I have a Canon BubbleJet 2110 printer, and my black ink cartridge has gone dry. Seems to have, anyway: I printed a picture recently and all the black parts of the image were missing. I tried cleaning the cartridges and it didn’t help.
Could something else be going on, like a clog, that just makes it seem like it’s gone dry? I don’t know how to test for that, but it does seem like this cartridge ran out way too soon.
Also, I was at CompUSA recently and saw for sale those big syringes and “universal replacement ink” that supposedly will let you refill spent cartridges and dramatically lower the cost of replacement. Are these really a good idea? And, notwithstanding the word “universal,” how can I make sure it’ll be compatible with my BubbleJet?
I’ll keep my cracks to myself and try to answer part of the question.
I tried the injection stuff on my HP printer. It worked a couple times, and failed a couple times, so the savings for me was minimal and the hassle was maximal.
Sorry I can’t help with the BJ. You’ll have to handle it yourself.
Syringe kits for re-filling are messy and can void warranties. Ink formulations are not universal. Some people claim success but in my experience re-fill kits have always proven to be more trouble and mess than they are worth. It would be best to get a new cartridge.
Don’t skip on your BJ or problems can come back to bite you.
Um, Fiver? Mind hearing a word of advice? Thread titles like that don’t work. You’ll get plenty of views, but from all the wrong people (from your perspective). Give it a title like that, and you’ll get folks like SexyWriter to respond, who are interested in blowjobs. Unfortunately, it seems that Ms. Writer doesn’t know about printers, so she can’t help you. Someone like Anthracite, on the other hand, would be singularly uninterested in a thread with this title, but probably knows a good bit about printers.
I recommend that you e-mail the GQ mods and (after apologizing profusely for the misleading title) ask if they can change it for you. For the record, by the way, for anyone reading this after the inevitable title change, the title as of when I write this is “Ladies: Help me with a BJ”.
Standard engineering practice here would be “Suck it and See”.
I did. The generic refill kit works reliably in a cheap Epson printer. YMMV.
These guys: http://www.printerfillingstation.com had enough information on ink for different printers to convince me it was worth a try. You may find the same thing.
I have the same printer and the same experience. And of course it seemed to run out of ink right when I was trying to print an important paper for English Comp. I just printed my Comp paper in navy blue, and plan on replacing the black ink cartridge.
Oh puhleeze Fiver. You’re too old for the “What me?” act. Chronos was right. Your thread title was annoyingly misleading. People are in the GQ forum primarily to ask and answer general questions not be amused and/or annoyed (and I was both) by how clever you can be with thread titles.
Are you talking about a colour cartridge, and the black section ran out? Or a totally black cartridge that seems to have stopped working?
Because colour cartridge black components are not only individually replaceable, but are tiny and do get used up quickly if used repeatedly for simple b&w printing.
A Best Buy Guy told me once that Canon ink cartridges do eventually “dry up” even if they are not used because they use an alcohol-based ink. If you think that your cartridge got used up too soon, that could be the culprit.
I had a BJ 2K at my job. We replaced the black cartridge a little more than once a month at over $50 a pop. By comparison, I switched to an old HP laserjet II, and the toner thingy was still working 6 months later when I quit, and we had increased our printer usage.
We used the refill kit and it worked great. Canon has one out that cost around $40, and will refill something like 18-20 times. I’d recomend trying it. It saved us a bunch of dough.
Fiver, I appreciate the restraint it might have taken not to call this a BJ in your title thread. But I think you’ll get more appropriate answers with the new title I gave it.
Jill
Thanks for the tip, WEW. Looks like the refill kit is the way I’ll need to go.
The irritating thing here is that I’ve got two printers, the other one being an old but reliable Apple Personal Laserwriter 300…
…which I can’t use, because my brand new Mac G4 doesn’t have an Apple serial port: it’s all USB. I can buy an Apple serial port/USB adapter, but it’s like $80.
The ink jets can indeed get clogged with dried ink if you don’t use the printer often enough. Try wiping them with alcohol on a Q-tip or cotton cloth. No guarantees, but it’s worked for me before.
I used to install a lot of Canon Bubblejets on submarines, and sailors really liked the concept of plugging everything into a power strip and using the strip on/off button as a master control to start/stop the system. I don’t know about your particular BJ, but in the old days (8 years ago), these printers hated that. A proper shut down would park the print head correctly, but using the power strip method left the print head exposed causing all sorts of problems.
I have refilled my Cannon BJ ink cartridges several times with a refill kit made for the Cannon. I did have to replace the print cartridge (the part that holds the ink tanks, about $50 IIRC) once because it was clogged, but I don’t know if the refill ink had anything to do with this.
Helpful hint – do not soak the print cartridge in acetone to clean it. :eek: