Switching back to OEM ink.

[qwertydude]

Hi guys new here I've been refilling my printer for about a couple months now. I got the Canon ip4600 so refilling is a constant affair. I've recently noticed slight striping and after some investigation I traced it down to ink not flowing well enough from the cartridge, I noticed it didn't drip as much on refilling like before. No problem took the carts outside and blasted water through them with a hose nozzle till they were clean. Well in the meantime I also bought a spare set of OEM ink and decided to do some photo test prints well then I got dark banding in reds that no amount of cleaning cycles got rid of, in fact I wasted 3/4 of the magenta and yellow cart in cleaning cycles and solid color printing trying to get it working, I almost gave up and it wasn't until I emptied the cartridge and was forced to refill it that the problem was solved. Now my question is could my printer have gotten accustomed to my refill ink? Considering it was fine immediately after refilling.

I also actually like the color output of my refill stratitec. I bought the 2 liter 4x500 ml premium ink package from stratitec, which I know is considered a bottom tier refill, but I actually like the color output better as it is a closer match to what I see on my monitor as I find blues are over saturated on canon oem, all I do is bump up saturation 5% and everything turns out excellent. Oh and one extra trick I use to keep the ink flowing as I do the same thing in fountain pens is add a small drop of dish washing soap into your ink, it'll flow better and keep ink deposits from forming in pens so I figure it should do the same in my carts, hopefully my carts won't clog as fast now. I add one drop to my 2 ounce refill bottles. Also their glycerin content ought to keep the sponges conditioned.

Oh yeah to dry out the cartridges, after shaking as much water out and blowing through the refill holes to force water out of the foam I simply place the cartridges in my computer and run a processing intensive program like folding. My video card will get super toasty and I just put the carts on top bone dry in about 8 hours. I've been drying wet electronics liked dunked phones and RC car stuff that got wet and they all recover, small trick is actually turn them off as soon as possible and rinse them in DI or distilled water to remove any contaminants. Technically electronics will actually work in distilled water, they submerge high power electronics in DI water to keep them chilled, though they need special filters to keep the water clean but they work in water.

Anyways just wanted to share my story here since I've been lurking here learning how to refill. I do now wish I bought the ip4500 as it is a better printer but I'll keep mine since I've also invested in a spare printhead since I was afraid my current one would burn out. I print tons of photos, for friends and family so In the past 2 months I refilled my carts about 18 or so times.

 

[RWP]

Oh and one extra trick I use to keep the ink flowing as I do the same thing in fountain pens is add a small drop of dish washing soap into your ink, it'll flow better and keep ink deposits from forming in pens so I figure it should do the same in my carts, hopefully my carts won't clog as fast now.

I can't comment on the rest of your post but I wonder if adding dishwashing detergent is helpful when foam and bubbles are a cartridge's worst enemy? Consider how vigorously the carts shake back and forth during a print job... my 2 cents worth anyhow.

 

[qwertydude]

I haven't experienced too much problem with foaming, it's a little bit worse but the way the cannon ones work is that the only outlet is from the bottom via a wick so there's no real chance of getting a bubble in the line plus once the ink runs low I fill up before the reservoir runs out, I don't wanna risk running the foam dry. As it's happened once already and I got some banding for a couple pages because of poor ink flow. Luckily no damage was done once I rinsed the cart and put the ink back.