Refilling HP Designjet CP series printers

[AlienSteve]

I just became the happy owner of an HP Designjet 3000cp wide format printer. 54 inch wide prints!! Yowza.

I couldn't really afford it, but it was one of those lucky finds that I'd never come across again. But it's out of ink, has the dye C180xA cartridge/print head installed.

Well, I have loads of Encad GA (dye) ink that I got with a broken Encad Novajet Pro 36. Since the Novajet uses HP print heads, I'm taking a chance and refilling the 3000cp cartridges with that ink.

They are bagged cartridges, aluminized mylar bags in a long cardboard box. No easy way to inject ink, so I cut the hose and installed a T junction and Luer lock fitting. I clamp the hose after refilling so it doesn't suck air in, then I have plugs for the Luer lock fitting.

So far I have only refilled the yellow, and it seems to work just fine! It took 8 syringes at about 35ml per, so about 280mL of ink and the bag was still slack. Ran a Head Refill, worked just fine. So next I'm going to refit and refill the rest of the cartridges.

The yellow head displays a warning on the printer, book says that is caused by either 1. the printer deciding too much ink has gone through the head or 2. too man clogged nozzles. Since all the other print heads show no warning, and the yellow nozzle check shows many missing nozzles, I think that's it.

My plan is to ultimately get the UV (pigmented) cartridge/print head sets, but that's going to be around $800. So the plan is to make some money printing with the dye inks.

Anyone else here have any of the Designjet CP series? 2000cp, 2500cp, 2800cp, 3000cp, 3500cp, or 3800cp?

 

[Nifty]

Steve, welcome to the forum! I know you're new, so you probably aren't aware of my requirement for pictures when people post cool stuff like this! So, where are the pictures man?

 

[AlienSteve]

How's this? As you can see, I've only done the yellow so far. There is a place near Seattle called The Creation Station, I'd picked up a bunch of unused medical surplus for Mad Scientist-type projects. I cut some of it up and patched it in.

There is a seal on the end of the Luer Lock. I attach a syringe full of ink, then after I've injected a few syringes worth I suck out any air. Dissolved air, evaporated water/solvents. I use the clamp before removing the syringe each time so it doesn't just fill up with air. Then when I'm done, the white cap goes on and I unclamp.

Since the cartridge itself is below, if my tubing leaks it just sucks in air rather than leaking ink.

 

[Nifty]

Refilling + 54 inch printer... oh the things I could do!!!!

Thanks for the pic steve! Now, let's see some pics of that bay in action!

 

[AlienSteve]

I need to refit the other three colors and fill them, I'd hate to run out of ink during testing and run a cart dry.

I also need to get it to give me the cleaning stations/waste ink containters, so I can fill them out. I've not used HP printers much before now, so I'm doing a lot of Googleing.

I see that print heads in this class are remembered by the printer, at least for long enough so putting one right back in will get recognized as the same (empty) cartridge. There are tricks to it, involving putting tape over specific contacts temporarily. I may have to do that.

Or removing all 4 print heads and then closing the lid. It may think I'm getting it ready for transport.

 

[AlienSteve]

The bugger won't let me complete the ink change process if I just plug the same heads back in. I want it to give me the cleaning stations so I can clean them up.

So I did the old trick of getting it to unpark the heads, then used the hard off switch to remove power. Although the cleaning station holder was not extended, I could still just reach inside and take them out. You just push down a little on the handle and gently pull out.

The yellow was a bit crusty, hard little flakes of yellow ink.

Here's the black:

 

[Nifty]

wow, that's amazing. If I understand correctly, that is a removable head cleaning / resting station?

 

[AlienSteve]

Yes, that is what it is. It looks to have some kind of felt or absorbent material in the bottom, but not much.

However, I still have the problem of the yellow cartridge. It shows as 1 bar, which the book says it's at the end of life, although when I can get it to test print it is printing. I am going to try the tape trick (tape over specific contacts, reinsert, remove, remove tape, reinsert.)

I have another problem: sometimes it says "No Media" when I just loaded paper! I'm hoping I don't find out I've bought someone else's problem child.

 

[AlienSteve]

Feedthisway emailed me off list about resetting the cartridges. I'd rather discuss this on the list, so others may benefit or be spurred to answer.

I have not tried this yet, but it purports to be a way to cause an HP to think it has a new cartridge with HP 15, 17, 23, 41, 45 and 78 cartridges.
http://stratitec.com/inkrefill/support/hplowink.html

The CP heads look very much like the 15 or 45, so this may work.

 

[feedthisway]

Hi Steve and forum, I have the same printer which I got for a bargain 'cause the parallel port was broken, but it works 100% over ethernet. I use it for a personal research project at home and like you, wanted to try some other inks. By the way, I found I could get ink out of and into the CP cartridges using a fat syringe with the needle off - it was just right to depress the ball bearing and allow ink to pass - got to have a steady hand though! Also pretty hard to photograph, apologies admin!

I had a frustrating problem thrown up a couple of nights ago. I have a good new set of UV heads in and I tried to change the cyan for an old one I got with the printer, to experiment on - see what happened refilling with new ink - this one was rejected, presumably cause of some date or ink throughput signal. Trouble is now when I put the good new one back in it reads as near empty when it was full before. That means buying a new cyan soon when the old one is barely 10% used!

Yesterday I found similar sites to the one you link to and tried the '45 method. There is no direct correlation though because of the CP's startup and head parking behaviour. If you find a way through or around this it would be great to hear.

I found another reference to a method I'm also trying. Again it's not 100% applicable.

http://www.atlascopy.com/newsletters/Resetting_Cartridge_Ink_Levels.htm

If anyone out there knows how to get the CP to read an ink system as new, or the head throughtput as low, or more specifically - how to get it to acknowledge that the head in there is actually a new one, not the old one it had a momentary glimpse of, I'd love to know.