Can My Cartridge Be Refilled?Written by Barry Shultz
New styles of inkjet cartridges are entering market all time, faster than anybody can keep up with. It takes time for remanufacturers to collect empties and tool up to refill them. Sometimes it could take many months for remanufactured or generic cartridges to hit market. Bulk inks need to be developed or reverse engineered. For this reason we don't always have refill kits or bulk ink or cartridges right away for new printers. What's a person to do? You ask, "Can my new cartridge be refilled while I'm waiting for after market to catch up?". Thankfully answer is a resounding YES! If manufacturer got ink inside that bugger you can bet you can too. "What about inks?", you ask. Many new cartridges are just re-hashes of old ones with minor variations. While you're waiting you can experiment with your old cartridges and try to refill them with ink you already have. There are some guidelines to follow here though because I don't condone a one ink fits all solution. Generally Lexmark and HP inks are interchangeable. Likewise, Canon and Epson can be interchanged. There might be some color variations but you should be able to compensate in driver set up. Pigmented ink should not be used in a dye based cartridge, however, dye based ink can be used in a pigmented cartridge. An Example is Canon BCI-3e black cartridge which uses pigmented ink and BCI-6 which uses dye based ink. You can use BCI-6 black in BCI-3 but not visa-versa.
| | Using Print Head Sealing TapeWritten by Barry Shultz
There is a lot of confusion when it comes to using print head sealing tape. When you refill a cartridge that contains a print head, Lexmark and HP in particular, you need to seal print head to #1 protect it and #2 keep it from drying out. The combination of sealing tape and a cartridge clip can't be beat for sealing cartridges for storage or transport. Print head sealing tape comes in two varieties, adhesive and static. Both serve a different purpose which I will get into very shortly. There are two colors available, blue and orange. The orange tape is used on Canon cartridges mostly and is of adhesive variety. The blue tape is used on HP and Lexmark cartridges and is available in static or adhesive. The reason orange tape is only available in adhesive form is because Canon cartridges don't have print heads on them which can be damaged with an adhesive type of tape. The orange tape can be used to seal ink ports and refilling and breather holes on BCI-3e and BCI-6 Canon cartridges. The blue tape deserves more discussion because using wrong tape can permanently ruin your cartridge. Do not use adhesive tape on color print heads, ever. It is used to seal breather holes for storage. The adhesive tape can actually cause copper foil to disconnect from cartridge when you remove it, which is of course a bad thing.
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