What seems to be the most frustrating thing to refillers is probably the most easiest thing to remedy. The problem is many people don't have the patients to do it this way. I'm talking about gravity refilling.
One of the biggest problems facing refillers is injecting the ink too fast into the cartridge. This causes tiny air bubbles to get into the sponges, I call them micro bubbles. When one of these "micro bubbles" hits the print head it will cause missing print and/or streaking. Also you may notice that it will print fine one day and the next day it won't print until you do a series of head cleanings. Sound familiar?
Gravity refilling is a simple procedure and I will explain how to do is in a minute. Cartridges best suited to the gravity method are those with a primarily sponge filled interior. Examples are HP C6578, HP C1823, HP C6657, HP C8728, HP 51649A, Lexmark 18L0042, 12A1970, 12A1980 and most Epson Cartridges. Epson cartridges have another advantage that I will cover and that is the ability to use the BFILL adapter.
Prior to refilling any Epson cartridge you should use a BFILL to suck out all the foamy ink. A BFILL adapter is a small plastic attachment that fits on the end of your injector. It fits snugly into the ink ports on the bottom of the Epson cartridges. After sealing any filling holes use this to suction out the foam.
Using the gravity method is no different than normal refilling with a few exceptions. The ink is still going into the same place but how it gets there is a different matter. To do this you need two ink injectors. Remove the plunger from one of the injectors. The plunger is the part that you push on with your thumb when injecting the ink. Use a three inch needle or longer with the large HP cartridges.
Take the injector without the plunger and insert it into the chamber of the cartridge that you are refilling. Get the needle as far down into the chamber as you possible can. Set the cartridge, with the injector sticking out of it, and stand it up, or prop it up, somewhere with the opening of the injector facing up. You want this thing to free stand on its own because your hand will go numb if you had to hold it because it could take up to 10 minutes or more per chamber for the ink to drain into the cartridge.
Now take the other injector, the unaltered one, and load it with the proper ink in the proper amount for the chamber you are refilling. Carefully fill the cavity of the injector that is sticking out of the cartridge. Now you wait. Let gravity pull the ink from the injector into the cartridge. At first it will seem like nothing is happening. Go grab your favorite vice, cigarette, beer or coffee, whatever hits you. :-) When you come back the ink should be drained into the cartridge. Rinse and repeat. And I mean that literally.
Having Fun With The Printer Support Techs
Many years ago when I was a copier technician my boss would always tell us to push our companies supplies, paper, toner etc.. Of course they wanted to sell more supplies and make more money but their techniques were very questionable. Just like printers you could go out and purchase generic supplies and some worked better than others naturally. Well the supplies that we sold were also mostly generic, however, they were branded with our companies name and logos. Here's where the sneakiness comes in. When a customer complained about a repair cost estimate we were told to blame it on their inferior generic supplies and to further that the repair would have been much cheaper if they were using our over-priced supplies.
My Printer Died - An Epitaph
My printer just died. My Epson C60 that I've had for almost 2 years was my buddy. I loved that printer. It was there for me through thick and thin. Sure it had it's quirks and idiosyncrasies like not printing when my office temperature dropped to 17 degrees because I forgot to turn the thermostat up one bitterly cold morning. I had to open the lid and point a ceramic space heater inside to thaw it out.
When Is Black Not Black?
Did you notice how many different black inks there are available? At last count we have forty different black inks listed on our web site. You may be wondering how many shades of black can there be? Well there are actually different shades of black which I will explain in a bit.
