A few CLI-42 questions

[dannno]

I've been watching some videos regarding flushing the carts. It appears that people don't seem to worry about getting the chips wet. One guy runs water into the fill hole under the faucet, and water is running all over the cart, including the chip.
Is it so? It doesn't matter if the chip gets wet?
Also, I'm wondering about flushing in the first place. I plan to pull my carts when low and top off with PC ink. I wonder how many times I can do this before a flush is even needed?
I've been using the Pro 100 for about a month. I am about 1/3 spent on some of my carts, according to the pop up ink level indicator. I suppose it will be a month until I try the refill routine...
Dan

 

[PeterBJ]

The small chip PCB contains no batteries, so getting wet does not harm the chip when the cartridge is not installed in printer. When the chip is installed in a printer it is important that it is completely dry, else water can cause a short circuit or a leakage current that can damage the chip and possibly also damage the printer electronics, making the printer a total loss.

The cartridges will need flushing when they develop problems with ink starvation or loose capacity. One theory is that using the ink in the sponge causes the ink to be replaced with air which might not be replaced by ink when refilling and so causes a capacity loss. Flushing and drying the cartridge can restore the capacity. See this thread by @mikling . Also see this and this.

Refilling when you get the first warning that ink is low, means you refill when the ink reservoir has just become empty but the sponge is still filled with ink. By refilling early in this way, less flushing should be necessary.

 

[dannno]

I guess we'll see how it goes...
Flushing doesn't look all that difficult. I just want to skip it when I can.

 

[The Hat]

I guess we'll see how it goes...
Flushing doesn't look all that difficult. I just want to skip it when I can.

@dannno, no need to worry about flushing/purging your cart for years, if you refill as soon as the yellow warning notice comes up and you replace it with a refilled one again, in fact you can refill hundreds of times using this method...