which forum for carbon ink printing?

I'm asking this in the Beginner Questions because although I've been a member since '02, I drifted away for a while and when I returned photo.net had taken a new look. Also, during my absence from this site I was learning about b/w digital printing and QTR, found in some Yahoo! groups. But lately, there hasn't been much activity over there and my question is in which forum here am I likely find the most activity on carbon ink printing. I suspect it would be the Digital Darkoom forum. The Black and White forum seems to focus more on traditional darkroom printing. Or perhaps what I'm looking for would be in still another forum that I've overlooked. Finally, the carbon ink I'm using for my inkset for is getting harder to find and maybe some users here know of a source. I don't use Piezography, I use the method developed by Paul Roark.

 

Thanks all!

 

Paul

Edited August 12, 2018 by PaulWhiting

Link - Digital Darkroom B&W Inks for Epson Printers - Inksupply.com Have not been aware of / used carbon inks or used this mfr. Interesting stuff though, thanks for bringing it up. I'll be looking into it. Suspect Digital Darkroom might be a good choice, Black and White, or even Conversation. Welcome back!

Sandy,

 

Yes, I'm very familiar with inksupply.com. I've ordered most of my materials for carbon ink prints from this company. The products are fine and well-suited to this process. It's a little tricky to navigate sometimes, and some folks are having trouble getting their orders processed. I've had good luck myself so far.

 

Regards,

 

Paul

There seems to be some folks who are not familiar with Carbon Dilgital Printing. Thought I'd post a short response and hope it proves useful. Maybe someone can direct me to the forum dealing with this technique.

 

Many people are not satisfied with the quality of the black in a printer just out of the box. The key to carbon printing is to replace all the color carts with different dilutions of carbon. For example, in my 1400 I use six cartridges ranging from 100% black (carbon) to about 2% (if memory serves). Sometimes one cart may use a very small quantity of cyan to cool the slight (very) warmth in the carbon.

 

I've had shows where some of my prints were traditional darkroom prints and some were carbon digital prints. My favorite paper was on Ilford Multigrade paper. Another favorite was Agfa, it had a very slight warmth much like the carbon print.These traditional prints were displayed side by side with the carbon prints on PremierArt Fine Art paper especially designed for carbon inks. There was no easily discernible difference between the two kinds of prints, besides which the carbon prints are more long lasting and resistant to fading - even when the darkroom print is selenium toned. These are results obtained by a testing site called Aardenburg Imaging and Archives in Lee, MA.

 

Thanks all,

 

Paul

Thanks for bringing this technique to the attention! (= I was not familiar at all with the technique indeed!).

 

The best forum here would probably be the digital darkroom, it covers issues around inkjet printing somewhat regularly.