Is it worth it replacing OEM ink with Bordeaux?

[Lady Who]

Hey there!

I own a Mimaki CJV150 with SS21 ink for 2 years now and I'm willing to replace this OEM SS21 with Bordeaux MS33 in order to stop losing money with ink. I've read a bit about Bordeaux inks here. Also called Bordeaux and had a general good impression about them, but I'd rather listen to the opinion and experience of people here.
So, please tell me:

1) Is Bordeaux MS3 much stinker than SS21 ink?

2) Since it's chemical composition is different, do you think I'll need to replace parts more frequently (dampers, captop, wiper)? Is there a higher probability of clogging the printhead sooner?

3) Do you believe Bordeaux's print head warranty will really get me a new printhead if their ink ruins my brand new one?

You think replacing the ink is a good choice or maybe the money I'll save with this ink will cost me more expenses with other items?

Thanks in advance

 

[Notarealsignguy]

No, not on these small printers. In the grand scheme of things, ink should be a relatively negligible cost.

 

[Bly]

We used Bordeaux inks in our Rolands when we had them years ago.
The inks performed well and didn't seem to cause any more wear than OEM.

 

[netsol]

for our rolands, everyone speaks highly of jetbest, and they have distributors all over south america

http://www.jetbest.com/en/wheretobuy.html

keep in mind for eco solvent we are a roland /epson shop so my experience ends there

 

[netsol]

obviousy, if you can cut you ink prices slightlly more than in half, this will help to offset the costs of the past couple weeks & you want to protect that new print head at all costs

 

[MikePro]

+1 to 3rd party inks being viable option. switched my jv3's ss21 inks to bordeaux a loooong time ago, and ran it for a solid 5 years before decomissioning the printer for latex upgrade. no noticeable wear on the printer/printheads, but a slightly obnoxious solvent-odor was the drawback.
still totally worth it when OEM inks were running me $140/cart and bordeaux came in at around $90.

still glad i made the switch, but ultimately its a difference of like ~$0.18/sqft vs $0.26/sqft... won't break your bank if you run OEM to maintain your warranties, but it IS still money left on the table if you're looking for options to save a buck.

 

[Lady Who]

+1 to 3rd party inks being viable option. switched my jv3's ss21 inks to bordeaux a loooong time ago, and ran it for a solid 5 years before decomissioning the printer for latex upgrade. no noticeable wear on the printer/printheads, but a slightly obnoxious solvent-odor was the drawback.
still totally worth it when OEM inks were running me $140/cart and bordeaux came in at around $90.

still glad i made the switch, but ultimately its a difference of like ~$0.18/sqft vs $0.26/sqft... won't break your bank if you run OEM to maintain your warranties, but it IS still money left on the table if you're looking for options to save a buck.

Here in my country MikePro netsol , Bordeaux inks will cost me one third the price of SS21 (which makes me curious, since in dollars it's not much cheaper than OEM), I think it will make a huge difference, just wish it doesn't destroy my printhead so soon.
As I said, I really like SS21 inks, but it's so pricey lately and since I got in this situation of the accident with the machine and not having the money to buy a new printhead, I realize I'm make a lot of financial mistakes. Like Notarealsignguy said, ink should be a small cost and in my case, it's the highest cost according to the numbers I have, that's why I'm losing money.

 

[Lady Who]

You know what, I'll call the vendor again because I think there's something wrong, that ink cannot be that cheap: not only the price is different in dollars, but also, the package. Bordeaux MS33 are sold abroad in 440 ml cartridges and here, they told me they are sold in 600 ml bags with SS21 ink chips. You ever seen the 600 ml bags option there?

 

[MikePro]

3rd party inks aren't in business because they ruin printheads.... else they wouldn't have customers for long.
Bordeaux has been a trusted brand for over a decade.

OEM inks want to scare you into thinking that their price-point is for peace of mind.

 

[Lady Who]

OEM inks want to scare you into thinking that their price-point is for peace of mind.

Yes, makes sense. And I may be the living proof for that statement: brand new machine, OEM ink and 18 months later printhead was missing 2 entire lines (magenta and cyan)

And the color of Bordeaux inks, are they as vivid as SS21? Just so you know, SS21 ink costs here 1,16 BRL / ml and Bordeaux will cost 0,40 BRL for ml!

And how about 3rd party dampers? You think they're safe?

 

[MikePatterson]

We run bulk ink and Bordeaux liters in our Roland for the last 7 years. We have had to replace heads from time to time but the shot count on the heads was upward of 30 billion so the heads were shot out anyway. I have a Magenta head right now with 20 billion shots on it.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Not all 3rd party inks are the same. There are definitely bad ones out there. It's all about the manufacturing consistency. A bad 3rd party ink will have good ink for a few years and then get one bad batch and take out people's print heads. Just recently Swiss dye sub ink trashed a bunch of RJ-900s. If I were running a shop I would run OEM to rule it out as an issue when issues do arise but my customers almost always push back so we offer the Bordeaux inks because they are so reliable.

 

[hybriddesign]

I've got the same machine and we actually prefer the Bordeaux over oem ink. Performance wise we can't tell the difference and the Bordeaux fumes are much much less harsh than the ss21 OEM cartridges. I think we see a slight magenta shift when using Bordeaux but otherwise it's great. We buy from solventinkjet. Wherever we run short we pick up ss21 locally and everyone complains because of the fumes. We've never had any head issues.

Generic dampers are usually fine but I prefer the oem especially on these weird new dual channel dampers but they sure are expensive.

Hey there!

I own a Mimaki CJV150 with SS21 ink for 2 years now and I'm willing to replace this OEM SS21 with Bordeaux MS33 in order to stop losing money with ink. I've read a bit about Bordeaux inks here. Also called Bordeaux and had a general good impression about them, but I'd rather listen to the opinion and experience of people here.
So, please tell me:

1) Is Bordeaux MS3 much stinker than SS21 ink?

2) Since it's chemical composition is different, do you think I'll need to replace parts more frequently (dampers, captop, wiper)? Is there a higher probability of clogging the printhead sooner?

3) Do you believe Bordeaux's print head warranty will really get me a new printhead if their ink ruins my brand new one?

You think replacing the ink is a good choice or maybe the money I'll save with this ink will cost me more expenses with other items?

Thanks in advance

 

[Dukenukem117]

3rd party inks aren't in business because they ruin printheads.... else they wouldn't have customers for long.
Bordeaux has been a trusted brand for over a decade.

OEM inks want to scare you into thinking that their price-point is for peace of mind.

Although considering how I've yet to hear anyone here succeed in finding a 831 Latex replacement, I do wonder how in the world some people like Bordeaux are offering such a thing.

 

[iPrintStuff]

I’d make the decision purely on how much you run the machine. I.e. how much ink is going through it.

When we made the decision to switch to third party inks for our mimaki, we were running it enough that we could have bought a new print head every four weeks and would still save money vs buying OEM inks. Thankfully we didn’t ever have to replace a print head but the savings were huge. We were literally running it 24/7 though so it was going through a LOT of ink. Easily 4-5 rolls a day.

However, if you’re only running a few jobs a day and the printer is only running for an hour or so, it’s probably worth just sticking with OEM so you have your peace of mind. The ink savings will probably be negligible. (Ink is a very small portion of the costs for everything, I don’t get why so many people get so hung up on ink costs).

I’d also be pretty careful with ink manufacturers saying they’ll replace any/all print heads if their ink destroys them. It’s VERY hard to actually *legally* prove that the ink is responsible if they do decide to play hard ball. I remember a tech telling us he had to replace about 4 print heads that were getting melted by third party ink within a month and eventually the company refused to replace any more unless they could prove it was the ink. Which is a lot harder than it sounds.

 

[Lady Who]

Thank you so much iPrintStuff , your answer is clear, logic and brought me to reality, helped me clear my mind to think twice about it, because I definitely don't run 24/7 and think I'll never will.

Right now I have a biggest problem to solve (get a new printhead) and once it's solved, I don't think I'll have the courage to risk damaging it with third party inks, I'm pretty sure the ink manufacturer could blame my "not running enough" in order to avoid replacing the printhead, if it eventually fails with the new ink.

Still, it's very tempting to do so, since the Bourdeaux ink here costs 35% the SS21 ink and I got a good feeling about it. But I agree with you: maybe some time, when I'm running a bit more jobs and buying another printhead would not be a problem, then I'll try Bordeaux. Many thanks, I really appreciate you

 

[iPrintStuff]

Obviously there will be people that have great experiences with third party, we’re actually one of them. It’s just definitely worth putting thought into.

I’ve always just found the less time the ink is in the system the less likely you are to have problems.

Is the third party ink in cartridges? A lot of the early bulk systems left the ink exposed to air which is a BAD idea

 

[Lady Who]

Yes iPrintStuff , it totally makes sense that having ink flowing all the time would reduce the risks of such problems.

For all I read here, I believe I could have a good experience with Bordeaux, but I'd need to run a little more, maybe at least 6 hours a day non stop, just in case.

Here the Bordeaux inks are sold in bags of 600 ml, which should be placed into the original cartridge by replacing the chip. They have the bulk in option too, but I'd pick the 600 ml bags