Canon ip4300

[martop]

Hi,

This forum is a god send, thanks to all the info I have read here I am about to begin saving a small fortune in ink, thanks

After reading through tons of posts here I took the plunge and ordered some ink and needles and a resetter from the company in germany, I already have needles but these seem a bit big at around 3 mm diameter and are blunt, so will wait untill my order arrives to see if those are smaller.

When I bought this printer I also bought one of those amor compatable kits with a cradle and ink tanks, it was on offer at the time with 2 of each cart making it more cheaper than the canon one, these sadly are running out. The cradle tricks the printer in to thinking its got its own carts in and they do hold more ink. I tried to refill one in the hope it would show as full, not sure how the cradle fools the printer I was hoping it may show a refill as full but it doesnt, its still half empty according to the ink monitor, the German refill method works for these carts too but an not sure of the chip on the amor carts can be reset, its an 8 pin chip with the 4 gold contacts on the back, similar to the canon, I cant as yet find any data online regarding the chip type, though the little pcb does not have any leds on it.

So its on with the refill of the canons and a reset, I think my original carts may have dried out by now, so will either read on the forum about washing them out or use a set of compatable ones and use the canon chip.

If there are any good tips you know to help a newbie with cleaning out some carts befor a refill then I would be gratefull to read them,

Regards,

martop ( UK )

 

[Servo]

I've got the ip4500 and refilled it twice now. My wife is a nurse, so I managed to get some needles from her. But they were not long enough to reach the chamber. So I got 2 sizes from her, melted the plastic off one needle, and superglued the thiner one inside of the other. It sure works well.

On your other cart, maybe the chip resetter might work with it, it's worth a try.

I've tried the chip resetter on compats, with chips already fitted (ink swiss) and it does reset them great.
Using the german method of refilling, will make flushing out the carts rather differcult, you would need a bleed hole, and this would need resealed after.

 

[martop]

I remember fusing two needles together years ago as I only had short ones, bit hit or miss and I usualy ended up covered in ink :-(

I think from reading your post and a few other ones it may be easire and less messy to use compat carts and reset them, then chuck them out say after 10 refills, they cheap enough now, local store sells them for 2.99 but can be got one line a lot cheaper, either way its saving me money.

Will have to wait till next week for this resetter to arrive but not sure about using it on these amor carts as the pin lay out looks different from the canon chip.

martop

 

[SLR_65]

Hi,

I have an ip4200 and I've refilled for a couple years now. I pulled out the rubber stopper ball from the original fill hole, threaded it, and installed nylon screws and o-rings as per an article here on Nifty Stuff and refilling has been a breeze. I did have to trim a little of the plastic inside the case as when printing CDs the nylon screw heads would just barely catch on the case (only on CDs, no problem with paper printing).

I see the appeal of the German method since you don't have to make/plug a hole, but it seems that most here flush their cartridges somewhere between 5 and 10 refills and they need a port to accomodate that anyway, so putting a port in does dual duty.

I haven't flushed any cartridges yet, though I probably should as my cartridge sets each have 7 refills on them now. I'm not looking forward to the whole flush and dry thing either and also have flirted with just replacing them. Canon cartridges are expensive though and empty ones off of fleaBay go for a premium too. I started a thread specifically asking about the generic CLI8 cartridges and it's garnered few responses. The couple it has gotten have pretty much said that the after market cartridges are inferior to the original Canon ones due to the sponge design. I found that kind of surprising as I thought the printers that use the new CLI8s were pretty much just ip4000 items modified to use the new chipped cartridges, I didn't realize there were signifcant design changes to the print head and cartridge internals. Since most of what I read said the generic BCI6s were just fine I was hoping the generic CLI8s would be too, but apparently that's not the case.

I bought one of the chip resetters from Germany and it's worked GREAT! It's really nice to have the ink level monitoring back!

I would imagine the chips on the after market equipment you have are probably recycled original Canon chips as I haven't heard of any clone chips, though I'm not doubting that eventually we will see some (maybe even some auto-resetting ones like you can get for Epsons!).

Anyway, these printers work great - they are frugal on ink and give great output. The cartridges are a breeze to refill and now that the chips have been dealt with it's pretty much a perfect printer! Enjoy!

 

[SLR_65]

I'm not following what the Armor cradle and cartridges actually accomplishes. Does it allow taller cartridges for more ink capacity? The one site I found had a pdf file on the Armor system but it just covered installing the cradle and then the cartridges. It seemed to say the ink level monitoring wasn't going to work any more too, and it seemed to say it's ink capacity was about the same as a Canon cartridge's . . . from the pdf "We guarantee the yield of our cartridges (by the number of pages printed) which is similar to a Canon cartridge"

 

[martop]

Thanks for the replies, I read them while at a friends lat night and was going to reply but could not remember the forum password

The amor cradle seems from what I can gather, just tricks the printer into thinking its got canon carts fitted, this allows for the monitoring software to work as normal, The amor carts are the same shape and size as the canons but the ink compartment its a lot bigger, the sponge part is a lot smaller, its in fact a mirror image of a canon cart and holds more ink in the ink part but less in the sponge part, refillling it can be done any of the three ways I have seen described here.

I took a photo to see the difference, hope it shows here.

I dont think these will last as long as canon carts for refilling.

As for resetting the chip, heres the chip off one of the amor carts, it looks different from the canon and is different in size

Value wise, its not worth it, maybe it was when I got it as the offer was for the cradle and two of each cart, then it was just as cheap to buy a new cradle with two of each carts, now its around the same price as a set of canons but you only get one of each colour, even the carts are pricey.

This cart flushing will be interesting, I have the set that came with the printer and a compatable set so I could test the flushing and drying on the canon set as they almost dry despite me covering the outlet hole with tape. I suppose I will get the hang of it after I have dyed my hands and shirt, half the kitchen and the dog

martop

 

[jflan]

Storing spent carts:
Save the orange, plastic snap-off and rubber band that to the outlet, then use tape to seal the vent on top.
Put the whole thing in a ziplock bag or air-tight container.

 

[martop]

I was already digging out the orange covers just befor I read your reply, I thought I would remove the sticky tape I had used and that would be all there was too it, my carts would still be wet enough to refill, then I read the part about the vent on the top, ' what vent ?' oh uh, I never knew they had one !!

Yep, they had dried out as I found out when I took the tape off ! Ive just washed them out and they look ok, will wait till they dry fully.

Thanks for all the replies, I learn something new, usualy after I should have learned it !!

martop