Well, I am now the new owner of a R800. I actually have a HP Photosmart 7960 printer but was intrigued enough by CIS to purchase a R800. I have been doing some research on CIS and don't really know what to do as far as which system to purchase. I have seen numerous systems on Ebay and other places. The more systems I see, the more confused I get. I am willing to spend more money on a better system if it truly is a better system. I have some questions:

1) Is the spongless system truly better as most manufacturer's suggest?
2) Would I be better-off buying a system that is spongeless and using MIS ink?
3) Is it dangerous buying the cheaper sytems from Ebay, will the quality of the ink and the hardware be of lesser quality than the more expensive InkRepublic or MIS products?

Below are links to some CIS for the R800 that I have found:

http://www.inkrepublic.com/ProductDetail.asp?item=R800

http://www.echostore.com/continuous-ink-system-r800.html

http://mslusa.site.yahoo.net/ep8cacoinksy.html

http://www.inksupply.com/cfs_r800_new.cfm
MIS System, sponge design, is this less desirable?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Bulk-Continuous-Pigment-Ink-System-for-Epson-R800-R1800...
This system looks very nice to me but who knows...

http://cgi.ebay.com/R800-R1800-8-color-pigment-bulk-ink-system

Any help, information or opinions would be greatly appreciated...

Thank you,

Roger Alexander

ralexander9646 wrote:

Well, I am now the new owner of a R800. I actually have a HP Photosmart 7960 printer but was intrigued enough by CIS to purchase a R800. I have been doing some research on CIS and don't really know what to do as far as which system to purchase. I have seen numerous systems on Ebay and other places. The more systems I see, the more confused I get. I am willing to spend more money on a better system if it truly is a better system.

Re: the whole confusion thing, I understand totally where you're coming from there and frankly I'm the same when it comes to cars.. My eyes sort of glaze over and I get cold sweats trying to figure out all the turbo injection, ABS, air bags, in car masseur, etc... are important or not

Quote:

1) Is the spongless system truly better as most manufacturer's suggest?

There's 2 things to be aware of here..
a) Sponges will eventually dry out and they also can clog with algae over time which means that your average CIS system that has sponge probably has a shelf life of around 18 months to 2 years.
b) Epson are currently going after everyone and anyone who produces aftermarket cartridges and a large part of their case is that they hold a patent for something someone in the industry put in the terms "Sponge in a box".. Granted Epson are also protecting their income but it's making people nervous and a lot of places are touting spongeless to avoid the bad press. In a lot of cases it's just a buzz word.

Quote:

2) Would I be better-off buying a system that is spongeless and using MIS ink?

I'll tackle this in two parts but in reverse...
a) The quality of your ink is much more important than your actual CIS choice... So I'd recommend MIS (They sell Image Specialists ink) for starters but I do know that folks often recommend other brands such as formulabs, so I'd cast around for good brand names.
b) Personally, I would recommend the MIS kit over the kit from Ink Republic.. To put it another way, I'm actually ripping out all my I.R. kits and replacing them with MIS parts because the IR kits just haven't been reliable enough for me. MIS are slowly replacing their kits with the spongeless designs though and I suspect if you were to request and require a spongeless cart instead of their older stock (part sponged) items they may well put together a kit specifically for that need. I'd recommend talking to them direct.

Quote:

3) Is it dangerous buying the cheaper sytems from Ebay, will the quality of the ink and the hardware be of lesser quality than the more expensive InkRepublic or MIS products?

It's hard to say, I've heard a lot of people complain about the lack of support from eBay only units and the one thing you hear a lot is that of problems with the reservoirs failing. Your mileage may vary so it's a question of whether you want to cast around to check support levels, reliability for eBay sellers and whether that's even possible.

Quote:

Below are links to some CIS for the R800 that I have found:

http://www.inkrepublic.com/ProductDetail.asp?item=R800

See above.. They aren't my favourite kit and I've found out recently that their technology isn't as "new" as they've made out.. It's apparently a few years old now and from personal experience (on D88, C86, C84, R200, R300 printers) I've had various problems with the ink feeding (MIS ink) has been a problem on certain colours (usually magenta and Cyan) thus requiring quite a bit of head cleaning. Hence the reason I've returned to using my spare part sponged kits I've had in storage.

Quote:

http://www.echostore.com/continuous-ink-system-r800.html

http://mslusa.site.yahoo.net/ep8cacoinksy.html

http://cgi.ebay.com/Bulk-Continuous-Pigment-Ink-System-for-Epson-R800-R1800...
This system looks very nice to me but who knows...

http://cgi.ebay.com/R800-R1800-8-color-pigment-bulk-ink-system

These are all more or less clone kits produced in China (or so I've been led to believe) and as such the important bit is going to be finding out just how much knowledge the vendors have and linked to that, just how much support they're likely to give you. My recommendation would be to request a copy of the installation documentation and see how comprehensive it is.

From what I've "heard" JWL tend to be one of the better ebay seller though.

Quote:

http://www.inksupply.com/cfs_r800_new.cfm
MIS System, sponge design, is this less desirable?

Personally I'd try and see how soon before they go with the new spongeless design but in all honesty I think a 2 year life span is pretty good and by then the technology may well have changed significantly anyway... From what I hear it could well do that.

Quote:

Any help, information or opinions would be greatly appreciated...

No problem... Just to note, just because I own and run this site you should take my opinions as just that.. opinions. They aren't gospel, nor do I have concrete experience of some of the systems you've linked to... That's mainly because I have limited funds and not many printers to try things out on. So I'd still cast around for more input from other R800 and CIS owners to see what you get..

Hope that gets you started anyways... All the best..


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Printers: (Canon) MP500/830, MX700, iP4000/4200/4300/4500/5200, iX4000(A3) (Epson) C84/86, D88, CX6600, R285/800/1900 (HP) K550, K850, K5400, L7680

Hello Martin,
Thank you for the information. I think I'll go with the MIS but I'm going to call them to see if I can get a spongeless system. Your site is the best source of information that I could find. I know that it has taken many hours of your time and I appreciate it.

Thank you again,

Roger

ralexander9646 wrote:

Thank you for the information. I think I'll go with the MIS but I'm going to call them to see if I can get a spongeless system. Your site is the best source of information that I could find.

So's you know... MIS have their own forum which is run by a guy called "Marine" and he's a pretty good source of information (but not support as that's discouraged on the forum) so if you have general queries about MIS kit he's a good person to get input from.

Quote:

I know that it has taken many hours of your time and I appreciate it.

In truth I'm still something of a babe in the wood but the lack of a dedicated forum to CIS systems prompted this forum so it's good to hear it's of use..

Best of luck with it all



_________________
Printers: (Canon) MP500/830, MX700, iP4000/4200/4300/4500/5200, iX4000(A3) (Epson) C84/86, D88, CX6600, R285/800/1900 (HP) K550, K850, K5400, L7680

Well, I've made my CIS hardware purchase. I went with the CIS from Ebay seller "Print-On-A-Dime". It looks like a good kit. Their documentation was very good with a good instruction manual and videos and they replied to all questions that I asked. Here is a link to their kit:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6863545556&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&rd=1

I think I will use MIS Ultrachrome ink. It's $150 shipped for 8, 4oz. bottles. I've shopped around for bulk pigment ink and haven't found any real deals that were much cheaper than MIS. If anyone has an ink source that they would like to share, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,

Roger

ralexander9646 wrote:

Well, I've made my CIS hardware purchase. I went with the CIS from Ebay seller "Print-On-A-Dime". It looks like a good kit. Their documentation was very good with a good instruction manual and videos and they replied to all questions that I asked. Here is a link to their kit:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6863545556&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&rd=1

It'd be really useful if you could review the kit when you get it and let us know of any good/bad points you come across in the process. There's a few examples of formats and things to look out for in the Review forum.

Quote:

I think I will use MIS Ultrachrome ink. It's $150 shipped for 8, 4oz. bottles. I've shopped around for bulk pigment ink and haven't found any real deals that were much cheaper than MIS. If anyone has an ink source that they would like to share, I would appreciate it.

Given that you're based in the USA I can't really suggest many others as my own supplier is now the European distributor for Image Specialists (the ink supplier for MIS) but various mentions are made of Formulabs, amongst others... I'd recommend checking out comments on either:
- nifty-stuff.com forums
- Steve's Forums


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Printers: (Canon) MP500/830, MX700, iP4000/4200/4300/4500/5200, iX4000(A3) (Epson) C84/86, D88, CX6600, R285/800/1900 (HP) K550, K850, K5400, L7680

Roger, I have printed samples of the ink sold by MIS that I will give away.

I print these photos using the Epson R1800 at Best Photo > PhotoEnhance > Auto Correct.

You can see scanned images of these photos at my web site. The images resolution have been reduced to allow faster download.
I will be happy to mail you the photos.

Ronnie

www.efillink.com

www.inkfillshop.com