What do you do with the needles and ink bottle cap after refilling?

[OM2]

What do you do with the needles and ink bottle cap after refilling?

Do you wash them and keep them separated?
Or just keep them together?

I thought there would be a small danger of mixing colours otherwise

Thanks


Omar

 

[Mowerman90]

It's very important to throughly wash and dry each needle and syringe after each use. All that is needed is warm water to do a good job. If, however, you let any ink dry in the syringe or needle you'll need to use some soap or windex.

 

[fotofreek]

What do you do with the needles and ink bottle cap after refilling? Do you wash them and keep them separated? Or just keep them together? I thought there would be a small danger of mixing colours otherwise.

Thanks, Omar

I assume that you are talking about using syringes and not squeeze bottles. Before I used squeeze bottles I had a separate syringe for each color and labeled the syringes with a permanent marking pen. When I was done with all my refilling I washed the syringes and needles with tap water and kept the needles and syringes for each color together. This might be overkill, but it was easiest in my estimation. I never washed the cap from the ink containers as I only had the caps off long enough to fill a syringe.

Once you've been refilling for a while you might consider buying a set of squeeze bottle. No washing of syringes, uncapping and replacing the ink container caps, no washing of needles. After refilling you can hold the squeeze bottle upright and pump air in and out of the bottle to clear the ink from the needle (with some paper toweling over the tip of the needle to prevent spraying the ink from the needle all over the place!)

 

[l_d_allan]

Generally agree with fotofreek. I started off with separate syringes for each of the 8 colors of the Pro 9000-2. However, that does seem like overkill.

I do my refilling in batches of 10 to 15+ carts. I like to have at least 2 and preferrably 3 of each color to refill. I let the empty carts build up until I'm getting close to running out of carts.

My impression is that many, if not most, people on this forum do a quick refill of the cart that just ran out. They have two sets of carts ... one in use and one for an immediate replacement of the cart which reports low/empty. Others have only one set of carts, and do an immediate refill of the low/empty cart. Each his own ... I do things in batches.

For my batching, I use a single large 60 ml syringe, and a single blunt needle. I do each color together in a batch, and then thoroughly rinse the syringe+needle between colors. I may eventually switch to squeeze bottles, but the 60 ml syringe (~2 oz) has so far worked ok for my "work flow". YMMV.

With the OCP ink I use, the smallest amount they sell is 16 oz ... which is a lot. I have 8 oz of each color in the refrigerator ... the CLI-8G Green and CLI-8R Red may be plenty for years ... same for CLI-8B Black.

I gently shake the ink bottle before refilling that color, but dye ink has less problems with settling than pigment, I believe. The 60 ml syringe hold enough ink to refill 4+ carts. While refilling carts, I make it a point to put the lid back on the ink bottle ... it would be a WOW (wrath of wife) disaster to carelessly knock over an ink bottle without its lid on.

When done with a color, I put any excess from the 60 ml syringe back in the ink bottle. I do wipe off any excess from the bottle itself, but not really the lid ... maybe the lid threads. I do seal the ink bottle with vinyl electrical tape around the lid+bottle to reduce the chance of spilling if it tips over.

When all done, I take apart the needle + syringe + plunger, soak in warm water, and let dry separately.

So far, the above seems to be working ok. However, I haven't been refilling that long, and it may very well turn out that in the long run, I'm "shooting myself in the foot" with less than "best practices."

 

[OM2]

thanks for the replies guys

that's great information

i think there's a problem with the guides: they're only 95% complete

things like what to do with syringes and squezee bottles are absolutely essential
(i've got squezee bottles, by the way)

+ i think really important as well is: practices from experienced users like u guys - those golden nuggets of advice make a huge difference i think

ok, ok: so it might be hard to write a 'complete' guide... but i think there could be betters ones that are an amalgamation of current guides + info from replies to threads

i'm tempted to write one myself!

 

[Redbrickman]

Why not, others will benefit from your knowledge/experience

If you have never written manuals or guides be aware that what you think is the process is very often not!

The important thing is to give the guide to someone who has never had any experience of doing the activity, then see how they get on.

In this case find a wife, girfriend, partner to use a a guinea pig, but provide plenty of newspapers, paper towels etc. just in case they spill some ink

 

[OM2]

Why not, others will benefit from your knowledge/experience

If you have never written manuals or guides be aware that what you think is the process is very often not!

The important thing is to give the guide to someone who has never had any experience of doing the activity, then see how they get on.

In this case find a wife, girfriend, partner to use a a guinea pig, but provide plenty of newspapers, paper towels etc. just in case they spill some ink

i do consider myself to be a semi expert - solely because of this website - it's awesome
i was a semi jedi without even having refilled my first ink cartridge
may the force be with u

 

[l_d_allan]

i think there's a problem with the guides: they're only 95% complete

I'm a believer in writing up guidelines to benefit others "down the road" and "pay it forward" as in the movie, but the problem is "it depends" on quite a few factors.

 

[The Hat]

l_d_allan I'm a believer in writing up guidelines to benefit others "down the road" and "pay it forward" as in the movie, but the problem is "it depends" on quite a few factors.

Would you not wait till your more experience and knowledgeable before attempting to write a GUIDE how to.
It just might save someone getting in over their head on your own exact words in this guide.
Its supposed to be sound advice for Newbies and not the Movies stuff.. :|

 

[slocumeddie]

I believe that one should refrain from giving advice until one is truly familiar and experienced with the subject under discussion. Long, "wordy", and frequent posts to this forum do not an expert make.......:/