Wide Format news 1-2017

Dom Perignon prices for wide-format ink?
Try a third party
Alternatives to expensive original equipment manufacturer inks are an attractive option when ink is more expensive than champagne or
expensive perfume. A Consumer Reports magazine 2013 study shows OEM printer ink as costly as top champagnes and pricey perfumes.
Legitimate suppliers in the wide-format third-party ink
industry successfully frame their inks as an alternative to the
champagne-like OEM prices. Some have succeeded in ink that
retain its colour, can “hot swap” and work in the machines
perfectly. But some small businesses have been burned by ruined
printheads or drifting colours in prints from inferior ink. Vetting a
legitimate supplier is important and easy in this internet age.
Small businesses usually have the option to experiment
with third-party ink for wide-format machines. Aqueous-ink
technology allows the business to easily print high-quality prints
that range from photography to indoor graphics and posters to
banners with low cost, extended colour gamut range and easy
drying and lengthy colour-fastness. OEMs such as Canon, HP Inc
and Epson continue to produce versatile machines using aqueous
inks producing vibrant output on diverse media.
With the advent of water-based latex inks, also available as
third-party ink, the range of wide-format printing has extended to
an almost infinite range of applications - printing on vinyl, wall
coverings, PVC banner and PET film in addition to paper.
Some have made small-business third-party ink the main part
of their business. Tony Martin, President of Ink2Image, based in
Glenview, Illinois, has been involved in the inkjet market for 25
years, and the company’s inks include those for wide-format
printers by Epson, HP Inc, Canon, Noritsu and Fuji. The company
is looking at doing some latex, dye-sublimation and eco-solvent
inks in the future. For now, aqueous fills Ink2Image’s dance card,
and Martin noted that in 2000, the third-party market boomed and
has increased since then.
“There is definitely - particularly with the larger users of
printers - more acceptance of third-party inks than there was,
probably, 10 years ago,” Martin said. Mostly, Ink2Image takes in
empty cartridges from sources from customers and cartridge
brokers, then fills and recycles the cartridge. Most customers are
small businesses, but they supply some chain reprographers in
print production.
Ink Specialist, in the Maastricht area of the Netherlands,
remanufactures wide-format cartridges for all makes, but mainly
water-based cartridges. Ink Specialist also supplies bulk ink for
certain printers.
Robert Grafton, President of the Ink Specialist group of
companies, says: “There has been a greater awareness of thirdparty,
but not as much as we all would like. If you compare it to the
desktop cartridges, we have a very long way to go.”
What do dealers in wide-format think about thirdparty
ink? Advanced Color Signs and Graphics based in Newtown,
Pennsylvania, is a Canon and HP Inc dealer. The company’s Brad
Schwartz says he does not recommend such inks. “I have never
and would never,” he said. However, he has a UV-curable CET
printer the company uses that uses third-party Vanguard ink,
which has “hot swap” capability (does not require flushing the
OEM ink before substituting third-party ink), and a colour gamut
he knows is correct, and he has been using for five or six months
with no problem with the output.
Challenge of the chips
Being a non-OEM in the ink market for these machines is a
challenge, particularly with OEM computer chips, usually on
printheads. Frequently, smartchips in printers won’t recognise
third-party cartridges, giving a warning or refusing to print. But
third-party suppliers of chips are adept at versatility, too, and
have enabled workarounds for third-party ink in wide-format by
sourcing third-party computer chips and reset options.
But for third-party ink manufacturers using the chips,
finding the right chip is sometimes a challenge. Grafton says it has
become hard to compete when the older printers are phased out
and replaced with the newer models. Sometimes the chip number
is different, though the cartridges are the same and the chip boards
are the same. And sometimes Grafton says he can’t determine how
many chips he will need.
“I have also given them ideas about making blank chips have a
small programming device, and we can then programme the chip
according to model, colour,” Grafton said, adding that so far, it has
“fallen on deaf ears”.
For Ink2Image, chips the printer reads is also part of the
challenge of recycling cartridges with third-party ink. “The issue
for us is the same for most recyclers. If you’ve got a great ink, the
biggest issue is that you have to get it into the printers, because the
cartridges and chips are a lot of the business,” Martin said.
“The biggest problem that third-party inks on cartridge
machines have is not being able to recycle cartridges or being able
to recycle original cartridges or being able to use cartridges that
don’t infringe patents or being able to get chips that read on the
printer […] that’s the age-old recycling problem – it doesn’t matter
whether you’re doing ink or laser.”
©2017 The Recycler www.therecycler.com Page 4