My MAXIFY 5350 is on refill ink

[The Hat]

With all the toing and froing with these carts I just had to get a set instead of first waiting for a response from Octopus about their refillable carts and chips that I’m using, I like to be in the deep end before I realise I actually have a problem.

The Octopus set I have refuse to empty so I don’t know how the chips are going to react yet, every so often I get black ink on a couple of sheets despite using it daily, and I get a very small puddle of ink on the platen area also.

This pisses me off, and I want shot of them, because they shouldn’t do that so there must be something wrong with their construction, so what else is going wrong in there and the jury is still out on the ARC chips, I only go to the printer to put paper in it, otherwise I never touch it.

My new carts have been ordered and should be on their way by tomorrow..

 

[Redbrickman]

Join the club Exactly how my Octopus carts behave. Yor new ones should be here fairly quickly, i was surprised that the AliExpress delivery only took
8 days.

 

[The Hat]

The upgrade parts for my CR-10 have still not arrived, dispatched the 10th of this month...
It’s a Feckin pity RobotShop and and their express delivery, could learn a thing or two from AliExpress ..

 

[palombian]

I assume the cart is not filled like the OEM's i.e.the syringe does not make a perfect seal in the port when filling and is not cycled up and down to expel air/ink.

Thanks for the info.

I received with my carts a small plastic tip to place on the syringe reducing the diameter to make it not fit thight in the ink fill hole.
So I injected ink that way letting air evacuate around the tip.

I removed carefully the sticker from the "old type" refillables.
They seem to contain some pressure equalising mechanism also.
Behind the square in the middle is a (very) small airbag that collapses when pressing on the cartridge.

 

[Redbrickman]

Very interesting to see this. I think the bags are just for pressure equalisation in these carts rather than to hold ink.

 

[palombian]

With all the toing and froing with these carts I just had to get a set instead of first waiting for a response from Octopus about their refillable carts and chips that I’m using, I like to be in the deep end before I realise I actually have a problem.

The Octopus set I have refuse to empty so I don’t know how the chips are going to react yet, every so often I get black ink on a couple of sheets despite using it daily, and I get a very small puddle of ink on the platen area also.

This pisses me off, and I want shot of them, because they shouldn’t do that so there must be something wrong with their construction, so what else is going wrong in there and the jury is still out on the ARC chips, I only go to the printer to put paper in it, otherwise I never touch it.

My new carts have been ordered and should be on their way by tomorrow..

My objective also was to have a refilled printer that could be operated without any special intervention.
If the new carts keep their promises and the auto reset chips will behave as OEM's it could be possible to leave it in the hands of an unexperienced person.
Never give up in refilling.

Maybe the ink pads will be full sooner, but that will be the case with OEM carts also.
By refilling you will have saved several new printers at that time.

The tricks we learned to change the carts before the printer allows it, refill all carts together, disregard ink levels, prime by tapping of some ink etc are necessary to master the printer at any moment, but I doubt it will save a lot in the long term.
Leaving the printer alone has already be adviced to avoid ink problems.

I am very pleased with the MAXIFY, and many home users should consider it as an alternative to the usual Canon Pixma's all-in-ones with dye ink for a comparable price.
The ink does not fade, is water resistent, photo's are much better than you should think, probably the ink pads will be much larger and the replacement printheads are cheaper.

 

[The Hat]

I reckon I can give 5 stars to this printer too, yes, the carts are a bit of a bummer, but the printer is solid and prints very well, I am more than happy with it, I just have to master doing Duplex pages in Adobes PDF again!

An update on La Poste and my order, it would seem they sent the parcel to the wrong Friggin Country, now they’re going back to located it, serves me right, I should have sourced the stuff in China.
I’ll probably get my new carts delivered by AliExpress before I get this missing parcel back...

 

[mikling]

Very interesting to see this. I think the bags are just for pressure equalisation in these carts rather than to hold ink.

The bag on the side is to accommodate expansion due to barometric pressure and temperature fluctuations. When the cart is initially filled the accordion looseness of the bag will end up exerting a positive pressure on the nozzles. Until the bag has been pulled back to the inside, you could encounter dripping. I think about 1-2 cc of ink consumption will pull the bag back into the cart and THEN the negative pressure will begin developing. So if you refill and then do not use up 1-2 cc of ink, then you will likely have drips.

One way to get around this is to actually fill the cart completely and then draw out 2cc of ink and then the bag will collapse inside and thereafter the cart will hold negative pressure. If you do not get the bag to collapsse you run the risk of drips.

It appears you all have just refilled and printed a little bit but not sufficient to collapse the bag and generate the pressure and thus end up with drips.

I'm also thinking at this point that if the pigment ink has insufficient surface tension, then drips could occur as well even with the pressure set up. Has anybody checked this aspect?

 

[mikling]

Thanks for the info.

I received with my carts a small plastic tip to place on the syringe reducing the diameter to make it not fit thight in the ink fill hole.
So I injected ink that way letting air evacuate around the tip.

I removed carefully the sticker from the "old type" refillables.
They seem to contain some pressure equalising mechanism also.
Behind the square in the middle is a (very) small airbag that collapses when pressing on the cartridge.

View attachment 6213

Remove the square cover and see what the bag is. It is a loose bag that flops around. Why? That circular thing on the left is likely a flapper valve that allows air in but stops flow going the opposite direction. It will have some hysteresis on the flap so it will take some level of negative pressure to open the flap. The opposite flow direction will be perfect. Now, what happens when the cart is half full or nearly empty and the temperature rises? What happens to the air inside the cart.
Expansion of the air and ink....if this expansion is not accomodated somehow, what happens.
The ink is forced out of the printhead because the flapper valve will seal the entrance. Hence the bag.

Now what happens when the barometric pressure fluctuates? Hmmm. similar situation as above.

Now you will begin understanding what the cart is trying to do and how it works.

All of these valves etc. require some degree of proper assembly. and that is where the problem is sometimes.

In summary, there is always one entrance point and one exit point and something must take care of the dynamic environment.

 

[The Hat]

WE got low pressure weather fronts passing over the country every second or third day and my barometer is registering them like a Yoyo, so if that’s anything to go by then the pressure in these carts are also varying up and down, which might account for the occasional leak...