Roland Ink Scam?

[warcroft]

Ive been weighing and measuring the 440ml Roland ink cartridges.
A new, unused 440ml cartridge is 700g.
A completely drained cartridge (case opened and ink completely drained) is 300g.

440ml weighs 440g so there is a 40ml ink shortage in every single Roland 440ml cartridge. 10%.

I didnt just do this once or twice. I did it over numerous cartridges and the weights are always the same to the second decimal point.

Also, when the Roland printer says the cartridge is empty there is still 50ml left in there. You can shake it down a few times and keep using before its actually empty (just in case youre not doing that).


Food for thought.

 

[Jburns]

What is the resolution of your scale? sounds like two places - .01gram?

A scale with .01g resolution would give you the most dependable / repeatable results. (I have seven years experience in the lab scale industry)..

 

[warcroft]

What is the resolution of your scale? sounds like two places - .01gram?

Yep.

 

[JulieS]

Could you explain shaking down the cartridge to get more use out of it? Do you literally just give it a good shake? And is there not any danger to doing that? I'd love to get as much ink out as possible!

 

[Johnny Best]

I am not a math person so I could be off. So I am sure someone will contradict me on this.
But, if a gallon of paint weights 4404.88 grams and there are 400 grams of paint (ink) in a cart. that makes 11.01 carts in a gallon
and at $150 a cart, they are making $1,651.50 a gallon. Nice mark up.

 

[oldgoatroper]

440ml weighs 440g

440 ml of WATER weighs 440 grams.... not necessarily ink.

To figure out what the ink weighs per volume, you'll need to take a known volume of your ink and weigh it.

 

[Johnny Best]

It's Post time.

 

[ProPDF]

I switched our soljets to $20 a liter of Chinese ink and could not be happier. We have been running it for years and the colors are better imo. Nazdar is great ink but still too expensive.

 

[Solventinkjet]

The way the cartridge tells the machine that it is empty is a little plastic flag pops out and pushes a little lever. That flag will move in and out depending on the angle of the cartridge as well so if your machine is not perfectly level, it can cause the cartridge to flag the machine early. I am willing to bet that your machine tilts slightly towards the back of the machine which causes the ink to flow to the back of the cartridge and the flag pops out.

 

[Glennora]

I always have about 10% of ink left in the (max life eco-sol) cartridge when it says it's empty. I save 'em up and take a syringe, suck, pull, and combine the leftovers into one. But I'm just frugal like that.

 

[euronymous]

To build on this oem ink conspiracy:
The new TrueVis ink pouches are labeled as 500ml of ink.
If you look at the service report on one of these machines it will show these ink pouches as 440ml.
Maybe a firmware oversight or something....maybe they're robbing us blind...at least its cheaper than the old stuff I guess

 

[Gino]

Guess it's just me, but for the many $1,000's of dollars we make on a 440 cartridge, I tend to think we did well. If I'm gonna dispute an ounce or two and get all upset about it, then it's time to take a job at a tanning salon handing out towels or sunglasses.

Just imagine...... that maybe what 4pcs 4'x 8's you got gypped on ?? If you're pricing your stuff right, those numbers don't mean squat to the average shop from 2 or 3 printers up to maybe 6 or so. Not until you get up to using gallons a day in a large facility will those numbers affect anything.

 

[ProPDF]

To build on this oem ink conspiracy:
The new TrueVis ink pouches are labeled as 500ml of ink.
If you look at the service report on one of these machines it will show these ink pouches as 440ml.
Maybe a firmware oversight or something....maybe they're robbing us blind...at least its cheaper than the old stuff I guess

The new TruVis ink isn't really cheaper when it uses more ink to print the same image compared to eco sol max.

 

[DoubleDiamond]

We ran an SP540 for years then a VG for a short time (encountered countless problems) and now an XR640. With the SP we were able to shake the cartridges and get a few more days out of it. We usually did this two times. The XR does not let us though. We have done the syringe thing in a pinch and could pull about 50ml from an "empty". Someone posted that the danger is adding air, but we had no problems with that, just try not to puncture the bag you are putting ink in. The vg seemed to drain them empty, probably the angle they lay in.
I really wanted to mention that the VG printed the most amazing impressive looking prints, and fast too, but used about twice the ink. We simply looked at our average ink purchases and they doubled. Confirming this is the XR has us back to the normal amount. Kinda be nice to shake them at least.
I did want to point out that on the SP we tried solaris inks and they worked for like a year, then the cyan kept clogging. A switch back to roland ink flushed the clogging problem and the extra money spent on ink is microscopic and the improved performance is priceless. This applies to regular volume printing though. Part of the problem I think is having a machine that may run every other day. We now run an XR everyday most of the day, but I don't see the advantage being big enough to try aftermarket inks again and I believe the versaworks configures the ink volume to use differently for aftermarket cartridges. I read this in a post here and can see that it's true when I compared the inside of our SP to a friends that had been running some aftermarket. We both ran our machines for about 6 years. He ran about twice the square feet and used much more than twice the ink, but the most obvious sign was the inside. We never cleaned the "inside area" and ours looked amazingly clean with the slightest overspray... his looked like 2 or 3 egg sized balloons of ink exploded inside. Overspray everywhere.
My 2 cents

 

[bilge]

440ml doesn't mean 440g. Since we don't know the carrier, drier and pigment ratio of this ink and density each of them we can't calculate simply by weight.
1ml water is 1g, but 1 ml gas 0.71g, 1ml acetone 0.78g.

 

[ams]

Am I the only one who knows the trick with the Roland inks? That extra 40 ml that is still in it, I use about 35 of it and then throw it away. You can bypass the out of ink function in a matter of seconds and use it up to the last drop.

 

[bilge]

Am I the only one who knows the trick with the Roland inks? That extra 40 ml that is still in it, I use about 35 of it and then throw it away. You can bypass the out of ink function in a matter of seconds and use it up to the last drop.

I do, some models have empty mode. It can bypass empty cartridge warning, but has a risk to get air in the tube.

 

[warcroft]

Am I the only one who knows the trick with the Roland inks? That extra 40 ml that is still in it, I use about 35 of it and then throw it away. You can bypass the out of ink function in a matter of seconds and use it up to the last drop.

Thats not what I was saying.
My machines (XC540 and XJ640) have horizontal set cartridges. When it says empty theres still 50ml left in the cartridge.

The 40ml Im referring to is straight out missing. A new full cartridge is only 400ml. Not 440ml.

440 ml of WATER weighs 440 grams.... not necessarily ink.

Yes, Im aware of that.
Ink is thicker and heavier than water. So, if thats the case, then its more than 10% missing per cartridge.

Could you explain shaking down the cartridge to get more use out of it? Do you literally just give it a good shake? And is there not any danger to doing that? I'd love to get as much ink out as possible!

As simple as it sounds. Hold the handle end of the cartridge and shake the ink to the chip end. Youll get another few metres out of it.
I can do this three or four times before I have to change it.



My XJ640 I switched to Matrix EcoSolvent inks a few weeks ago and the colours are definitely better. More vibrancy.
My XC540 is still running on Roland inks until we have used them all up.
Before third party inks hit the scene Roland inks were around $220 for the 440ml cartridge. Once competition hit the market Roland dropped the price to $120.
The Matrix EcoSolvent inks are half that again!

Im also running two Vutek 3360 Grand Format printers. Anyone know any info on Vutek printer third party inks?

 

[oldgoatroper]

440 ml of WATER weighs 440 grams.... not necessarily ink.

Yes, Im aware of that.
Ink is thicker and heavier than water. So, if thats the case, then its more than 10% missing per cartridge.

"Thickness" of a liquid is no indicator of heaviness... Motor oil is thicker than water, yet still lighter by volume. Any oil/solvent-based ink will almost certainly be lighter than water, by volume. The only way to know for sure is to actually measure the weight of a known volume.

 

[GAC05]

Need to read the fine print. This was translated from the Japanese script on the Mutoh carts I buy.

 

[Gino]

So, what's your favorite flavor ?? Light cyan or magenta ?? The yellows tend to tickle my tonsils. Black doesn't sit well with me.