just did my first refill on pixma ip4500...whats next?

[yanomilano]

Hey Guys,
I finally did it and it seems to works. I refilled the original carts after i removed the hole on the top and seems to be working ok. I do have some warnings on two carts and x and an ! mark. I have a few questions because I want to leave this setup for someone who will be only replacing carts if necessary and they are not tech savvy.

1. If i just refill more carts and leave them waiting for their turn will that work or will they dry out?

1.1 How much ink should I put in each cart...after a while the sponge seems to take in the entire tank content...i dont want to put too much.

2. Do I need a re-setter...or is it possible to go without them. IF no which one should I get?

3. I read about problems with clogging, leaking etc that develop after using refilled carts. What can I do to prevent that.

Again, I would like to leave the system relatively easy to maintain and dependable. Please help.

Sincerely,
ME

 

[ghwellsjr]

1. If you refill more carts than you can use right away, you should leave the orange clip over the outlet port or tape or whatever you use to plug the outlet port while refilling and store the carts in an air tight ziplock bag with a folded up sheet of paper towel soaked in water. This will keep the cartridges from drying out.

1.1 When you refill from the top like you did, the sponge will quickly become saturated which isn't the best but not necessarily bad. It is best to half fill the reservoir and let the bottom sponge material soak up that ink, then cover the air vent hole with a piece of tape and refill the reservoir to the maximum, put whatever plug you have for the refill hole, then remove the tape over the outlet hole.

2. You can get by without a resetter by telling the printer that you are willing to void the warranty when it asks you, but this will disable the ink monitoring and you will have to periodically remove your cartridges to see if they are ready for more ink. I use the Redsetter but there are others.

3. If you refill with the German method, you will not have a problem with leaking. With the top fill, you need to make sure that the refill plug is air tight. You should temporarily remove the cover on the outlet port when you are done refilling to see if the ink leaks out after a few minutes.

 

[msmart]

1. Agree with ghwellsjr

1.1. I refill from the top too. Did you cover the outlet port with the orange clip using a rubber band to hold it on? That's what I do and fill the tank to about 1/8" below the top. Plug the hole with a stopper that came with the refill kit (see sig).

2. Since you're leaving it with someone not tech savvy, leave the warnings on and buy a resetter. I bought/use this one: THIS one.

3. Since I started refilling about a year ago, I'm still using the original OEM carts I started with. No problems yet. As ghwellsjr says, remove the outlet port cover after refilling (after refill plug is inserted) to see if anything drips. I hold a paper towel up to the port to soak up any ink that may want to drip out. Then cover it back up until it's needed. Be sure to tell your friend to hold their hand or a paper towel under the cartridge as they're getting ready to install it just in case ink should leak out. Much easier to wash the hand then getting ink drops out of carpet.

Congratulations on your first refill. It gets easier the second time since you won't have to mess with removing the refill hole ball.

 

[The Hat]

ghwellsjr

I only fill my Canon cartridges from the top (Habit/lazy) and never changed over to the German method (not yet). The reason I am on is that when refilling the cartridges the ink always cover both sponges no matter what I do and just wondered if that is caused by the air balance being disturbed in some way because of the drill hole.
The German method is obviously a better way to fill as you say, only one sponge gets saturated/against the top fill where both become saturated.
Is there any of the top filling veterans on here got a different opinion as to the lightly causes. That being said the cartridges performs perfectly well despite the over fill.
Another thing was that there are two sponges in the smaller 520 Canon cartridges, and the air vents in the side wall are the same height as the bigger cartridges (I remembered you querying that)..

 

[ghwellsjr]

I don't think there is any problem saturating the entire sponge area on the first refill. Previously, I vacuum refilled hundreds of BCI-6 cartridges through the air vent (upside down) and this completely saturates the entire sponge area. These all worked with no problem but I never refilled any of them a second time.

However, I did have problems with the BCI-3eBk which I refilled with Inktec pigment black ink. Some of these I refilled a second time and half of those would not flow ink properly. I believe part of the blame is on the tendency of Inktek's pigment black ink to clog but it may also have had something to do with saturating the entire sponge area. I just don't know.

One more thing, I had problems with other pigment black ink in BCI-3eBk cartridges refilling them by the German method. I now test my refilled pigment black cartridges by printing a solid black page on plain paper. A cartridge that has flow problems will start printing white streaks. The only way I could get these cartridges to work again was by vacuum refilling them right side up with the air vent sealed, in other words, through the outlet port. Now I beginning to think that the clog is in the filter in the outlet port rather than in the sponge material itself. Of course, it could be both. I may go back to vacuum refilling, at least for pigment cartridges, for this very reason.

 

[The Hat]

ghwellsjr

I had a similar problem with my 3eBK cartridge when I only filled the reservoir up once and didnt top it up again. Maybe you should give websnail new kmp black a trail..

 

[ghwellsjr]

I'm not sure I understand your comment. Did you mean give it a "trial"? If so, I already have purchased both the universal and the special one for Canon PGI carts.

 

[The Hat]

ghwellsjr


:| Sorry I am a bit late with my comments, I meant "give it a go/try it out ". Anyway I'm very glad to hear you have got some.

 

[vallejoboy]

One more thing, I had problems with other pigment black ink in BCI-3eBk cartridges refilling them by the German method. I now test my refilled pigment black cartridges by printing a solid black page on plain paper. A cartridge that has flow problems will start printing white streaks. The only way I could get these cartridges to work again was by vacuum refilling them right side up with the air vent sealed, in other words, through the outlet port. Now I beginning to think that the clog is in the filter in the outlet port rather than in the sponge material itself. Of course, it could be both. I may go back to vacuum refilling, at least for pigment cartridges, for this very reason.

I'm using hobbicolors black pigment ink on my PGI-220 and if I dont print anything for a day or two I get a clog (streaks on text). Going through the clean cycle fixes it though, so is this an ink specific problem because I don't remember having this problem when my cart still had OEM ink.(I though these printers go through clean cycles by themselves if they are left on and so I'm puzzled as to why it still clogs even though I leave it on all the time.) Everything else seems okay. Also to comment on overfilling, I overfilled the yellow cart by accident and so far it seems okay, hopefully it stays that way. All I did was suck out all the ink and redo it. I refill via German method.

 

[ghwellsjr]

A lot of people have observed that Canon cartridges start having flow problems after many refills. I had the problem with the second refill on more than a dozen cartridges using Inktec's pigment black ink which I am now convinced is prone to clogging cartridges and the waste ink absorber pads inside the printer. I never had a clogging problem with this ink in the print head itself.

Cleaning cycles will not cure the flow problem in a cartridge. You can usually tell if a cartridge has the problem by putting the top of the cartridge to your lips and blowing into the air vent to get some ink to come out of the outlet port. If it is really hard to get the ink out, you have a flow problem. At this point, most people purge their cartridges by flushing water through them, especially if they top fill. Since I don't top fill, I tried other methods but they didn't work on the pigment cartridges and so I tried the vacuum refill scheme which you quoted.