JetTec inks

[toyosnapper]

Have any of our UK readers any experience with JetTec inks? I have just discovered that my Epson R800 now requires feeding at a cost of £16+ per colour - in excess of £1600 per litre (@10ml per cartridge) for ink! This seems a bit excessive to me & JetTec is very much cheaper, if it is OK. Thanks.

[Joanna Carter]

See my reply in the UKLFPG forums

[Willie]

Why get a high quality printer with inks that are supposed to be "archival" and then go aftermarket with anything but similar high quality specialty inks?

John Cone and one or two others may be of similar quality to Epson factory inks. Most of the aftermarket inks are nowhere near the quality.

[Tom Monego]

Yes ink is expensive, but current Epson inks are reasonably archival (100 years or so) and you have profiles to print with, almost assuring good results. Third party inks are for the most part untested, are they pigmented inks, you can't be sure. You need some way to get profiles made, or you will waste the money you saved with the inks on paper.
Been there When I was printing with an Epson 9000 and the sketchy inks Epson had with that printer, I found a high quality 3rd party inks and used those until I sold the printer, to a guy who wanted to use Cone inks. Initially I was spending a fortune on paper, finally learned about profiles and started to make my own, finally got good at it, then it was every print shop was buying a wide format printer and in my area printing on bond paper and charging nothing, so I got out of the business.

[Jim Jones]

I've been using an Epson P800 for 17 months and 1000 prints, and have found the cost of 11 replacement 80ml Epson ink cartridges for this model to average under $0.60 US per photographic print. Most prints were A4 with perhaps a hundred being A3 and A2 with somewhat wide margins. This cost includes the free initial cartridges, and should creep up when averaged over the next few years. This might be considerably more economical than the much smaller R800 cartridges. It seems to be a modest price to pay for the known performance and durability of Epson ink.