Spongeless cartridge

[panos]

OK, after a few final retries with the Jetyoung spongeless cartridges and after being contacted by Jetyoung with more instructions I think I can provide a verdict. The spongeless cartridge is a great idea. But its implementation from Jetyoung, though it has a great potential, it is not yet reliable.

Without a sponge in the outlet hole, the cartridge creates a puddle of ink that is secured by the outlet lips and the rubber pad which surrounds the metallic ink pickups on the printhead. This engineering works without problems in the first time. However, when one removes the cartridge, the puddled ink flows freely from the printhead nozzles and that creates a mess.

Secondly, the cartridges are not build with high quality standards. In many cases I had to apply force in order to place them in their right positions. The most notable reason for this is that one side of the spongeless cartridge is made up from a plastic membrane that is glued to the polyester casing. Small excesses of this membrane protrude and that causes the cartridge to be out of the proper size.

Thirdly, of the 20 cartridges I bought (4 for each color), I tried at least the half of them and I was never without problems. Despite prolonged cleaning and deep cleaning cycles, I never found myself at ease with the results. Either a color would not print at all, or there would be streaks and then I would remove the printhead to inspect it only to find puddles of ink at the nozzles... a huge constrast with the original BCIs which would "heal" the printhead of any adverse effects caused by the Jetyoungs.

Is there an issue of viscosity? Honestly, I don't think so. What I do know is that I tried these cartridges with the ink provided by Jetyoung and the results were far worse to what I experienced when I filled them with my own "unspecified, low quality" ink. And by the way, I also tried the Jetyoung ink on the normal Canon cartridges and it didn't work well either.

To be fair, I must say that I've had an excellent communication with Jetyoung. They accept paypal, and they were eager to accomodate with my special instructions about shipping. The package arrived in 4 days. And the prices are unbelievably low! I simply don't think that their spongeless cartridge, in its current design, is meant to be used as a reliable alternative.

 

[Grandad35]

panos,

Thanks for the update and excellent summary. It's too bad that these carts weren't reliable, as they would have provided a solution to the sponge clogging issue when refilling conventional carts. As was stated in the early posts in this thread, designing a workable spongeless system presents many difficult engineering problems.

 

[ocular]

I am still going with Spongeless cartridge setup. The Continuous inks system with the jetyoung cartridges in place has been flawless. I use a single black spongeless refillable with sponged colour cartridges in another system. I agree with Panos that the spongeless cartridge doesn't respond well to being taken out and put back in with the ink slopping over inlet hole in the printhead.

When the cartridge ink gets low it's performance becomes erratic. I have discovered that the cartridges fill more completely if you turn the cartridge upside down with the syringe in place (the syringe is hanging down) and create the vacum by pulling on the syringe and suck out the air, and then turn the syringe upright and allow the ink to be sucked in from the syringe. Do this 2-3 times to maximally fill the cartridge. A maximal refill with the exit clip in place weighs about 48gms (empty cartridge weighs 29gms)- suggests almost 20 mls of ink for a complete refill.

Before I tried this refill technique (which differs from the Jetyoung described technique) I didn't seem to get complete refills and the inkflow was erratic - like there was an airlock in the channels of the cartridge.

Panos what does your "full" black spongeless cartridge weigh with its exit port clip in place?

 

[panos]

Occular I've used exactly this method as you are describing. I'll edit this posting to add the weight measures, but I feel I am done testing these cartridges. I can't stand anymore cleaning cycles... the "waste tank full" message must be approaching

Edit - here are the measures:

BCI 3: 47 gr

BCI 6: 30 gr

all measures +/- 2 gr (measured WITHOUT the exit port clip. Are you sure we have the same one? -- Correction, yes we have the same. Well the clip weighs about 2 grams)

Do you think I'm following an incorrect filling procedure?

 

[photoguy]

I've just discovered this new spongeless refillable. They claim that it can be refilled in the printer. Not much detail on their site, I'm wondering if anyone has seen these before. They also sell the spongeless refillables tested by Ocular. The cartridge can be seen here: http://www.cutemaker.com/sdp/307459/4/pd-1174350/1518748-588931.html
photoguy

 

[hpnetserver]

I bought a refurbished Epson R300 a few months ago. I put the set of 6 Epson OEM carts away immediately in case I need to return the printer so that I do not have to pay for the ink cartridges if they were already used. So I purahsed a set of spongeless R300 cartridges from Ebay and some bulk ink as well. I have been able to fill and later refill these cartridges with a syringe. Ink filled nicely but they simply never worked. I gave up and put the printer aside. Well, I revisited it again today by filled up the cartridges to start with. Reset all the chips so that the monitor sees them all full. Still nozzle test showed some colors missed some segments. Repeated cleaning cycles. Still nozzle test showed some missing segments on some colors. I kept repeating and checking the cartridges trying to figure out what's wrong. Eventually one of the color became empty... Most of other colors were also near empty too. I gave up.

I took the 6 OEM carts out and put them in. Can't return the printer any more. All in a sudden like magic the OEM carts in the printer worked and worked extremely well. I did not even need to manually invoke a single cleaning cycle. Printed half a dozen 8x11 photos and still worked flawlessly. My conclusion is those spongeless cartridges are crap. They don't worth trying. Now I have quite some refill ink remains but have to use OEM cartridges at this point.

Anyone has different experience with spongeless cartridges for Epson R300? I bought the R300 for its CD printing feature. I guess without the ability to refill I will use it only for occassional CD printing.

 

[color1]

So I purahsed a set of spongeless R300 cartridges from Ebay and some bulk ink as well.

Could you post the link from ebay?
I get spongeles carts from MIS for a epson 890 and It's was awfull. Never worked. I spent a 2oz st of ink and have none prints at all. I still waiting a solution from MIS.... ;-(

 

[dashisiong]

i found some thing from a singapore friend....check it out.

Heard he is using it with no problem.

http://www.ez-fill.com.tw/utech-e/m_cfse.htm

Let me know if u need more information.

 

[cutemaker]

very hot forum, I see somebody mentioned a website abvoe: http://cutemarket.ebigchina.com/sdp/307459/4/pd-1174350/1518748-588933.html, I just come from that company--cutemaker. I explain more here:
1. this picture is one of refillable cartridge for epson.
2. we make refillable cartrige for epson/canon/hp.
3. very important--- refillable cartridge is different from cis cartridge. you cannot join the refill cartridge with tube to make ciss, if you do, ink will not flow smoothly. the two style of cartridge may looks simialr to eachother, but their inner frame are different.
4. someone have difficulty in filling ink to refillable cartridge, we have a manual wih pics, anyone want pls email tome, I will email back the manual to you.
5. for more info about reill cartridge or cis, pls view: www.cutemaker.com, or write to me: sales@cutemaker.com
any more question, wirte to me directly and mention you find me from this forum, I cannot log in this forum very often.

thanks and warm regards to everybody!
thanks to this forum, which give great help to people to us! (may I give a suggestion: the words is too small here, I cannot see clearly.)

 

[zakezuke]

very hot forum, I see somebody mentioned a website abvoe: http://cutemarket.ebigchina.com/sdp/307459/4/pd-1174350/1518748-588933.html, I just come from that company--cutemaker.

I reconize that blue label... I suspect the same company who made those made my Epson refillables but what I have must be an earlier version. Only the one fill hole, and the "do not remove this blue lable" with the mispelled label looks like it's been replaced by simply do not remove. Understandable error... as the word ladle would sugest that le is the correct syntax rather than el as in label.

Anyhow the ones that I have with the same "blue lable" I had serious issues with. Basicly they had no vent hold to speak of what so ever... easily proved as vacuum filling was required and that tank could take a serious vacuum. But because there was no vent hole and the ink was seperated into two major chambers and two sub chambers what would happen is the printer would suck ink only from one chamber, by default the smaller lower one, leaving the upper one untouched. One could "burp" them by removing the plug, but this would suck air into the lower chamber. I would estimate that using this method you could only print roughly 30% of the tank's total volume. I tried to resolve this issue by punching a hole in the top so that when the printer would use ink it wouldn't create such a vaccume, but what would happen is the top chamber being about 60% of the total volume would get used and rather than using the lower chamber it would suck air from the top chamber and that air would get sucked into the print head and cause banding... very consistant banding that could only be resolved by refilling the whole thing.

Now I imagine I could have been filling them incorrectly, but considering this issue was observed when I got them new filled with ink if that was the case they filled them incorrectly as well. I tried leaving in 25% of air in the top chamber, But I still had issues with it sucking air when the top chamber became empty. Needless to say I never had anything resembling instructions. But regardless I considered what I bought to be a pain in the tookus. The only resolution I can think of is using these cartridges in a CIS system. I'm willing to believe that this may have been resolved in a new design but I don't know for a fact. I would like to know if instructions exist for these or others made by what I call the "blue lable" company.