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A Guide to Colour InkJet Printers

Buying a New InkJet Printer

Printing

Photographic Paper Guide

 
Guide  

Consumables cost a lot of money, and the cost savings of compatible or recycled cartridges equates to a real reduction in your printing costs. But unlike other consumables like CD-Rs or printer paper, inkjet cartridges are exactly and carefully engineered to match the printers for which they are designed. These strict performance and compatibility requirements may make you think twice about saving money on an off-brand cartridge. Therefore, A little research may save you cash because, while manufacturers encourage you to use their own-brand consumables, Compatible cartridges are available for most printers.

TYPES OF INK                           [Back to Top]

Whatever technology is applied to printer hardware, the final product consists of ink on paper, these two elements are vitally important when it comes to producing quality results. Two entirely different types of ink are used in inkjet printers: Dye based and pigmented. Dye based ink have high brilliance and wide colour gamut, but are not light fast or water-fast enough. They are slow at penetrating and take about ten seconds to dry. However, Pigmented inks are more waterproof and fade-resistant and fast-drying which dry at about 100 times this speed. The former is generally better suited to straightforward monochrome printing, while the latter is used for colour. With colour printing, because different inks are mixed, they need to dry as quickly as possible to avoid blurring. If slow-drying ink is used for colour printing, the colours tend to bleed into one another before they’ve dried.

Original Equipment Manufacturer(OEM) INK CARTRIDGES

A brand name inkjet carries the brand name of the manufacturer on it, usually the same as the printer manufacturer, for example, Epson, Canon, Hewlett Packard, etc. Inkraider have worked hard to bring you the latest OEM products at superb prices. 

COMPATIBLE INK CARTRIDGES      [Back to Top]

A company other than the original printer manufacturer manufactures compatible or unbranded inkjet cartridges. There are a large number of such manufacturers and the quality of their product can vary according to the quality of ink they use.  Compatible cartridges are completely new, generally reliable and perform as well as brand name cartridges.  

REMANUFACTURED INK CARTRIDGES [Back to Top]

A remanufactured inkjet cartridge, by definition, is a cartridge, which has been refilled with ink. Primarily you will only find remanufactured Inkjet cartridges for Hewlett Packard, Lexmark and some Canon printers, as they have patented their inkjet cartridge designs. Therefore, Many people choose to refill their own Ink cartridges, as there are refill stations available to do it you.

COST OF INK CARTRIDGES           [Back to Top]

The cost of brand name inkjet cartridges can be exceedingly high in comparison to compatible or remanufactured inkjet cartridges. In many cases, compatible inkjet cartridges can be as much as 70% less than the cost of brand name cartridges making them a good economical option.

It is easy to source cartridges for Epson, Hewlett Packard and Canon printers.  The Epson type has a fixed print head and the Hewlett Packard type has print heads in the cartridges. Canon produces printers of both types and a halfway system with a removable print head unit that takes small cartridges.

The fixed print head printer (Epson) uses cheaper cartridges that are only ink tanks. It has one drawback; if the printer is only used occasionally, the print head can dry out and become blocked. The printer is then likely to be a write-off. It is almost very difficult to clear a blocked print head.

The printer that has print heads in the cartridges (Hewlett Packard, Lexmark, Canon) can also suffer from a blocked print head. If this should happen, only a cartridge is lost. Print head cartridges cost more than the ink tank type but often contain more ink.  

Epson have introduced a series of inkjet printers that use chipped inkjet cartridges. The microchips offer no advantages to the user over the original system that Epson used for its earlier printers to indicate the amount of ink left. Epson introduced the chips to make it difficult if not impossible for the compatible cartridge makers to produce cartridges for the new printers. Nevertheless, the compatible companies have now produced cartridges with compatible chips. These tend to cost slightly more than the unchipped cartridges but are still considerably cheaper than the Epson originals; search for the latest prices on our site.

 

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