[Leica] CIS for Epson 2200

[feli at creocollective.com (Feli di Giorgio)]

I was looking at getting an Epson 2200 (ended up with the Piezography
system instead), but the big turn off was the huge cost of the ink
cartridges. I have seen 3rd party ink kits for the 2200, but if you want
to stick with Epson's ultrachrome inks you have to be a little more
clever. After a little research I came up with this.

http://www.mediastreet.com/cgi-bin/tame/mediastreet/n3.tam?&prd=2200

I have read that people are buying the above kit and are filling the 
bottles with the Ultrachrome ink from the large Epson 7600/9600/10600 
cartridges.

The Epson 2200 cartridge has only about 10 ml of ink in it. That's 
right 10-12 ml for $10 bucks. If you are only making the occasional 
8x10 print of your dog that's fine, but if you are doing bigger prints 
(especially on matte paper) and in any kind of volume you are going to 
need a second job to pay for the ink.

So, people are buying the empty Niagra kit. Then they get the 
Ultrachrome ink cartridges from Epson's large format printers like the 
7600/9600 and 10600. These cartridges contain between 110 and 220 ml of 
ink! You can get the 110ml cartridges for as little as $60 bucks and 
the 220ml are an even better deal.

Inside the big cartridges the ink is stored in a plastic sack. You cut
the cartridge open and remove the sack which you drain into your CIS ink
bottle. I don't know if all of the cartridges use a plastic sack to
store the ink, but you could always drill two small holes (one for
draining, one for breathing) in it and drain it that way.

I haven't tried this myself, but it sounds like it would work.


Feli