cartridge leaking using the durchstich method

[jimbo123]

had a similar leakage issue, see below for a quickie "reverse german" solution

quick update. the problem YELLOW cartridge is nearly 2 years old, has been refilled 12 times, so figured it had served me well. also wasn't looking forward to blowing the ink out, making a mess, so was going to give it a proper burial and replace it.

then decided to give it a shot. i use squeeze bottles, so i thought that was going to complicate things but was pretty easy:

1. squeezed some air out of the squeeze bottle to create negative pressure
2. used reverse german method to suck ink out of sponge chamber
3. was going to blow out the ink out of the sponge, but then decided to try the "reverse german" to the sponge side
4. took a few "reverse german" attempts to suck sufficient ink out of the oversaturated sponge
5. then filled up ink chamber normally with no backup and leaks
6. good to go !

full thread at: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4589

J

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Printers: Canon Pixma MP830, IP4500(spare), MP830(2 spares)
Method: German Durchstich Method using Canon Cartridges
Ink: Hobbicolors, great guy to deal with
Misc: Squeeze bottles, needles, scabbards from Howard Electronics

 

[Nifty]

To minimise this problem is injecting the ink very slowly, so the air can escape through the ink outlet/durchstich refill hole...

Interesting! I think my refill hole may actually be too tight and may be one reason I've had problems with ink out the exit port or air hole. I'll need to enlarge a bit. Thanks!

 

[leo8088]

I had this same problem the very first time I tried the German method to refill a BCI-6 ink cartridge. The cartridge still had maybe 10 or 20% of ink in the reservoir. The sponge was't dry. When I started to inject ink into the reservoir the displaced air coming out of the reservoir needed to find its way through the sponge out of the cartridge. Because the sponge still had a lot of ink in it. The displaced air couldn't just escape without forcing some ink to come out of the cartridge too. I got Ink leaked out of all openings, including the vent, the ink outlet and the inject hole. Very messy.

You can imagine this. 1 cc of ink injected into the reservoir means 1 cc of air needs to escape from the cartridge. The reservoir has a capacity of 6 cc. To refill it with 5 cc of ink 5 cc of air needs to come out. Unless the sponge is bone dry the air coming out will force some ink in the sponge to be pushed out too. No matter how slowly I inject ink I can't stop ink from leaking. The only way to solve this problem is to empty the sponge before refilling with the German method.

I returned to the traditional method. I could try to overcome the problem but since I am comfortable with the tradional method I have not tried it again.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Leo8088, where did you make your refill hole for the German method? Did you place it as close to the bottom of the sponge chamber as possible so that you did not have to pierce the sponge?

And how did you hold the cartridge when you were refilling? Did you hold it with the reservoir down so that the place where the needle was entering the reservoir was the highest point?

And did you insert the needle so far that it was hitting the prism or did you back off slightly so that the ink can fall down into the reservoir?

I am going to try "topping off" some cartridges, which is what you were doing to see if I have the same problem. Usually people refill after the reservoir is empty but I have been recommending that they top off all their dye ink cartridges whenever one of them registers low, just to minimize the automatic cleaning cycles that occur when a low cartridge is refilled.

One last question, have you found that you need to purge your cartridges after refilling many times?