What’s the SD on using injet refill kits, rather than buy a new cartridge? Do they work? Are they safe to use? I’ve heard that you can ruin your printer using them, or that the printer is programmed to detect tampering and shut itself down if you use a refill.
I’ve used them with no problems. The problems arise when people abuse them by trying to push the cartridges past their useful service life. Most inkjet printers today have the printheads integral to the cartridge, and these don’t last forever. Typically it is recommended that you replace them after every 3-4 refills–you can buy blank carts for many printers, in fact. If you’ve got the type of printer with permanent heads, like some Epson printers, then you can more or less keep refilling the cart indefinitely. As long as you use reasonable care, and perform the refill exactly according to the instructions, then you should be fine. Do wear gloves, though, as the ink takes just about forever to wash off your skin.
Ink refiller here. I have a three + year old HP and have been refilling it for some time. I also get about 4-7 uses from my black cart but my color keeps drying out and I really only get 1-2 refills out of it. One warning is that I had to opent he printer up and really clean it out as the ink deposited itself all over the damn place once the “cleaning” area overfilled.
I know someone who’se been refilling the same cart on his Lexmark for ten years although he recently had to buy a new computer.
Also, depending on the cart and printer, some are impossible, or at least require some goofy devices to “reset” the carts. I know Epsons are a pain in the ass and I believe that the new HP carts are like this too. Check it out before your start.
Mine’s an HP PSC 1210 all-in-one. Any idea whether they are refillable? How would I find out?
To reset an Epson cartridge (and do some other neat stuff as well) you can use the Epson SSC Service Utility. No special equipment required.
There are actually commercials telling you always to use original HP ink, implying that you should never buy generic ink cartridges or refill them yourself. You need to do this to get the best possible print quality, they claim. Of course, really it’s that printers are artificially inexpensive and the manufacturers intend to compensate for that by selling ink cartridges, which have a very high profit margin. (Especially if people voluntarily ‘recycle’ them, which allows the manufacturer to simply refill them. To protect the environment, yknow, like at grocery stores that make you pay for plastic bags.)
I wonder if there’s any legality issues with refilling ink cartridges, like there is with downloading music. I wouldn’t be surprised if printer manufacturers eventually start arguing that we have to buy their ink if we want them to keep developing all these wonderful new high-resolution printers for us. Or maybe they’ll just make them cost what they really cost, and not subsidize them with future ink profits.
One of the mrinkjet sites (not the Austrailian one) has some extensive info on this. There’s no federal (or other that I’m aware of) law mandating use of original parts so refilling is not illegal. The only thing that you give up is your warranty rights if the cart. leaks.
Some third party fillers who will send you refilled carts will put their own warranty in place, but HP, Epson, et al. will not honor theirs.
A recent Consumer Reports article recommended not buying generic ink cartridges. Their tests showed that the generic ones ran out so much faster than the name brand cartridges that the generics actually cost more! (I would think it would depend on just which generics you bought, but they seemed to say all of them were inferior to the name brand ones.)
I think they also mentioned refilling cartridges, but I don’t recall for sure. (I don’t use ink-jet printers, so I didn’t pay much attention.)
You’re not far from the truth.
Several months ago, I bought an HP DesignJet 120 printer. It’s a 6-ink photo printer, and the prints are absolutely gorgeous. The problem is that the inks aren’t permanent (they conveniently left this fact out of their specs).
Recently, HP came out with a similar printer whose inks supposedly last 75 years. I contacted HP and asked about the possibility of using the new inks in my existing printer. I know that it’s technically possible, I just wanted to know their recommendation. Especially since the new inks were obviously being developed when I bought my printer, and I was never told how impermanent the old inks are.
I was told that if I want permanent inks, I’d have to buy the new printer. They said that if I use any ink other than what is made for my printer, my warranty would immediately become null and void.
Now I’m looking into the possibility of using non-HP ink. I can’t afford to buy a new printer now, but when I do, it will definitely **not **be made by Hewlett-Packard.
They can say that all they want. But it’s unlikely to hold up in court.
In previous cases where manufacturers have tried to require customers to use only their brand of supplies, courts have told them that they have to first prove that there is a significant difference between their name-brand supplies and other supplies. They are seldom able to do this, because many times their name-brand supplies are actually manufactured by some other company, who puts them into a box with their name-brand on it. Often they come off the same assembly line as the generic supplies.
Of course, you probably don’t want to have to go to court over the warranty on a $79 printer! You could probably buy a new printer for less than the court filing fees.
But you can certainly use this as an argument with them – you don’t have to just accept their statement that the warranty is null and void.
Correct. In fact, the Magnuson-Moss Act specifically forbids this practice, exepting certain conditions, which must be approved by the FTC:
Yeah, I’ve got an HP printer that’s 3 yrs old and I’ve used the cheap filler ink lots of times. I’ve found that after about 4 times it’s time for a new cartridge too.
W-Mart actually sells a color printer that takes the same cartridges that sell for about $50 for both… get this. The cheap printer which includes BOTH black and color cartridges (exact same ones) It sells for about $30… it doesn’t come with the cable but is photo quality. It takes the ??? what’s the name of that little damned cable? Is it a USB? … Hell I can’t think of it right now. Anyway, I just get the whole printer and use the cartridges out of it.
I’ve sold two or three of the printers that I bought and gave a couple of 'em away. Works for me. 
They are probably losing on the printer sale. They expect to make up later from the cartridge sales.
Not from me they won’t.
Hey Dog… what ever happened w/ the blood in the stool deal?
Well, I am still alive
no bloody shit… :rolleyes:
that was bad wasn’t it?
What infuriates me is that they’re objecting to me using **their own **ink, which is made for the newer printer. I wish it were merely a $79 printer, but it’s more like $1500!