What is Best Value Solvent Ink?

[John McNickle]

gravesy

Ive just tried ITL inks and they arent brilliant but they are far from bad my machine runs Citrosol so its full mild solvent, a few flushes with colourific and a few with ITL cleaner then away it goes

ITL carts are £29.99 for 220ml which aint that bad, nearly half price

smart-inkjet.co.uk

John

[Robert Lambie]

i would say your probably already buying them. just as long as they ARE genuine colorific activasol, not b&p activasol. trust me, there is a difference!
ive been using colorific for the past two and a half years… never had a single problem. no profiling, no head cloggs, zilch.

im not naming names here, but if your using any b&p ink distributors, and still being told your buying colorific inks. your being told porkies… i have had the same calls…

[David Rowland]

value means "not the cheapest"

Cant comment on Uniform but the colorific tests have been ‘good’.

[Robert Lambie]

i have yet to hear a bad report on colorific on UKSB, so regardless to my own oppinion, this says allot for the brand.
as you said Dave, Value doesnt mean cheapest. from what i have read posted on the boards, there are some cut-throat prices going around on Ink brands that seem to be popping up all over the place, that and allot of false promises.
i seldom sing the praises of anything i haven’t already tried or don’t use on a daily basis. but as i said, i have been using colorific for over two years now. that’s a fair time longer than most here will have ever even heard of the brand. I use their BIO-ink (biodegradable) in our Grenadier (Roland Soljet) and i use their Pro-AJ in our Roland AJ740.

now coupled with the FREE service from ColorGreen, you dont even have to worry about safe or costly disposal of your spent cartridges.

for me this is a win win situation… reputable ink with a competitive price tag, then throw in the options of BIO-ink & a free recycling service and your company is at least seen to be moving with the times. i know fine the whole c0ck+bull of recycling our waste, and agree to an extent… but ide rather be one of the first on the band wagon than to miss it at all…

[John Thomson]

I have a Mimaki JV3……..started with original ink carts at approx £205 +vat a litre ( based on 44oml carts)
Switched to Colorific carts at £110 +vat a litre (based on 440ml carts)

Now switched to Jetbest bulk ink at £55.00 a litre with enviro freindly re fillable carts…..saves money and good for the envinonment 🙂

john

[Bill McMurtry]

I use Jetbest full solvent. Never had a problem with it after 2 years in my JV3. I think it’s excellent value at $25 USD per litre plus delivery.

[Mark Nihotte]

WE have been successfully using Jet Best eco sol for two years – have profiles from JB USA and they have enabled many of the features in Versa Works (such as auto half toning) that are disabled in most other profiles. At USD35 per litre we have saved 15-20K each year…that’s a new machine every two years

[Phillip Jhonson]

its interesting to hear what people have to say about third party ink as in the past there has always been a negative view on the subject. what would people recommend for a Roland sp300 running on eco sol max ink’s?? are there any reasonably priced inks out there??

[John Singh]

quote Phillip Jhonson:

its interesting to hear what people have to say about third party ink as in the past there has always been a negative view on the subject. what would people recommend for a Roland sp300 running on eco sol max ink’s?? are there any reasonably priced inks out there??

Seem to echo your thoughts too
Third party ink discussions seemed to be on the negative side at one time
But now comments are more favourable: Is that because third party have improved in quality?

[David Rowland]

well there is a spanner in the works at the moment, my light colours are not printing very well, its as if the ink and media and strugglin… however we stopped using Avery on now using a new brand of imageperfect vinyl, its likely to be that or i dont have it profilled very well with the colorifics.

[Robert Lambie]

or your heads not firing properly… 😉 :lol1:

Dave We currently run the following vinyls…

Oracal Digital
Oracal Digital Reflective
Oracal Vehicle Wrap
Oracal 551 & 751 "cut vinyl"

3M Digital 3 + 5 year life
3M IJ380 digital vehicle wrap

Metamark MD5
Metamark MD7

Yaun Yaun digital/solvent banner
Serical fujifilm digital/solvent banner
Robert Horne digital/solvent banner
Selectech digital/solvent banner

(sory, im giving suppliers of the banner as i dont know each banner brand.

Hydrosol gloss roll-up stand media
Gloss & Matt Papers, Flag material… the list goes on…

none of the above were profiled, everyone with the acception of the "cut vinyl" films worked perfectly well. the cut vinyl film still printed well and the customer delighted. i just mean that "too me" the solid black we laid down could have been a little denser. but hey… we were printing hundreds of A4 stickers in black directly onto yellow and orange cut vinyl, not a digital media. the custoer comes back time and time again for the same order as and when needed.

both our machines were "not" profiled…
we run the same profiles that came with our grenadier running TROOP, 5 years ago.
we run the same profiles that came with our Roland AJ740 running versaworks.

Most of the Colorific Inks are simply plug & play… change from one ink supplier to theirs without the need of a flush.
Our BIO-ink was a quick switch to flush carts, then in with the new Bio-ink. this was because we were not buying a matched ink, but actually choose to switch to a new eco-biodegradable ink, or we would have simply bought Colorific Activasol which IS a plug and play. (hope i made sense there) 😀

.

[David Rowland]

I am so used to Avery 2000, we moved over to Imageperfect, i can see some problems however the Avery price shot right up. I think its the material, but then again I dont have any Avery handy to compare.

[Phillip Jhonson]

it would be nice to get feedback on inks suck as inktec, granthams and other third parties to see what people have experienced with these. would have to look out for other third parties at the show 🙂

[Phillip Jhonson]

also are there any views on bulk ink systems??

[David Rowland]

my suppliers view on bulk ink is the reliability of the flow to the print heads, if you are starting up then use cart route until your happy to take the next step.
I might be going the refillable cart route as soon as its available from my supplier (colorific)

[Bill McMurtry]

I use a bulk ink system on my JV3. I think bulk ink systems are much more convenient and flexible for large format printers compared to using cartridges. Convenient because you have visual control over reservoir ink levels at all times (cart levels are often a guess and they can’t be topped up/switched during printing), flexible because you’re free to use any ink combo you choose. IMO, OEM’s try their hardest to not give you the choice because selling their ink is their business 😉