do the ink refill kits work

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raggie33

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well i got a printer finaly for obvios resons mainly my hand writeing is worst then my typeing lol the printer was a great deal.came with scaner and printer and prints good its a hp 1410 but man that ink cartidges cost a lot and only come with 5ml of ink.so i bought a refill kit do they work are they worth it.the brand name was unversal and came with like 70 ml of black ink and 32 ml of each other color.
 

PhotonWrangler

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Other than the kits being a little messy I haven't had too much trouble with them.

Lately I've been straying towards the knock-off manufacturers like NCR (available from OfficeMax and probably others). They're less expensive than the OEM brand and they seem to work just as well.
 

greenLED

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Check dillonno1 on eBay; been buying ink cartridges from him for over 4 years now. Never had a problem.
 

IsaacHayes

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The only printer I've owned was an old HP black and white inkjet that didn't have very high dpi at all. Text was the only thing that would look half decent. I tried the refill approach, but then the cartridge leaked constaltly out of the print head, and would never work right.

Are the cartridges better now-adays? What is the life you can expect out of the print head(jets/whatever)?
 

LumenHound

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The first refill may go a bit slow because you make sure your doing everything right but after that it's smooth sailing and loads of money being saved.

Just make sure you have plenty of old newspapers covering the work area before starting to refill.

I'm able to refill my black cartridge more than 5 times before the tiny ink jets on the bottom of the cartridge wear out.

The only problem I've ever heard of is that some printer makers embed small IC chips that monitor the cartridge ink level into the cartridge body and that this chip needs to be "reset to full" in order for the refilled cartridge to work.

You take out the cartridge, refill it as per the instructions, pop it back in and the printer doesn't print because the embedded chip tells the printer the cartridge is still empty.

My brother's old HP model 777 suffered from that problem.
He ended up buying a inexpensive "cartridge chip resetter" on Ebay and it solved the problem.
 

bexteck

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I've had good luck with them as long as you take your time when re-filling the cartrages. Only thing is, after several refils, you may need to replace your cartrages since the heads can become worn or clogged because they are being used 4+ times more than they are designed to be.
 

tiktok 22

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Good point Bexteck. I've found that if your doing high quality photo print, it's best to stick with the manufactures originals. Anything else...refill kits and aftermarket cartridges generally work O.K.
 

Neg2LED

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'straya, mate!
i have a color solid-ink printer and a color inkjet

in the inkjet (Canon BJC-5100) the tiny i-dont-last-long cartridges cost close to 45 USD! we have been using some random-brand refill pack from Officeworks (i forgot the brand :p ) for a couple years with no problem :)

--neg
 

KevinL

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I don't refill, personally. When I use inkjets, I'm usally printing photos, and I typically demand absolute maximum quality that the printer can deliver and I trust only original inks to do the job. Agreed with tiktok on this. :thumbsup:

However, refills are fine if you are using your printer for more routine stuff or not expecting perfection (ie. photo lab grade prints) from it.

The grunt work around here is done by the black and white laser. The Xerox Phaser 3116 cost me the princely sum of $109, each cartridge is $60, and lasts forever, easily thousands of pages, so I buy originals for that too since I change so rarely. As a plus, it's a USB printer, very small, and handles laser labels very well - never jams.
 

bexteck

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Not trying to hijack the thread, but since we are talking about the cost of ink, laser printers are actually far cheaper to operate. I have a rough cost breakdown below.

Ink Jet
-Printer cost: $40-$100
-Cost of ink for 10,000 b/w sheets: $550 assuming $50 a cartridge
Total: $600-$650

Laser
-Printer cost: $100-$250
-Cost of toner for 10,000 b/w sheets: $140 assuming $70 a cartridge
Total: $240-$390

These are just rough figures for b/w printers, color of course is more expensive, but laser is still far cheaper if you are going to be printing more than a few hundred pages while you own the printer.
 

AJ_Dual

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It's horrible from a consumption/waste/landfil standpoint, but my wife and I have fallen into the pattern of just buying a new inkjet whenever one comes down below the price of replacment cartridges.

You'll often see printers on sale at the big-box retailers for well under $40. That's cheaper than one black and one color cartridge! They're obviously loss-leaders to try and get you to buy their ink. We just use the printer until the included ink runs out, then give the printer away to friends or family who might want one. Usualy, they hang onto it until they realize how much the ink costs then just chuck the printer. We feel okay as we "tried" to recycle, honest. It's the recipient of the printer who is the evil land-fill abuser... Either that, or they wind up in attics or basments where they sit in printer purgatory. To useless to use, but too "nice" to actualy chuck them :D

It's a hillarious business model when you think about it.

You just have to do a bit of research and watch out for the brands/models of printers who ship with smaller "starter" cartridges. (often HP) The second-tier sellers like Canon , epson, and the third tier off-brands that work harder to get market share because of HP will often ship full-size cartriges with the printer as value added.

We don't know how long it will take, but they can't keep this up forever.

The big push to get people to burn ink is digital photos. Unless you're decorating your walls, why print at all? We just leave photos up on our family website for anyone who wants them, or we burn DVD's and CD's with the past years photos for all the family. With ultra-cheap DVD players out there, even non-computer family can look at pictures on their TV's.
 

BB

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I have done both ink refills and just starting to do laser toner refills.

The OEM ink cartridges are just way too expensive to buy retail (unless it is for work)--but for home it is the only way to do any real color printing. I have been refilling a Cannon ink-jet type printer and it works OK... The price is low and the cartridges last OK (but I do have to buy a new one every so often).

However, in the end, even refilling the ink cartridges is a pain. I have pretty much chosen to put the printer away and just use laser instead. Now I can print 3-6,000 pages without having to touch the printer. The ink jet seemed to be just 100's before I was refilling an ink container or trying to clean a print head.

If I needed cheap color, before I bought a printer I would go to a web site like www.weink.com (I have bought a toner refill kit from them, the first time, a few weeks ago and they shipped it quickly) and look at these types of external continuous feed inking systems. And, once I found a system I liked, buy the printer brand/model to fit it. I saw these types of systems used all over in Taipei.

Regarding refilling Toner Cartridges... I just purchased a Brother HL 5170DN about a month ago and have already put close to 13,000 pages through it using one 3,500 page toner cartridge (this is the small one that comes with the printer--the big one prints about 6,500 pages) and I have been refilling it myself.

The first time I refilled it take a bit of mechanical fumbling around to figure out the instructions and trying to keep everything clean (free of grease and black toner dust)... Which is kind of hard considering that the gears are covered with grease and you have to dump out about 80 grams of old toner on your first refill (they recommend dumping the OEM toner out so that it does not cause problems with the refill toner's slightly differing chemistry).

Other than doing it outside and taking my time with a few hand tools and a lot of paper towels, it went OK. I have since refilled the cartridge 3 more times and the printing is 100% perfect. And the subsequent refills, I just top off the toner (don't dump any) and it only takes a couple minutes to pull the plug and dump (by weight) the refill toner in. The cartridge is supposed to last about 4 refills before needing to be replaced (I don't know if this is 4 x 3,500 pages or 4 x 6,500 of the larger toner cart-- but it is doing real well so far).

I am down to about $28 for toner for 10-12,000 pages of printing (excluding other costs). Plus, this printer has duplexing, so that I am using half the paper too.

There are expensive consumables too—like a new toner cartridge ($70) and the drum that has to be replaced every 20,000 pages or so ($120 new) or the fuser (after 60-70,000 pages--don't know its price). But I do like being able to print thousands of pages without stopping to refill ink or clean a cartridge.

-Bill
 
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Lurker

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I have had very mixed results with refilling and finally decided it wasn't worth the trouble. I threw away a perfectly good printer and replaced it with one that I selected based on the cost and capacity of the ink cartridges. It was a Cannon. Now I just buy new cartridges when rarely needed and no more hassles. If I printed more, I would try some generic cartridges, but have not needed to yet.

Whatever you do, do not use a Lexmark printer. They are specifically designed to take only original Lexmark cartridges which are extremely expensive, non-refillable and run out very quickly. They are a scam.
 

bexteck

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Most of the time, manufacturers attempt to prevent people from being able to refill their cartriges, but in almost all cases, it can still be done. Often this is done through the same port that is used to fill the cartriges in the factory. I have seen this port hidden under the colored plastic tops which are glued on the cartriges, and underneath labels and stickers. To get to these ports, you usually run the risk of damaging the cartrige, and then have to properly seal the port back up or all the ink will seep out the bottom of the cartrige due to the lack of internal vacuum.

I imagine the manufacturers are continuing to improve on means to prevent cartriges from being refilled, so enjoy it while it lasts.
 

Lightmeup

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BB said:
I am down to about $28 for toner for 10-12,000 pages of printing (excluding other costs). Plus, this printer has duplexing, so that I am using half the paper too.
Do you find that doing duplex printing causes any print quality issues or other printer problems after doing a lot of printing? Someone told me that doing duplex printing causes something in the paper path to get dirty quicker because small amounts of toner from the printing on the front of the page sometimes comes off during the printing of the back of the page, since it takes two passes to print one full duplexed page.
 

BB

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To date the print quality has been perfect. And virtually all of the 12,000 impressions or so have been printed using duplex (6,000 pieces of paper over the last month).

Only a few paper jams (nothing unusual).

We purchased the printer based on the recommendation from this homeschool curriculum web site...

Since we are literally printing books (150 to 300+ pages), duplex printing allows us to store twice as many books in the same space. We are also, generally, using the two images on one page option for most of our book printing--with top flip binding option (using a comb binder to finish the books).

-Bill
 

cy

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LumenHound said:
My brother's old HP model 777 suffered from that problem. He ended up buying a inexpensive "cartridge chip resetter" on Ebay and it solved the problem.
thanks for the heads-up on chip resetter. my HP will not work after refilling color ink cart, but black ink refill works great.

usually will get 4-5 refills before dying..
 
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IsaacHayes

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This is kind of on the same subject, but what printer brand do you like most? HP, Lexmark, others? Which is easiest to re-fill with good results?
 
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