I am concidering a WF 7110 with ciss from Cobra Ink System. Can anyone tell me if pigments are less durable than dye? What are you having the best success with? Is there maybe a "clear coat" of some sort to protect the gaming surface from scratches or am I being too ambitious? The use of printed material for gaming is new to me. my son and I just started playing Heroclix recently and I thought Terrainlinx would be awesome!

What you get with a CISS should be just as durable as any printed surface from that printer. It should hold up pretty well during use. Usually, the paper itself starts to rip or tear through heavy use long before the printed surface wears.

I've got a CISS for my HP8600 and I'll throw out a word of warning. I don't use my CISS for my cardstock terrain because I've found the ink colors for it don't 100% match that of HP's. The red, in particular, is off a bit. And the printer is made to work with HP's colors, so it can't adjust for that. Other folks on here have been using CISS's for their printers for years without issues, so I assume my experience is rare.

That is unfortunate that your ciss does not print colors properly. Keeping the cost down is a must. My curent Canon printer is ridiculously expensive to run and we don't print all that much on it. I am looking to use the new ciss printer primarily for paper craft but I'm sure we'll use it for other things also. I'm leaning towards pigments for the archival properties .

I guess I'm not really clear on what the differences are between "pigment ink" and the regular inks that an inkjet uses, so I'm not sure how that might affect the wear and tear of your printouts for cardstock terrain.

When ordering the ciss they ask if you want pigment or dye. Pigments do not fade nearly as fast as dye. UV can apparently fade regular dye within weeks. But, some say pigments scratch easier than dye. So I guess that is my main concern for gaming. I want the archival properties for photos and paper craft but durability is important for gaming. Thus my posted questions. Thanks by the way for replying.

Well, the ink that comes with the printer is Durabrite ultra pigments. So I guess I should probably go with pigments.I was curious what the paper craft community thought about it. This is the time to make the decision, before buying a new printer.

I recall someone on these forums posting a couple of years ago about a line of printers that uses a solid ink/pigment to print. He was happy with the results, but did say that it tended to print by putting a very thin layer on top of the paper, rather than the typical ink that soaks into the paper. And that did mean that it could get scratched off over time. I haven't heard anything more since then, though.

(1) You're not going to experience any appreciable fading for any models that aren't exposed to direct sunlight for hours a day, days on end. If you're using TLX and your stuff is filed or stored away, the few hours a day that it's out on the gaming table will never make a difference. I've had some of my magnetized stuff up on my fridge for months with no difference, and my Epsons use dye ink.

(2) Use the ink that is designed for your printer. If it's designed to use pigment ink, use that. If it's a dye ink printer, use dye.

(3) The issues of 3rd party inks not matching OEM is real. You can mitigate this through the use of profiles, but it's hit or miss. Some of my stuff printed using 3rd party inks definitely has a mismatch with my OEM ink printed mats, but I use them together on the table anyway. Example below.

IIRC, someone mentioned that swapping ink types in a printer (e.g. print with dye ink then swap to pigment ink) can clog the printhead. So staying with pigment dyes is wise if that's what the printer normally uses.

I have also read changing ink types can cause clogging. The printer comes with pigments so I will go with them. As far as color goes, if I start with the Cobra inks I won't have oem colors to try and match. I'm not worried about fading with the paper craft as much as photos. You guys do some amazing things by the way. I'm sure you have a lot of time and effort into your builds. Very impressive.

The solid deposited on surface is either the Xerox printers or more likely a laser printer. Yes, the laser-printed color can flake.

It was the Xerox printers, I think. I've not had issues with my laser printer flaking and I've had it and been using it to build TLX stuff for 2 years now.