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expiration date on inks

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Emil

New Member
Hey guys,
i have a mimaki cjv150-130, we can never match the volume needed to use up an ink cartage before it expires. We got the printer for the size we can print not the quantity. ive seen chips that allow the ink to be used longer, im not thinking years but deff a few months longer. do they actually expire, would it harm my printer, anything i should know?
 
Solventinkjet

Solventinkjet

DIY Printer Fixing Guide
The Mimaki chips will give you 2 more months after it expires. After that you will need to buy some chips which Mimaki doesn't sell so you will need to find a 3rd party supplier. I have seen my customers in many situations where they used expired ink and it didn't seem to cause an issue. That being said, if there are issues, it would be the first suspect. I would just take the cartridges out and rock them back and forth a few times to make sure the pigments don't separate from the solution to be extra sure.

Full disclosure, the official Mimaki response would be never to use expired ink just so you know.
 
E

Emil

New Member
Solventinkjet said:
The Mimaki chips will give you 2 more months after it expires. After that you will need to buy some chips which Mimaki doesn't sell so you will need to find a 3rd party supplier. I have seen my customers in many situations where they used expired ink and it didn't seem to cause an issue. That being said, if there are issues, it would be the first suspect. I would just take the cartridges out and rock them back and forth a few times to make sure the pigments don't separate from the solution to be extra sure.

Full disclosure, the official Mimaki response would be never to use expired ink just so you know.
Click to expand...
yeah i just kinda figured they were being a bit greedy in trying to get you to buy new inks so often.
 
DTP2

DTP2

New Member
They are not greedy. Inks do age and become unstable after which could do harm to your ink system. It might be that their inks can last much longer, but for example they also can not control the way the distributor and you control your storage. Too many variables. So they most likely came up with a safe shelf life where their customers would not be facing issues caused by their inks.

But honestly, if you are not able to finish the smallest size cartridges they have within the shelf life of the inks (2 years I think for Mimaki inks?), you most likely should have never bought a printer in the first place... Then, in my opinion, the problem is not them being greedy or the shelf life. It's you underutilizing the printer.
 
S

Sindex Printing

New Member
I have used expired inks with our Mutoh printers and haven't had any issues. The expiration date was explained to me "quality and consistency can not be guaranteed to be accurate. Also not to use one that is more than 6 months old." I was also advised that if you have a service call and it has expired ink that is the the first item they will replace.
 
Solventinkjet

Solventinkjet

DIY Printer Fixing Guide
White Haus said:
Do you know if this applies to the UV inks as well? (LUS170 / LUS200)
Click to expand...

Shelf life on UV inks is about a year and Mimaki will send dealers ink that have 6 months or more in general on stocking orders. Not sure what the difference is but my rep told me it's because it's harder to keep the pigments suspended in solution with UV inks for some reason.
 
H

hybriddesign

owner Hybrid Design
We have a jv300 running 2liter sublimation ink (4liters per color) and we use aftermarket chips as a problem solver all the time. When we first got it we bought two back up cartridges for each color meaning that 4L per color on the printer and 4L sitting of a shelf we had 8L per color to burn through and when the sb54 ink first came out we were getting cartridges that expired 6 months from the date we got them (this has gotten way better now). We also had a lot of the factory mimaki chips crapping out halfway through an ink bag. All said and done we had a lot of expired ink and defective chips. We bought a bunch of aftermarket chips from lavaink and use those whenever we need a problem solver. Tried sign-in-china but they kept shipping us solvent chips instead of sublimation. So far we've had no issues with using expired ink.

Our Roland lef20 UV is another story though. The ink in the black carts will harden up and burst the cart shortly after the expiration date hits... Other colors seem fine.
 
Ian Stewart-Koster

Ian Stewart-Koster

Older Greyer Brushie
Laugh if you like, but I was using ink 2 years past the use-by date, and heads equally past it, on our HP L25500, with no problems.
The console comes up with a warning that they've passed the date, you click OK, and onward you march...

The L260 also has no problems.
 
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