Refilling Canon with OEM ink

[Ink stained Fingers]

I was using PGI-72 pigment inks by octoinkjet, no problems as mentioned.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I created a profile for this test - pigment inks in an IP7250 , the gamut is pretty small, compared to pigment inks in a WF2010W, on the same Aldi/Netbit paper which yields a much larger gamut.


I can imagine there is some tweaking possible with the color saturation settings in the driver, I don't have a feeling at this time how the paper selection and driver settings influence the gamut, I only have seen that the gamut with a higher quality setting for a photo paper glossy actually is smaller , so there would be some testing necessary. I'll run these same PGI-72 inks in the WF2010W as well to eliminate ink variations for a comparison. Be aware - this is experimental and preliminary

 

[The Hat]

It could be that some of the pigment particles got filtered out by the sponge in the cartridges, you can get the same effect when a pigment cartridges has not been shaken for weeks and you try to do a quick print, or did you forget to shake the ink bottles...

 

[martin0reg]

...
Pharmacist did try something similar with BCI-6 carts and it didn’t work out for him...

Yes I remember his short report too, and I think he did not suspect clogging of the nozzles but clogging of the small fine ink lines in the head which are leading to the nozzle plate .... And ISF is right to point out the sponge design of the carts...
This is a warning to all who are going to take the risk. I once took the risk and filled fuji DL dye ink in a canon... but when there was the slightest sign of bad ink flow I stopped the trial.

BTW - I'm still asking for the secret ingredients or chemical properety that makes an ink, pigment or dye, suitable for the thermal bubble jet process. Would be a killer to make DL ink useable in canon printers!

 

[PalaDolphin]

Listening...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

- there is a particular amount of ink within the nozzle, and some electrical energy , with a short pulse, is used to boil, evaporate that ink creating a gaseous bubble which expels the residual ink, which creates a vacuum pulling ink in again for the next cycle. The energy to evaporate a particular amount of liquid is a physical property of the liquid and can vary very much, so Canon uses a particular mix of whatever glykoles etc which you can read in the material safety data sheets. And Epson just uses a different mix which does not boil that easily.
The PGI-550 paper black ink for the IP7250 is a pigment ink and comes in a cartridge with the same construction as the CLI-551 dye ink cartridges - with a sponge inside, that is an indication for me, that the sponge does not filter pigments that much, and people are refilling pigment ink into the PGI-550 cartridge which tells me that the sponge is not a significant hindrance for pigment inks, even by repeated use of the same cartridge. And Canon is running pigment inks in their Pro 10/1000 printers suitable for a bubble printhead - so why not switching the other pigment inks as well into another printer.
I did several nozzle checks during my experiment which all looked clean.
But again, this was just a very short experiment based on the considerations above, that test is over and I'm not able to continue any more tests - colors and saturation, driver settings, longer term use etc and I'm not defecting to Canon printers for that so I just do not know whether such ink swapping is feasible at all for regular use. I started that test with a clean refill cartridge set so any mixing with previous dye inks did not occur.

 

[Flying Scotsman]

@Ink stained Fingers in your opinion and based on short term use did you see any real problems in the test you did

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

We did the test with a pristine refill cartridge set, for 3 days and used about 3/4 of the inks per status monitor, the ink chambers were about empty, the ink foams in the 2nd chambers still very much saturated, not all inks were depleted equally. I printed various test images and a profile patch sheet, tested some driver settings and checked every day for a good nozzle check, and we then replaced the refill cartridges back to 3rd party standard cartridges. My friend is typically buying those 10-packs, but since inks don't use up equally he is balancing that off with some refill. He recognized fading of prints he did some time ago, but now has another plan - (more reliable) - swapping over to genuine Canon cartridges just for printing photos - and printing all the other stuff with the 3rd party ones for which fading doesn't matter so much. So again, it worked, short term, with some weakness in the magenta range which most likely can be compensated with some driver settings. The Pro 10 is running with 4 pl droplets, the IP7250 with smaller ones - is it 1-1.5 pl? for magenta and cyan - which may inhibit the ink flow somehow - I just don't know, that all would require some more specific testing for this or other effects. So - no - we didn't kill a printhead with this test - but it's just not enough data to make any recommendation.

 

[The Hat]

This is a warning to all who are going to take the risk. I once took the risk and filled fuji DL dye ink in a canon... but when there was the slightest sign of bad ink flow I stopped the trial.

The Canon print head needs certain chemicals and the correct viscosity to function effectively, but Epson inks fail to work in the same way in the Canon head.

As its been shown some Canon heads will work with pigment ink but must be watched very carefully, if you’re going to test out different inks, be prepared to lose the odd print head, because luck plays a big part in any testing...

 

[mikling]

It's all easy peasy until it isn't.

Fact...sponge based carts are a whole lot cheaper than PGI-9 and PGI-72 carts to make and sell for a profit. Then why would Canon got to the expense of this unique construction? Add to that the intricate and innovative stirring paddles inside? That we can experiment is great but as Hat indicated be prepared to pay the price of that fun at times. I know Hat has but he gets great value of out of it. Some poor soul trying the same thing will not be impressed when his printer chokes.

Pigment text black pigment ink is a whole different animal to pigment ink for printing on photo papers. WHOLE lot of things very different going on. The parallelism pointed is not parallel at all!

Pigment ink for Epson printers is not just the boiling point viscosity etc. Epson pigment ink is literally easy peasy compared to formulating a good Canon pigment. I am currently involved knee deep in that deep swamp with various parties. It ain't as easy as most think until it doesn't work as intended and you end up with a headache that requires some kind of breakthrough....that is not documented or known except maybe to Canon. And even then, I see something that most have not picked up that indicates they also faced hurdles. I will say no more to this as I consider that proprietary.

I will end any more statements with a warning. Heed Hat's statements about being prepared to lose equipment along the way and not point fingers. Firmware controls the printhead functions. Profiling cannot go beyond the firmware limits to ink output. Profiling thus has limits as well...and the ink alone does not constitute the gamut of a printer. Do not for one minute think that profiling any printer with any ink will work and provide good results. A good chuckle, I will have for that thought. Two minutes maybe.