cleaning PG-210 cartridge -- it works!

[Danl]

I've had an MP-280 printer for the last two years, and have gone through 10-20 reams of paper with it with ONE PG-210 cartridge. (I only use black.) I just refill the cartridge every three weeks or so. Very sweet. But finally, the cartridge started misbehaving, and I was about to trash it, but decided to try cleaning it. The way you do that is to heat up half-an inch of distilled water, and soak the active surface of the cartridge in it for an hour or so. Then wipe off the active surface with a clean wipe, ideally saturated with some rubbing alcohol. Much improved. Did the same thing again with clean water. Bingo! It works great again now. I'm a little surprised, as I thought the cartridge would just soak up all the water, and I'd have to flush it with ink to restore it. But while some ink comes out in the cleaning process, what's left behind in the cartridge works fine, and isn't obviously diluted.

As it turned out, I also had a year old used PG-210XL cartridge laying around that someone gave me. It was kept in a plastic bag, so probably wasn't entirely dried out, but it was mostly non-functional. Did the same cleaning job with that one, and now it works too. Pretty awesome. That's $50 worth or cartridges that I brought back from the dead. There is a lot of info on cartridge refilling, but rather little on cartridge cleaning. Cartridge cleaning should be an important part of our bag of tricks.

 

[PeterBJ]

I'm impressed by the number of times you have successfully refilled these combined sponge and print head cartridges. They are much more difficult to refill and get working properly than Canon's single ink tanks.

If water isn't sufficient for the cleaning, you could also try a window cleaner with ammonia or pharmacist's cleaning solution .

If the cartridge is very badly clogged, you can remove the top and the sponge(s) and treat the cartridge like you would unclog a separate print head. After cleaning, replace the sponges and re-glue the top to the cartridge and refill. Super glue AKA 10 second glue works well for this purpose. It is necessary to re-glue the top to the cartridge, using tape isn't sufficient, the cartridge will dry out in a week or so, and you will have to start all over again with washing out the sponges and possibly unclogging the print head. I have tried this, I bought two Canon iP2700 printers at thrift stores. These printers use the same cartridges as your MP280. The cartridges were totally dry, but I managed to get one colour and one black cartridge working again by dismantling and cleaning the cartridges, so my success rate was 50%.

To others who would like to give refilling the combined cartridges a try: There is no resetter available for these cartridges, but ink level monitoring can be disabled in the same way as with the larger printer models using individual ink tanks, allowing you to print with refilled cartridges.

Refilling the cartridges as soon as they start to fail increases your chances of a successful refill.

 

[Danl]

I should add, and underscore your remarks above, that in order to keep these cartridges working well, DO NOT wait to let them run out. I fill them every three weeks, and I keep track of how much ink I squirt in. It should always be less than their capacity.

Interesting about removing the top. Does it just pry off, or is there cutting involved? What do you replace the sponges with? Why don't you just wash out the sponges in the cartridge and use those?

My MP-280 fortunately doesn't care much about ink levels. If it senses that the ink is low, you can just reset that warning and move on.

 

[PeterBJ]

I agree with the the idea of topping up the cartridges instead of letting them run dry. The same good advice applies to similar combined cartridges from HP and other brands.

To remove the tops of the cartridges I use a knife and a small hammer, using the knife as a kind of chisel, I tap the knife until the top breaks free. Be careful and use good leather working gloves for protecting your hands.

Maybe I wasn't clear on the removal of sponges. After having rinsed the sponges under tap water I dry them using paper towels/kitchen paper and reuse them. I don't replace them with another material. The sponges seem to be made from the same type of fibrous material as the sponges in Canon's single ink tanks, and the sponges from the colour cartridge can become white. The sponge from the black pigment cartridge cannot become completely white, when the colour has changed to a uniform medium or light grey, it is as clean it can become, and OK for reuse.

Here is a link to a druckerchannel.de article about refilling some older but similar Canon cartridges: http://www.druckerchannel.de/artike...pixma_pg_40_pg_50_cl_41_cl_51_cl_52_befuellen or a Google translation to English: http://translate.google.dk/translat...pixma_pg_40_pg_50_cl_41_cl_51_cl_52_befuellen

Note that the druckerchannel staff had problems with loosing capacity in the black cartridge. Maybe this was caused by not reapplying the label to prevent evaporation. If the label will not stick to the cartridge any more, a replacement can be cut from a piece of tape. Note the fine air channels on top of the cartridge. Their purpose is to minimize evaporation. The cartridge must be able to "breathe" through these fine channels. Blocking them will lead to a negative pressure inside the cartridge stopping ink flow. In case of a black cartridge loosing capacity, I think this can be cured by washing the sponge.

Edit: Instead of "replacing the sponges" I should have written "putting the sponges back in place" in post #2.

 

[Danl]

Very interesting. Thank you. Good idea about sponge reuse. But it does sound as if you're not just prying off the top of the cartridge, but actually breaking it open.

Yes, I just put a piece of tape over the fill hole, but I wasn't aware of the air channels. I just assumed that the taped-over hole leaked enough air to keep a neutral pressure in the cartridge.

As I said, I keep records of how much ink I inject with each refill. (That is, how much ink I can put in before it overflows the fill hole.) I've not seen any decrease in that.

One has to wonder exactly how off-brand cartridge vendors remanufacture these cartridges for resale, which is what most of them do. Do they actually pop the top and wash the sponge? Not obvious to me that these remanufactured cartridges have covered-up fill holes.

 

[Danl]

Here's a related question for someone who understands how the sponge in these things works. I've NEVER managed to get more than ~5 cc into a PG-210, though it's supposed to hold 10 cc (and I guess the XL is supposed to hold 15 cc). Is that because it takes the sponge some time to soak up the ink and, when I fill it, the ink appears to bubble out before the cartridge is really full? That is, when filling, should I inject some ink, and then wait a while for the sponge to soak it up, and then come back and top it off in order to get it filled completely?

 

[PeterBJ]

See this thread about a similar question: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=9024

The nominal capacity for PG-210 is 9ml and for PG-212 it is 15 ml. The useful capacity is lower than the nominal capacity. If 3 ml is left in the cartridges, useful capacities are around 6 and 12 ml. This explains the double number of pages obtainable with the larger cartridge and explains why you can only fill around 5 ml of ink into the PG-210

 

[Danl]

That's very interesting. What accounts for the "useful capacity" being lower than the nominal capacity? Perhaps 3 cc is just the amount of ink that's necessary to saturate the sponge? If that's the case, maybe by the time you don't get anymore ink coming out, you'll be left with a wet sponge holding 3 cc inside? That is, maybe the sponge, once saturated, won't give up about 3 cc of ink? Or maybe the sponge just takes up 3 cc worth of the cartridge, such that the cartridge would hold 10 cc if there weren't a sponge in it?

 

[Danl]

Actually, the thread you pointed me to pretty much answers my questions. Thanks again.