Before you begin refilling your inkjet cartridges bear in mind one thing, most inkjet cartridges have sponges in them. When the sponges dry out they can become rock hard.
After removing a spent cartridge from your printer don't just throw it in a drawer and expect to be able to refill it in a month or even a year, judging by some of the email I get.
The main reason why the sponges dry out is because of a special drying agent that is added to inks. This drying agent is used to prevent smearing when you print out a page. When the ink is inside the cartridge, especially an unsealed cartridge, it will react with the air and harden the sponge. When the ink in the cartridge is used up it is displaced by air which is trapped in the cartridge. In a few weeks or even days the ink left in the sponge will harden to a rock like consistency.
So, can you inject ink into a rock? If you get to it in time you can, possibly. However, you would have a much better chance if you put the cartridge in a zip lock baggie with a damp paper towel before throwing it in your drawer. Be careful with color cartridges. Don't cap the print head with anything except an approved cartridge clip or you risk cross-chamber contamination. Squeeze as much air out of the baggie as you can before sealing it.
Now, what can be done if you really want to refill your rock? The best thing to do would be to get some purging fluid or you can make your own version of 50% water and 50% Ammonia. Inject the fluid into the cartridge, as much as you can get in. Let it sit for a day or two. Then suck out as much as you can with your injector.
Refill in the normal manner but don't expect the best results because it is impossible to remove all of the purge fluid. Your prints might be a little washed out until the fluid mixes with the ink. If you're persistent you could possibly restore it to 100%.
Congratulations, you just refilled a rock! :-)
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.
