First Refill - Canon

[sathyakala]

I have canon MP258 which used pigment black cartridge (PG-810) and color cartridge (CL-811 - Tri color). Right now the black shows as very little ink in the status monitor (Color shows as sufficient still, about 1/3 full).

Right now I am still able to print black printouts on paper. Should I wait till the black cartridge is completely empty or Can I refill the black cartridge now?

I have purchased ink already and this is the first refill I will be attempting. I am not sure about compatibility of this ink with Original canon ink in the cartridge but I guess I will find out soon....

I saw youtube videos about refill and it says to inject slowly. Assuming I am injecting say 5ml, is it enough if I take 20 secs for injecting 5ml of ink?

Thanks.

 

[Tudor]

You should refill before it is empty. Slower is better when refilling these cartridges because you are injecting ink directly into the sponge and you want to avoid the formation of foam. 20 secs should be ok, but it doesn't hurt to make it an even 30.
Make sure you do a cleaning cycle after refilling and print a nozzle check.

This is a BK nozzle test on a PG-510 cartridge refilled a few times with InkTec ink and method. ~100ml of InkTec ink went through this cartridge.

 

[inkoholic]

You should refill before it is empty. Slower is better when refilling these cartridges because you are injecting ink directly into the sponge and you want to avoid the formation of foam. 20 secs should be ok, but it doesn't hurt to make it an even 30.
Make sure you do a cleaning cycle after refilling and print a nozzle check.

This is a BK nozzle test on a PG-510 cartridge refilled a few times with InkTec ink and method. ~100ml of InkTec ink went through this cartridge.

[url]http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/uploads/thumbs/8048_img_0003_copy.jpg[/url]

100ml through a combicart and still looking good. Looks a lot sharper also than the black from my MP610's semipermanent head. Unfortunately the nifty refill kits by Inktec are hard to come by in the Netherlands.

How do you refill the tricolour by the way? After refilling you need to suck a couple milliliters of ink from the bottom of the cartridge (I think): isn't this all 3 colours CMY combined? Seems like a waste of ink.

 

[Tudor]

How do you refill the tricolour by the way? After refilling you need to suck a couple milliliters of ink from the bottom of the cartridge (I think): isn't this all 3 colours CMY combined? Seems like a waste of ink.

Yes, you throw away some ink, but the ink is cheap compared to OEM ink. I didn't have much success in refilling the tricolour cartridge (used in mp250). Maybe I'm doing something wrong, or they are too fragile, or maybe the plastic/silicone things that clean the printhead did this, but when the second cartridge was damaged I just gave up and bought an ip3600. I still use the mp250 for scanning or copying documents with only the black cartridge active.
Here's the full nozzle test:

 

[inkoholic]

How do you refill the tricolour by the way? After refilling you need to suck a couple milliliters of ink from the bottom of the cartridge (I think): isn't this all 3 colours CMY combined? Seems like a waste of ink.

Yes, you throw away some ink, but the ink is cheap compared to OEM ink. I didn't have much success in refilling the tricolour cartridge (used in mp250). Maybe I'm doing something wrong, or they are too fragile, or maybe the plastic/silicone things that clean the printhead did this, but when the second cartridge was damaged I just gave up and bought an ip3600. I still use the mp250 for scanning or copying documents with only the black cartridge active.
Here's the full nozzle test:
[url]http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/uploads/thumbs/8048_mp_250.jpg[/url]

Did you try cleaning the tricolour a couple of times? I had the same kind of weird nozzle test after my first refill. A few cleaning cycles solved the problem. Inktec has complete video tutorials on their site as well.

 

[sathyakala]

Well finally I refilled the black 810 cartridge. Pulling ink into syringe was harder than I thought. Hence stopped with 4 to 5 ml of black ink (cartridge didn't overflow). Tried but couldn't suck any ink from the bottom of the cartridge. anyway put it back in the printer, did a cleaning and a nozzle check. Seems fine now. Since the cartridge was not fully empty, if there is any problem due to refilling, probably it may show up after the original ink is fully used up.

For these cartridges (not resettable PG810,CL811), I guess I have to disable ink monitoring when the printer says there is no ink (currently it thinks black ink is low). Once ink monitoring is disabled, should I keep topping off some ink at regular intervals or refill when the printout is not OK?

 

[Tudor]

Did you try cleaning the tricolour a couple of times? I had the same kind of weird nozzle test after my first refill. A few cleaning cycles solved the problem. Inktec has complete video tutorials on their site as well.

Did you notice that the cyan strip is bent to the right and the magenta to the left? Not all of the strip, just the 2/3 in the middle. That's what bothers me. The same thing happened to the previous tricolour cartridge. I doubt it's my refilling tehnique because the black is ok on the nozzle test, so it must be something wrong with the printer. I cleaned the contacts on the cartridge and in the printer (while it was disconnected from the power supply)... no change.
Anyway, the printhead is damaged and I can see it, but I don't know the cause (and stopped looking for it ).

This is what it looks like:

You can see it better on the magenta row (wish I could take a better photo), the nozzles seem different on the middle 2/3.

Once ink monitoring is disabled, should I keep topping off some ink at regular intervals or refill when the printout is not OK?

Top off.

 

[sathyakala]

Well, I filled both PG-810 (Pigment black) and CL-811 (Tri-color, Magenta, Cyan and Yellow). The nozzle check seemed OK. I refilled them when the Printer said the ink is low. Even though I have printed 40-50 pages or more after that, still the ink monitor is still saying the ink is low (It still does not say empty). These carts can't be reset and we can only disable ink monitoring when it says the cart is empty and hence my question. I was hoping, it will say cart is empty so that I can disable ink monitoring and not get this low ink popup every time.

Everytime I use the printer, it is making noise which makes me think that it is cleaning. Is there a way to reduce this? I am afraid the waste ink pad may get filled-up quickly. Is there any setting which controls how often the printer initiates auto-cleaning or is this automatic?

 

[sathyakala]

I have a problem in CL-811 tri-color cartridge. The Yellow is not flowing. Even when I swipe on paper napkin, I see only 2 color lines (Cyan and Magentha). I added 2ml of ink of each color. still the same. I did cleaning twice. The nozzle check didn't show yellow band. Then I did a deep clean. After the deep clean, I see traces of yellow in nozzle check. Again, I took out the cartridge and swiped it in paper napkins (with ammonia glass cleaner sprayed). Only the two colors are coming out consistently. Once I saw little yellow come out.

I am not sure what the problem is. I have left the cart in the printer to soak and see if it fixes itself tomorrow. Any idea what the problem could be or what can do to try and fix it?

I don't know how long this problem has been there but I did a nozzle check after refilling last time (about 1 month back) and it was OK then.

We have been printing something or the other and hence I didn't do any nozzle check. Could it be Yellow wasn't used and could have clogged?

 

[Tudor]

When the printer runs a cleaning cycle it uses all the colours. Are you sure that there was enough ink in the yellow sponge?
The printer doesn't use the same ammount of ink from all three colours when printing... How do you know how much ink to put in each chamber on the tricolour cartridge?