Aardenburg Imaging & Archives Light Fade Tests of Conecolor Inks

InkjetMall Customer Support ConeColor Inks & Printing
1

First, let me say that I’m a pleased user of the Cone Piezo Flush set, which has returned all my heads on my 4900 to full operation. So I was considering going to the ConeColor Ink set for the 4900. In doing some research, I came across this site: http://aardenburg-imaging.com/light-fade-test-results/ , which is supposedly a neutral site with reliable fade tests (at least according to one poster on the Luminous Landscape). Their tests (see ID #277-278 in the test results) suggest that when tested on an Epson R3000, the light-fade results were 8.14 to 15 megalux hours when printed on Red River Ultra Pro Satin and Epson Ultrapro Premium Glossy papers versus the Epson Ultrachrome K3 inks (tested on the Stylus Pro Epson printers) had a megalux rating of 43 to 100+ megalux hours depending on the printer and paper used.

While I have not studied this long enough to understand how “megalux hours” into into longevity in fade resistance, the seemingly stark differences cause concern. Can anyone shed light (no pun intended) on these differences in results versus what this site’s results seem to show?

Thanks,
David

2

I have tried to explain megalux on our WIR i*star tests:

ConeColor Pro

InkThrift CL

InkThrift Pro

Above tests are using the Wilhelm WIR i-Star beta. We are excluded from participating in AAR who considers us to be OEM. WIR considers us to be a 3rd party and while excluding us from OEM testing allows 3rd party ink manufacturers to participate in the WIR i-Star beta. One of the main differences between WIR i-Star and AAR i*star is the lighting source for decaying targets. AAR uses fluorescent tubes and we use a similar lighting to what WIR uses in their WIR i-Star which is a Xenon bulb filtered to imitate sunlight coming through a window. Xenon filtered to imitate sunlight through house glass may be more indicative of home performance in which sunlight is a factor rather than interior office performance where only fluorescent tubes are a factor. Otherwise megalux doses are the same in 10ML between the two systems.

3

Thanks Jon, very helpful.

4

This is something else I don’t understand.