Generally poor print quality - tips please?

[galerion]

Paul on here makes custom ICC profile his site is http://www.frames4photoshop.info

[muckyducky]

Paul on here makes custom ICC profile his site is http://www.frames4photoshop.info

What's his username? I'd like to send a PM.

Thanks for your help by the way!

[galerion]

His username is Paul and I must point out that if you don't use sawgrass ink you could be facing a court case and a hefty bill at the end of it.

[muckyducky]

His username is Paul and I must point out that if you don't use sawgrass ink you could be facing a court case and a hefty bill at the end of it.

So I can't use generic dye in my EPSON?

[galerion]

Sawgrass holds patents that prevent you legally being allowed to use any other brand of sublimation ink in printers A3 and below in size.

[muckyducky]

Sawgrass holds patents that prevent you legally being allowed to use any other brand of sublimation ink in printers A3 and below in size.

I guess I'm off to buy a Ricoh printer and some Sawgrass ink then. Didn't know that, thanks for pointing it out.

[pisquee]

Sawgrass holds patents that prevent you legally being allowed to use any other brand of sublimation ink in printers A3 and below in size.

That is not true, this is not how patents work.
Sawgrass has a patent on their formulation/system of sublimation ink.
Any other company can produce sublimation ink if it is different from how Sawgrass have made and patented their ink.
If another company comes to market with a sublimation ink, then they are open to legal action from Sawgrass, where Sawgrass would try and prove that the other ink infringed on their patent, whilst the other company would be trying to prove that their ink was different and didn't infringe.
This is a costly and time consuming business, so most big ink companies just pay a 'license' to Sawgrass to stop being sued and can then just continue in their business.

Sawgrass' patent is long and boring and very detailed, and is available to download online (Google have a patent search tool) if you want to see what they have actually patented for sublimation, rather than hearsay and rumours.

No where in the patent does it mention the size of printers that the ink can and can't be used in. This division of the market at 42" came as part of an out of court settlement between BASF and Sawgrass.

The patent on sublimation ink that Sawgrass does have on sublimation ink expires in September this year. Along with this there has been a growing amount of sellers on Ebay selling non-Sawgrass inks and lasting, whereas in the past they all seemed to vanish quite quickly. I did query Sawgrass on this, and they denied it having anything to do with their patent expiring, but that the person who dealt with Ebay was 'on holiday' although this was months ago, and there's still a lot on Ebay.

[Paul]

I must point out that if you don't use sawgrass ink you could be facing a court case and a hefty bill at the end of it.

why??

[muckyducky]

why??

Paul, could you PM me please?

[galerion]

Thanks pisquee I knew someone would explain it in detail at some point in this thread and paul maybe I got the wrong end of the stick but I thought there were posssible repercussion for using non sawcrass ink in small format printers and that normally = money. If there are no possible repercussion for the person using the ink then why is the topic of non sawgrass ink always a bit iffy on here, i've not ever seen a thead saying such and such ink is a good replacement for sawgrass ink import it from here or anything like that.