pixma ip4300 ink

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Just a quick note... when creating my CIS kits which are essentially constant refill cartridges I've been putting the hole (for the tube fitting) over the sponge area just above the colour letter (eg: "M")..

Mikling is definitely right about the drill and sponge potentially catching which does indeed cause a mess if you're not paying attention but it works fine.

 

[mikling]

ghwellsjr
Yes, you are on the right track but you must remove the seal from the reservoir to allow ink to flow into that compartment. When you approach near full, you must slow down the rate of injection because the pressure differential between the two tanks will be low. Whenever ink comes though the two holes you've made, slow down or stop to allow the ink to move over.

hpnetserver, grandad on this forum is a very experienced Canon user who refills frequently. Now why does he and many others have a need for purging? Why not tell them they use bad ink and your limited refills on your own cartridge is evidence of this? I would expect he and many others do in fact use good inks and Canon does use a good quality sponge. I stated that during my test I compared it to a compatible and the Canon releases the old ink better than the compatible did. Furthermore, you now state that you do not use Canon OEM cartridges. Maybe you have a better cartridge than Canon's but I highly doubt it.
Now as to trying to understand the physics, there is a 3 way equlibrium point that is maintained in the cartridge. Three forces are in play not two and that is how the Canon cartridge works. To simplify the theory, you have the force that comes from the printhead. This force is generated when the chamber fires and is emptied and is required to be refilled. (The physics in the print chamber is fascinating because you get a high pressure pumping action from two open holes, same as a jet.) This wicks ink from the cartridge through the printhead assembly ink feed port. This wicking force pulls ink from the cartridge. Now at the cartridge side, the capillary action from the sponge in the cartridge prevents the ink in the cartridge from dripping down into the printhead and causing the printhead to leak. Now the third force is that as the sponge empties the same wicking action wicks ink from the reservoir. How strong is this wicking action? Strong enough that it will suck air into the reservoir via the path of least resistance through the sponge, generally at the sidewall of the sponge. You see bubbles going into the reservoir (as you stated) when this happens. Three forces are at play and they are all balanced.
Now what happens when this path of least resistance goes away or the resistance gets very high? The reservoir will not feed ink. If the reservoir does not feed ink properly, the sponge will be drier. If the sponge is drier the force the printhead needs to generate to wick ink from the cartridge gets higher. But it can only generate so much wicking force. Then you get an ink supply problem. Now there is still some ink in the chamber but it is now inadequate. So when it fires, it spits out some ink BUT since the ink it requires from the cartridge is now restricted, it actually sucks some air back in from the nozzle. Now we have some bad printing because the jet is weak. It will look like a tiny clog.
Continue printing, as more air gets ingested from the nozzle side and less ink gets fired out eventually no ink shoots out and the ink that is in the chamber gets heated continually by the firing of the printhead. When this happens, the ink in the printhead begins solidifying around the heaters in the firing chamber. Nothing will print from this nozzle. By the time this happens other nozzles will also be affected as well since there are thousands of them now on the new printers. You get all the signs of a "clog". But there is no clog blocking the path just a printhead chamber that cannot fire or shoot.
The user will print out nozzle checks and cause further caking. A printhead cleaning may draw ink from the cartridge and this may help a bit for a while as it may dissolve the ink cake. Then the "clog" happens again, and so on. But it keeps getting worse and eventually either the printhead needs to be "soaked" and cleaned, or the printhead heaters in the chambers get so encrusted with caking that it either gets destroyed or cannot be cleaned. Dead printhead.................................the death spiral of bad ink supply. All preventable if the user knows when to stop printing. Most of the time, true clogs rarely occur unless it has not printed for a long duration and the ink solidifies around the nozzle but when you start the printer there are little wipers that attempt to "scrape" these away. The other times you get bad print quality, are generally ink feed issues.

 

[ghwellsjr]

ghwellsjr
Yes, you are on the right track but you must remove the seal from the reservoir to allow ink to flow into that compartment. When you approach near fill you must slow down the rate of injection because the pressure differential between the two tanks will be low. Whenever ink come though the two holes you've made slow down or stop to allow the ink to move over.

So you refill only through the sponge area but with the plug over the refill hole removed so the ink will flow into the reservoir, correct? Why not top off the reservoir?

It's interesting that your process accomplishes almost exactly what I do with vacuum refilling except that I don't have to drill any holes or remove the original plug over the refill hole, and I don't have to worry about the integrity of replugging the refill hole. I apply an orange G&G clip to the outlet port and then fill through the air vent. I end up with a full fill with the sponge saturated. The only problem is that I have to make an extra effort to clear the ink out of the serpentine grove and the top of the sponge.

I also agree that OEM cartridges are superior, mainly because of their two-sponge design, but also because of the sponge materials. When you clean an OEM cartridge, the sponges quickly become pure white but others that I have cleaned still look like they are full of ink. The two-sponge design is important. Once the upper sponge is depleted of ink during the printing process, the ink from the reservoir generally will not flow back up into it. Instead, it allows air to get down to the top of the lower sponge so that the air can enter the groves on the wall that separates the two compartments and get down into the opening at the bottom of the wall so that it can form those bubbles that you see coming up into the reservoir.

 

[hpnetserver]

Think again about water feeding bottles in chicken farms. Chicken drinks water from the cup first. Water level in the cup is lowered. When it is as low as the mouth of the water bottle, air finds its way to get into the bottle for an exchange of equal volume of water to exit from the bottle. Air in, then water out. Air will reach the mouth of the water bottle only if water in the cup is consumed first.

Same for the ink in the sponge. It has to be consumed first so that air entering from the vent through the "empty" sponge will reach the bottom of the reserve tank in order to enter the reserve tank. The entire tank with the sponge is really the cup and the reseve tank is the water bottle. There are two differences. One is the cup also has a sponge in it. The second is ink is consumed from the exit hole at the bottom but chicken drinks water from above the cup.

Hope this makes it clearer now.

You said: Now the third force is that as the sponge empties the same wicking action wicks ink from the reservoir.
You seem to agree that sponge empties first in order to wick ink out of the reserve tank.

You then said: How strong is this wicking action? strong enough that it will suck air into the reservoir via the path of least resistance through the sponge

Well, how will the reserve tank suck air into the reserve tank? The reserve tank is sealed. This is just not possible. Try to blow air into a full coke bottle through its mouth. It's impossible with maybe a 1000 PSI air pressure.

Grandad is running an ink refill business. He once stated purging each ink cartridge before refilling is his standard practice. I agree it is an excellent business practice for quality assurance. I simply found it not needed for my own cartridges. My own experience does not imply it will not happen and it is not necessary to purge cartridges.

The need of purging is not a proof of your theory that ink is consumed out of reserve tank first leaving the ink in the sponge to cause a blockage.

 

[mikling]

I never said the sponge does not empty at the bottom first. But it does not empty the complete sponge uniformly. The picture clearly shows that.
Yes, the wicking action will suck ink from the tank but the force must be strong enough to cause the air to enter through the sidewalls grooves (like ghswellsjr states as well) because that is the path of least resistance.
I don't need to go back to my ME classes and will desist from further replies but I suggest you may want to review some physics about water or columns of liquid and what is absolute and relative pressure.
BTW grandad states " It has been generally accepted that it is difficult to refill Canon carts more than 5-10 times because they stop providing a reliable ink supply when they have been refilled too many times. "
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/docs/canon-BCI-6-cartridges.php
Maybe you need to take issue with him on that statement.

 

[mikling]

ghswellsjr, what you are doing is close to what I am also trying to achieve. My customers generally do not have a vacuum chamber. All they may be equipped with is a needle, syringe and screwdriver.
If your vacuum is strong enough, it will evacuate the air tank. When I connect a pressure gauge to the syringe at the bottom and pull back on it I can achieve about 25 in Hg or vacuum. So if your vacuum machine is strong enough, yes, it will close to totally evacute the reservoir chamber and when the vacuum is released, it will fill it. This is the same exact principle that deep vacuum fill of cartridges is all about, like Mick Carlotta's machine. The added benefit of the deep vacuum is that it completely fills every void. So many mfrs don't even grasp how this works and demonstrate their vacuum machine with integrated cartridges and don't seal the head. This is the nonsense Carlotta refers to. I have a GAST DAA here that can generate 25+in Hg but few people have these plus a vacuum chamber at their disposal.
If you have a centrifuge, then it might be better to dispose of the old ink first as well, before refilling.

 

[hpnetserver]

Ha ha, I agree that there is no need to further discuss on this thread. You don't need to agree with me. No problem.

But for what you just said: the wicking action will suck ink from the tank but the force must be strong enough to cause the air to enter through the sidewalls grooves

So you agree that air has to reach the grooves first? Isn't this just like chickens in the farm drinking out the water from the cup so that water in the cup lowers its level which allows air to reach and enter the grooves... Isn't this clear enough that ink in the sponge is consumed first to allow air to reach the grooves?

Just try to suck a coke bottle with your mouth covering the entire opening of the bottle. You will find using a straw to be easier because air can enter through the opening of the bottle to allow the sweety liquid to be sucked out through the straw. So it is simply impossible that ink is consumed out of the reserve tank first.

Oh well, I should quit now...

By the way, I won't take Grandad's words for granted. His particular phrase you quoted is just his own opinion which may be generally accepted but not necessarily correct. Besides, even if it is correct it is not a proof that ink is consumed out of the reserve tank first.

Some facts: the sponge and the reserve tank hold a total of about 15 ml of ink. An empty OEM cartridge is known to have about 3 to 4 ml of ink remaining in the cartridge when the printer declares it empty.

If ink is indeed consumed from the reserve tank first, the ink in the sponge will never have a chance to be consumed because when the reserve tank is empty the prism inside will tell the printer to declare it empty. You should have about 8 ml of ink remaining in the sponge instead of 3 to 4 ml.

An experiment: Just set up a chicken water feeder. Drill a hole at the bottom of the cup. Observe water level in the cup as well as in the bottle. Does the cup lose its water first or the bottle lose its water first? You can stick a piece of sponge in the cup if you want. If you do stick a sponge in the cup you will have to suck from the hole at the bottom of the cup just like the print head does.

 

[Grandad35]

Since I have been quoted a few times in this thread, I thought that I would stick my nose in (or is it stick my neck out?).

hpnetserver, grandad on this forum is a very experienced Canon user who refills frequently. Now why does he and many others have a need for purging?

Simply because the filter and/or sponge requires a higher suction from the ink pickup to get ink to flow after the carts have been refilled numerous times. At some point, this higher suction pressure will cause the loss of "the ink link" and ink will stop flowing.

Grandad is running an ink refill business. He once stated purging each ink cartridge before refilling is his standard practice.

Whoa! I may refill more than the average person, but there are many people who post here that print/refill a lot more than I do. I may have refilled an occasional cart for others, but never as a business. As an inveterate tinkerer, I HAVE tried many refilling techniques over the past 2 years in an attempt to get a more reliable ink supply, and I have sometimes reversed my written opinion after additional experience. I have tried vacuum refilling and direct injection into the base of the sponge (the posts are here somewhere). Both worked, but they were both far more work than what I now do, with no apparent benefits.

BTW grandad states " It has been generally accepted that it is difficult to refill Canon carts more than 5-10 times because they stop providing a reliable ink supply when they have been refilled too many times."

When I wrote that statement about 16 months ago, it was based mostly on what was written by others (including Neil Slade). With additional experience on my part, I can now say that I also agree with the statement based on personal observations. I just got through purging my complete working inventory of BCI-6 carts (45 in all) after an average of 6-7 refills on each cart. Why? Because it was taking more and more pressure to start the ink flowing by blowing into the vent port before installing a replacement cart. The final straw was when a previously working cart stopped delivering ink after it was removed to inspect the ink level and immediately reinstalled (simply blowing into the vent port to re-saturate the filter and reinstalling the same cart fixed the problem). After 16 months of trouble free operation (no banding, etc), it was time to clean the carts.

As I have stated previously, I have carts from 4 different sources in my inventory and I have yet to scrap a cart because it didn't work after purging. It may be that some carts are better than others (e.g. Canon), but I haven't seen that big of a difference in performance between the various designs. Against most people's advice, I overfill both the sponge and ink chambers, then allow each cart to sit in the sink for a few minutes with the exit port open (and the refill port closed) in case the cart wants to drip out any excess ink that may have accumulated above the sponge. Why overfill them? Because the more ink that I can get into a cart, the less often that I have to change them, and the less ink that I lose into the sponge pad, delaying the day when I have to dismantle the printer to change its diaper.

I have been reading the exchange on how these carts work with interest. I agree with parts of each argument, but I think that there are even more factors involved than those that have been mentioned. While it might be interesting to argue these points face-to-face, it is too difficult to discuss such technical details without being able to wave my arms and sketch on a white board, so I'm going to stay clear of the discussion. In any case, a detailed knowledge of how the carts work/fail is only important to most people if it gives additional insight into how to refill them.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I've tried the Inkprocess site you mentioned and only found Mick Carlotta's statements knocking the opposition. I found nothing of the article on Sponges in Cartridges that you mention.

How do I access them?

Here you go:

http://users.adelphia.net/~inkprocessusa/inkprocess/foam.html

 

[ghwellsjr]

As an inveterate tinkerer, I HAVE tried many refilling techniques over the past 2 years in an attempt to get a more reliable ink supply, and I have sometimes reversed my written opinion after additional experience. I have tried vacuum refilling and direct injection into the base of the sponge (the posts are here somewhere). Both worked, but they were both far more work than what I now do, with no apparent benefits.

I'm curious: what do you do now?