet to be tapped.

I perhaps could've gotten more life with the 1800 if I'd set it up to use the no-clogged positions - but ah well. The 1400-Eb6 is a real miser for inks though, I do appreciate that.

Good luck with your continuing research. Sounds like you're making some real progress toward a more neutral black and gloss options.

Paul W.