Official PK Poll - Is there any future in refilling?

[palombian]

With a little luck you might even find one of the better PGI-5/CLI-8 printers in a thrift store or similar. In my opinion those printers were the best Canon ever made for small office/home use. Here is combination of service test prints from my best dumpster find:

View attachment 4087

But continue searching for anything older than PGI-x50/CLI-x51 printers. This x50/x51 generation of printers is flimsy and noisy, I salvaged and cleaned a MG5550 and I was really disappointed even if a few regular nozzle cleanings gave a perfect nozzle check:

View attachment 4088

I'll write about my opinion of this printer in a new thread. I don't understand why Canon put such a nice print head with a lot of nozzles into such an inferior plastic thing!

The printers from the PGI-5/CLI-8 and BCI-3/6 generation are indeed sturdy (my workhorse is a MX7600 pigment with the same design).
But for none of these printers you still can buy a new printhead, you have to search a replacement printer second hand.
Since you may assume an older printhead (some are 10 yrs old) has only a part of the expectable life left, 1/3 of the price of a new printhead is IMO the maximum you can pay.
Sadly enough prices are too high now (€75 for an IP5200R ).

Consider also these venerable machines have no wifi, and are not supported in Windows 10.
All of my 525/526 do, the MG8250 even has cloud connection (also a CIS film scanner), and this generation still has a cassette and a rear tray (disappeared since 550/551).
Indeed, the printhead glides along a piece of steel i.o. a solid round tube, but the print quality did not suffer IMO.
The cartridges are small, but I seldom print large quantities in a row.

So, since I have a stock of 525/526 printers (3 types even share the same printhead), cartridges, ink and resetter, it is not interesting for me to invest in older printers.
I still may find a 525/526 bargain, but otherwise it is cheaper to buy a new printhead.

Same for my PGI-9 pigment line (PRO9500's and MX7600).

And since there are already ARC chips for the 570/571, why worry, there will always be a refillable printer.

 

[pixelphoto]

I have always used Epson printers except for the first ever inkjet printer made by Hewlett Packard. As long as Epson continues to rip off the user with outrageous prices on ink cart replacement I will do everything I can to replace the ink with 3rd party products. I despise greed.

 

[videobruce]

The printers from the PGI-5/CLI-8 and BCI-3/6 generation are indeed sturdy (my workhorse is a MX7600 pigment with the same design).
But for none of these printers you still can buy a new printhead, you have to search a replacement printer second hand.

I just got done searching eBay for a placement printhead for a iP4300 & a iP4500 and found numerous offerings. NEW in a Canon box! Unfortunately they are all from Asia (China & Hong Kong). The 4500 are 2x the cost of the 4300.

 

[The Hat]

I just got done searching eBay for a placement printhead for a iP4300 & a iP4500 and found numerous offerings. NEW in a Canon box! Unfortunately they are all from Asia (China & Hong Kong). The 4500 are 2x the cost of the 4300.

These new print heads may not be new at all, and tend to be refurbished so Caveat Emptor..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm just reading an email newsletter that farbenwerk.com has inks and new refill cartridges available for the Epson P800 printer so a major blockage for this model has been resolved.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

They could put the refillers out of business tomorrow if they would price ink reasonably. They're not going to do that. In the US, by law, they have to allow refilling.

 

[shotupdave]

we may have to go to single use chips and not have the capacioty for resetting. but refilling still be around

 

[PeterBJ]

The printers from the PGI-5/CLI-8 and BCI-3/6 generation are indeed sturdy (my workhorse is a MX7600 pigment with the same design).
But for none of these printers you still can buy a new printhead, you have to search a replacement printer second hand.
Since you may assume an older printhead (some are 10 yrs old) has only a part of the expectable life left, 1/3 of the price of a new printhead is IMO the maximum you can pay.
Sadly enough prices are too high now (€75 for an IP5200R ).

Consider also these venerable machines have no wifi, and are not supported in Windows 10........

They are not officially supported in W10, but a driver for an older Windows version will most likely work if installed in compatibility mode for that Windows version. Here is a screen shot from my W10 laptop, showing a couple of PGI-5/CLI-8 Canon printers which were bought at thrift stores. The MP800 was installed using the W7 driver in compatibility mode. The printer is fully functional under W10. The MP500 was successfully installed under W10 using plug and play. The install did not start automatically as in older Windows versions, but took a couple of mouse clicks to start.

 

[stratman]

They are not officially supported in W10

And yet my CLI-8 / PGI-5 MP830 driver file installed the usual way without any need for compatability settings or using Win 10's plug and play following the Win 10 upgrade from Win 8.1.

 

[The Hat]

PeterBJ said:
They are not officially supported in W10
Four of my older printers, Brother HL -1240, Canon i865, iX4000 and i9950 caused a lot of difficulty’s and refused to accept the Win 7 drivers with Win 8.1, but eventually by powering off the printers and USB before a reboot they gave in and installed correctly, a strange things dough my iP4500 which is as old as the rest, installed first time...