Third party inks.
 

Can't help noticing that a set of inks for my HP C5180 is a third of the price on Play.Com (Go-inks) than HP's own brand.

Is there a difference in quality? (fade quality in particular).

Possibly. :)

I've screwed up at least 3 printers with cheap inks, even ones that the local stationery store send away to be refilled, so called ' professionally '

Eventually moved to B & W Laser and occasionally have to buy an expensive replacement cassette, tho' they do seem to last a long time, but haven't saved enough pennies to go the colour Laser route yet.

Edited - why does it do this ... @ .... ???

My HP (antique psc 1355) does not reject 3rd party inks -but they just don't last very long........so altho' HP make ink cost more than expensive champagne, it is worth my while shopping around on the net to find discount "original" HP product.

Laser - pprune has auto-advertising and use of the actual word would attract adverts for products not greatly welcomed by the guys at the front end.

Use of third-party inks might require you to download a small subroutine to turn off the 'counter' which tells you your cartridge(s) is/are empty.

Having said that, HP cartridges are about €16 for black and €18 for multicolour in Spain: third-part cartridges cost very little less and as has been said there's a risk of leakage or clogging associated with 'em. As for "refill your old cartridges yourself", don't even think about it.

I have been using Pro-Jet inks in my Epson R220 for over 5 years. They cost about one-tenth of the price of original Epson cartridges. They last as long, produce almost identical prints and have caused no damage to my printer.
I also buy HP third-party cartridges for a friend with the same results.
A few months ago it was cheaper to buy a brand new Epson printer than it was to buy replacement inks for the same printer (RRP).
If you would like the name of the online retailer I use PM me.

Many thanks, clogging doesn't seem to be a problem on this machiFeb, have faded already (around the reds and yellows):)

Slight thread drift, I know, but third-party toner for my HP ColorLaser don't seem to fade at all. I printed a test sheet - or rather two A5 test sheets on one A4 paper three years ago, stuck one to the front of a filing cabinet and put t'other into an envelope in a drawer. No fade on the exposed one... unless they both faded irrespective of incident light. V happy with supplies which cost a quarter of the OEM stuff.

gingernut,

Difficult to say... personally I wouldn't touch third-party refills with a barge pole because its so much hassle to make double sure the stuff that's inside the cartridges is good.....

In the long term, your best bet is to buy a laser printer..... they are cheaper to run. I don't use inkjets anymore other than for the odd photo print on glossy.

Laser is fused onto the paper, it will take longer to show the effect.... you might also see the effect of paper deterioration too which is nothing to do with the toner.

Laser will probably outlast inkjet and offset in most cases.

Also, unless you are being scientific in your storage, and are certain you've got constant temperature, humidity and other storage variables in your house 24x7 (very, very unlikely) it's like trying to compare chalk and cheese.

There are other things to worry about with third party cheapo laser refills than fading.

Yup to all of that. However, Which? are just now doing an investigation on the economics of seldom-used inkjets. They make the valid point that "Manufacturers state how many pages can be printed assuming that printing is almost continuous. [This] doesn't factor-in ink used to clean the print head after your printer has been left unused" They talk about a factor of up to six times more ink used if we use our inkjet as Mixture (and I) use it. Arguably this doesn't matter since I print so few items on the inkjet, but there it is.

I've been thinking of asking Santa for a dye-sub photo printer..... but I don't think I do sufficient photo printing to justify the expense.... :cool:

The Strife insists on buying 3rd party inks - in HK the woman who collects the used cartridges, pays for them & delivers your 'new' cartridges. I think they cause a load of grief, not being recognised by the printer sometimes &c - but the Missus wants to keep using them as mostly they work OK.

I don't understand this, don't have a printer now for environmental reasons, and thinking back a decade or two it was always cheaper to buy a complete new printer.

I gave up using Epson printers here in Spain as the ink would dry out very quickly in summer and I was using more ink to clean the heads than to print. I've now had an HP printer sitting on the desk for two years and not had to clean the heads once or had any problem with inks drying/clogging.

Incidently before dumping the Epson I wrote to them about the problem: I wish I'd kept their answer as it was a classic bullsh*t who-cares-about-customers letter.

That's odd. I got five printers from Epson after 18 months of trying to get the old one right. I got a spare during all this hassle, (which they didn't want back.) and thought I'd come out ahead. But no, it was @$^@$

What was annoying, when I went from the 5k series to the 6k series, I thought I was on a winner, but the darn ink capacities had been reduced to an insult.

I sent off for a clone, but trying to fool the level chip thingie was a real hassle. One old boy sent me a cartridge which was troublesome, and he told me to shake it. I did, and ruined the carpet in my den. He just said, send it back for a refund.


Dumped a mass of printers a few weeks back, three big names, but none of them worked.


You have to pay Santa??!!



Edit to add a 'joke'. no need to tell everyone I've edited my post.




Sigh . . .:uhoh:

Surely laser is a process not necessarily a brand name ?

Not really important.

The first company to supply ink jet printers was H.P. Their ink jet mechanism didn't last too long so they combined the ink jet mechaniism with the ink reservoir so as soon as the ink ran out the new ink cartridge renewed the ink jets as well. Naturally, this meant that ink refills were expensive for H.P. printers. Once the general public had got used to paying an arm and a leg to HP for their replacement ink, other manufacturers who then entered the market with ink jet systems which did last the life of the printer jumped on the bandwaggon by charging an arm and a leg for their replacement ink cartridges. Due to the pressures of competition, the price of such printers felll from about £300 to about £50. As ink jet ink is fairly cheap, the manufacturers had to force their customers to only buy their own ink hence the built in chips and other mechanisms to attempt to prevent the use of third party inks.
To me this stinks and I have always used third party inks. At the moment I am using a Canon photo printer. It has never had "genuine" ink in it and I get superb prints using third party (chineese) refillable cartridges with third party inks manufactured to B.S. standards. Each cartridge costs about 50p to refill. Before that I used an ancient Epson and the third party ink cartridges again never let me down. For some time my wife used an H.P. The black cartridge could be refilled and continued to work happily as I never let it get empty which is what makes the jets burn out, but the colour cartridge, for some reason, never refilled satisfactorily. I did learn then however that using third party H.P. refiled cartridges doesn't work as there is invariably a fault with one or more of the ink jets.
It is important to remember with any ink jet that if it is not used for a period, the jets will dry out and need cleaning. My old Epson was quite bad in this respct, my Canon much less so but if this gets really bad the printer may well be scrap.
My wife now uses an A3 Brother. 3rd party cartridges are sensibly priced and there are no chips or other systems to prevent the use of third party cartridges.

P.P.