Any reason to buy non Epson inks?

[wonderings]

Had a sales guy in today and he gave us some pricing on ink for our Epson 9900. Now I have never used non Epson inks. Is there any reason to avoid on Epson branded ink? This is for our Epson 9900.

 

[benstarr]

There are plenty of reasons not to use non Epson inks. Epson will give you a hard time with support if you ever have an issue. They are not going to match your Epson inks so you'll have to re-profile. Third party inks likely do not go the the same level of QC as Epson so they may be more variable.

There are a few specific cases where I'd recommend a third party ink, it doesn't sound like you have one of those cases. I would not do it based on price unless this is a printer just used for imposition work (not color critical), it's out of warranty and you are prepared for the possible consequences of using it.

 

[Puch]

Mainland China is running on locally produced cheap ink alternatives for more than 10 years. I've seen printing Epson 4000, 4800, 4900, 7900 and 9900 with 3rd party inks without any problems. Also, it's much better for the environment as you refill the cartridges, instead of replacing them.

As benstarr wrote, it's not good for critical color work (like contract proofing) but for general applications it's pretty enough.

 

[SoggyWinter]

Your heads may not last very long with 3rd party ink, which was my experience using Sawgrass sublimation ink in X890 printers. Those printers and the x900s are notorious for defective heads though according to my dealer tech support. Compass Micro can help you with service manuals and replacement parts including heads.

 

[Magnus59]

We wrecked the heads on our Epson 9800's using third party inks, always used genuine Epson since then

 

[kdw75]

We used non-Heidelberg inks on one of our presses. It screwed it up so badly that we had to scrap it and buy a new one. Not worth it.

We use Epson ink on our 9900s, but we had some smaller 12x18 Epsons that we used to run non-Epson ink in and refilled the cartridges. They did have more clogs and required more cleanings, but the print heads seemed to be ok. We ran the snot out of them.

 

[Magnus59]

We used non-Heidelberg inks on one of our presses. It screwed it up so badly that we had to scrap it and buy a new one. Not worth it.

Ink on offset presses and ink being delivered by a piezoelectric imaging head are two very different situations, you can't damage a press by using inferior ink, though you may end up with an expensive reprint