4900 Refillable carts update
15 March, 2012 by
4900 Refillable carts update
Jon Cone

ConeColor PRO HDR inks in the Epson 4900

We have been working on this project for more than half a year. We’ve tested a wide variety of 4900 single use and refillable products that are being sold as “ready for the market”.

We even went to China to explore several 4900 solutions. We have rejected countless chips and cartridges as being very below what we consider to be standard or “stable”. We’ve tested cartridges that leak, cartridges that do not allow ink to flow well, cartridges that do not align well with the internal chip readers, and cartridges that are just plain flimsy (I believe the technical term is “crappy”).

The chips we have tested have behaved irregularly requiring incredible acrobatics to be all recognized by the printer at once. Many chip designs do not record any ink volume. Some chips have to be reset so often that it interrupts any resemblance of production and clearly will wear them out in months. Some chips simply fail quickly. All of these chips have been fairly expensive, so there is no point to releasing something that will require replacements.

Because we support our products, I have not wanted to release a product that would cause our customers trouble and take up our time with support and returns and replacements. InkjetMall standards are quite high.  If a turnkey product had come about, we would have released. I have wanted to have a 4900 product for many, many months. But, none have worked reliably for more than just a few days.

Our own design at late beta state. Nearly there!

So, we did start on our own product development with our chip supplier and with our cart supplier in parallel to our testing all the other “ready for market” products. And although we started later, we’re coming to market with a very high standard product. This is our third unique product that we have developed. First the R3000 and then the 350ml bag filled 7900 carts. Now we have a VPI 4900 cartridge with an auto reset chip that is not only sturdy but has a very reliable and steady auto-reset chip. This is a refillable cartridge that is eco-friendly and economical to use. We will sell it in sets as well as by the single color.

We are just about to begin the process of ICC profiling the Epson 4900 with ConeColor PRO HDR inks and more than 50 popular media.  The cartridges are a novel top fill design. The chip from our ultra-secret supplier. We are excited to be only a few weeks away from full release in ConeColor PRO pigment inks and also the new Ink•Thrift® dye inks for the 4900. Piezography will follow shortly after.

4900 Refillable carts update
Jon Cone
15 March, 2012
Share this post
Archive