Using Canon OEM 226 Cartridges

[Fabphoto]

I have been saving old ones . I plan to wash them out and fill them with gray and black to make
my iP4820 a B&W printer. My first question is this: Since some of these have been empty for
months, will the sponge be dried out and unusable? If so could it be revived with a solvent
such as water or acetone?
This will be my first attempt at refilling.

Thank you for any help.

 

[The Hat]

I have been saving old ones . I plan to wash them out and fill them with gray and black to make
my iP4820 a B&W printer. My first question is this: Since some of these have been empty for
months, will the sponge be dried out and unusable? If so could it be revived with a solvent
such as water or acetone?
This will be my first attempt at refilling.

Thank you for any help.

I hope your plan to print B&W on your printer is a great success, it wont be trouble free but at least successful.

Now your idea with the 226 carts is a bit more dough full, have you researched how youre going to fill these carts
and not have ink flow problems with them later, due to the fact that these carts are all opaque,
221 carts would be much more suitable for beginners.

The sponge inside an OEM cartridge is pretty robust and a little dried up ink is no trouble to shift at all however
if you put Acetone anywhere near anything to do with an inkjet printer youll make one hell of a mess
and that includes the print head, cartridges and the printer body itself, just DONT do it.

If you wish to clean out any of your OEM cartridges then good old fashion water is more than capable
of doing the job quite successfully without harming the sponge inside.

I would suggest you to do a bit more reading up on this site on the many Arts of good refilling practice,
because it would help you enormously and save a lot of time and colourful ink.

Happy Refilling..

 

[Fabphoto]

Thank you for your help.
I plan to drill 1/8 inch holes in the top of the carts and plug them with the plastic plugs sold on E-bay. Once I figure out how much ink it holds i plan to measure the ink in a hypo so as to fill it 3/4 full. Does that sound right?


I plan to order the Precesion ink set and chip resetter this week, and wait for the urge to attempt refilling for the first time.`

In my exerience with things I screw up the first 3 times.

 

[The Hat]

Thank you for your help.
I plan to drill 1/8 inch holes in the top of the carts and plug them with the plastic plugs sold on E-bay. Once I figure out how much ink it holds i plan to measure the ink in a hypo so as to fill it 3/4 full. Does that sound right?


I plan to order the Precesion ink set and chip resetter this week, and wait for the urge to attempt refilling for the first time.`

In my exerience with things I screw up the first 3 times.

While your on ordering you inks why you dont have a look at their tips on top refilling with pictures it cant do any harm.

Lets hope you can get the hang of this refilling first time so please make sure
you get a 100% seal on the top of your cartridges otherwise the cartridge will leak on you..

 

[PeterBJ]

Hi Fabfoto

I agree with The Hat that reading up on refilling is a good idea, before starting refilling. So here is some suggested reading and a couple of tips.

As the sealing of the refill hole is very important to avoid ink leaks when topfilling ink cartridges, I suggest you do not drill the cartridge to use the low clearance plugs. : http://www.precisioncolors.com/Using the Newer Low Clearance Plugs.pdf Instead I suggest that you use the zero clearance plugs as they require no drilling: http://www.precisioncolors.com/Using the Zero Clearance Plugs.pdf

As it is difficult to drill a perfect round hole using a hand held drill, the low clearance plugs might not provide a perfect seal. See this picture of a less than perfect hole drilled using a hand held cordless drill, click to enlarge:



Also the cartridge clearance is very low on some newer canon printers, so I recommend the use of the zero clearance plugs plus aluminum tape.

For topfilling the cartridges, see these threads: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=6264 http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=7915&p=1 and this instruction: http://www.precisioncolors.com/Canon instructions PGI-220CLI-221.pdf

For making handling the zero clearance plugs easier, here is a tip: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=56693#p56693

The wooden toothpick/cocktail stick is also useful as a dipstick to gauge ink level, when topfilling the opaque PGI.225/CLI-226. But refilling can be made easier if you swap your chips to the windowed PGI-220/CLI-221 cartridges. These cartridges are also available from Precision Colors: http://www.precisioncolors.com/c5ccart.html

Instruction for chip swapping here: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=41631#p41631 . When swapping the chips only swap one at a time, the chips are coded for color among other things, so don't apply a chip to a wrong cartridge.

I hope this improves your changes of a successful first refill. And as The Hat says: Happy refilling

 

[Fabphoto]

WOW!!

You have given me enough info to read for a while. Its a good thing I am old and retired , and dont have a deadline for refilling.

Thank you for taking the time to post all this..

 

[PeterBJ]

You're welcome.