ConeColor Pro is a brand new ink developed for the new Epson print heads found in the Epson Pro X880s, X890s, and X900s. We've reformulated to improve on a number of things such as foaming in our magenta (not that you would have noticed it), better dMax, and also improved glossiness. The dMax and glossiness you may have noticed was just under that of the OEM in our ConeColor K3 and K3 Vivid inks. We improved this initially with the ConeColor HDR. Then we took that knowledge and reformulated the entire color range.

ConeColor K3 and K3 Vivid inks are widely considered to be the best performing 3rd party ink. We've been honest in that we wished we had a little better dMax and a touch better glossiness. Therefore, much of our recent work was directed towards increasing dMax and glossiness to meet that of the OEM. I believe that ConeColor Pro will up the bar again for a 3rd party ink.

It is not necessary to flush out Epson inks before installing ConeColor inks. The two ink formulations are compatible with each other. Epson inks are encapsulated pigment. ConeColor inks (and Piezography inks) are also encapsulated pigment. Epson uses a polyester micro-encapsulation layer around each pigment particle. Vermont PhotoInkjet which produces ConeColor and Piezography inks uses a micro-encapsulation layer of an acrylic co-polymer. The vehicle (ink base) which this pigment is suspended in is compatible between Epson and Vermont PhotoInkjet. So, it is not necessary to flush.

We've been busy designing new ink cartridges. We are working directly with a cartridge factory and the first thing we did is redesign the R3000 product. While refillable R3000 carts have been on the market for some time, many are difficult to prime and the chip design has been proving problematic. We have sourced a very high-standard ARC chip for this model. It may not seem like much, but the failure rate of a semi-conductor company we found and tested is well below 1%. Standard China made carts have failure rates due to chips well above 4%. The added expense on our part will allow us to reduce our technical support due to chip failure. It's a very good solution: a sturdy reliable cart with a chip that rivals the OEM in quality.

How the chip is reset is by shorting two points located on the chip. There is a chip resetter located behind the chip on each cartridge. The top two points can be shorted by using a tweezers or a paper clip. When the two points are touched simultaneously, the chip resetter resets the chip to 100% full. The EPSON Status Monitor will show the remaining contents of these carts both on the LCD of the printer and in the software utility.

We support this color ink system with the biggest 3rd party media ICC profile library ever!