Questions about Pro inks for Digital Negs

InkjetMall Customer Support Piezography Inks & Printing
1

Hi there,
We are about to order some Pro inks for our 9900. The use will be mostly digital negatives and some eventual prints on paper. We have a few questions:

  1. Are Pro inks less prone to clogging than K7 inks? By a big margin? As you know well, the 9900 is quite sensible to problems related to clogging, and a good advantage in this regard will be very useful.
  2. Are Pro inks less prone to pigment settling than K7 inks, or just the same?
  3. Do Pro inks (11 set) provide better results when it comes to Digital Negatives than K7-Selenium?
  4. Are Pro inks as equally consistent in terms of UV density (throughout batches) as K7 Selenium?
  5. Are Pro inks 11 set + 9900 printer the state of the art in terms of digital neg printing?
  6. When will Master curves for PiezoDN be provided for Pro inks?

Thanks!
Rafael

2

Man!!! I thought I replied to this. Maybe I didn’t hit send!!! This was still sitting in my drafts:

All Piezo inks are very non-clog. I would say pro inks are slightly less cloggy just because we’ve updated some of the chemistry, but I really can’t tell. We go months and months without a single nozzle out on all our PIezo printers and Cone Editions Press. It’s hard to remember to do nozzle checks.

Yes! New pigment, smaller particle, glossier, less settle.

With the piezo driver on the 9900? Yes, I would say so. Not so only older model printers per-se but on the 9900, this is our dig neg production inkset at Cone Editions. You have to use the beta driver though: Piezography Driver | Piezography

Yep. Designed right in from the get-go.

Yes for large format.

See above about the driver.

best,
Walker

3

Hi Walker!
Thanks for the answers! No, I did not get any answers before, but I do not blame you, I still wonder how you do to answer all the questions we make you mate :slight_smile:

It seems the Pro inks with the new driver are the better option for my Epson 9900.

I would need to ask you something else. At this point of time, I have my darkroom not operative since I am out of here most of the time. I decided to put my 9900 with piezoflush and let it there. From late June I will start an intense darkroom season, when I intend to calibrate and print quite a lot. Meanwhile, I will have to order a new set of inks: either the old K7 selenium (that I already used, but that went stale due to pigment settling) or the new Pro inks. Based on your suggestions, I am inclined to buy the new Pro inks with 11 inks.

Once I start printing this summer I will need to be quite operative. So my questions are:

  • Do you foresee the new driver will be fully operative, manual-supported and user friendly for the end of June - July?
  • Can Pro inks be used with the old driver with equal results?
  • Do you have already Master curves for Pt-Pd printing with Pro inks?
  • Can these Master curves for Pro inks + Pt-Pd printing be used for both the old driver and the new one?

You say you guys are using Pro inks and the new driver for Pt-Pd printing, so maybe you are able to share curves or settings to use as starting point in the calibration process?

As you see, all my questions are related to how to prepare (aka: which inks to buy - what to study) so that I can have everything ready for production at the end of June and for the whole summer. Therefore, once I buy a certain set of inks, I will be settle down with that for quite a bit.

If anything, my interest is in having the best system for digital negs for the 9900, while minimizing problems of clogging, pigment settling and having the option of making piezography prints on paper with different tonings. Based on your answers, Pro Inks is the way to go, and that would make sense to me since at this point I need to buy a whole new set of inks… I would only like to know whether as a user I can expect to take all the advantage of these inks as soon as this summer? (drivers, master curves, documentation, etc).

Cheers!
Rafael