Refilling Printer Ink Cartirdges?

M

maury

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Sep 24, 2000
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Has anyone had any experience using those "refill" kits to refill ink cartridges? I am using a fairly cheap HP printer for pretty much exclusively text printing, so I keep running out of black ink. Cost of new ink is about a third of the cost f the whole printer! seems like a good idea to refill rather thanbuy a new one, but have heard that it can screw up the printer.

So: anyone advise onhow to do it properly? Any particular brand f refill kit? Or is this just a bad idea?

Appreciate any help - thanks!!
 
You can usually find a place that will trade your old cartridge for a recycled one. Once empty you just swap it out again. Not unlike Propane or 02 bottles.
 
The results of printing with refilled head are significantly worse than those obtained with original ink (droplets apparently splatter aroundmore, print is less resistant to water, etc.). Instead of switcing to cheap refill i'd suggest you switch to printer that has significantly lower cost per page. I have HP inkjet printer myself (one of the not-so-new DJ, 890C) and they're not exactly known for their low cost per page ... i'm not naming any brands but you can find affordable laser printer that will cost you way less in the long run, prints won't smear and will look much nicer than splattered refill ones. My $0.02, for what it's worth.

Oh and one more thing: cheap printers usually have expensive replacement parts (printing heads and such). Manufacturers ave to make money somewhere, if they sell a printer at 0% profit margin they have to make up for it on printing supplies. The cheapest printer isn't always the most cost effective one in the long run. Estimate a number of pages you intend to print and you'll find out that it usually pays off to splure a bit more (for a model that is just going out of production maybe ?) to get a decent printer that uses less ink/toner.
 
It's a mess, I HAD a HP printer and I would highly recommend buying the new cartriges. Save yourself the headache.
 
I'm with faramir on this one. I was in the same boat as you a few years ago, only printing text documents for school and constantly needing to replace the expensive ink cartridges. Only for some reason my black AND color would need replacement all the time. I got real sick of it, and decided to buy myself a laser printer.

I went out and got myself a Samsung ML-1430 black and white laser printer. It was under $200, and came with like a $50 rebate so the final cost was around $150. The print quality on text is much better than any inkjet I have seen, it is faster, and quiter. The best part is that the first toner cartridge, which came with it and is only about half of a normal one, lasted me about a year or so. So while the initial cost is higher the long term costs are significantly lower. Also the replacement cost of the toner is comprable to replacement of most inks, only it will last many times longer.
 
I've had an inexpensive Laser Printer for about 10 years. An Okidata ol410e 600 dpi. Toner was about 20 bucks. Wasn't expensive. Great per page print cost.

But.

The drum is now failing. And that costs about as much as the whole printer did new. Still, it lasted 10 years and thousands of pages. Just know that laser printers have some killer expensive parts too.

I still think laser printers are worth it over inkjets.

Phil
 
phatch said:
The drum is now failing. And that costs about as much as the whole printer did new. Still, it lasted 10 years and thousands of pages. Just know that laser printers have some killer expensive parts too.
Click to expand...

One thing regarding inkjet printers that's also worth mentioning: different manufacturers make different kinds of set-ups, each with its advantages and disadvantages (there's no cheao holy grail of inkjet printing). Companies like HP combine heads and ink cartridges into one undivisible whole while other companies (like Epson) use separate printing heads and ink cartridges (which means smaller supplies cost when one needs a refill - but lousier output and higher costs when head needs replacement).

By the time normal laser priner requires drum replacement you've already used it through its lifespan mostlikely and replacement parts arent even avaliable (at reasonable price) anymore. You just splurge out for a new printer. 10 years in Phil's example is a very good span and i bet the per page cost (amortization of printer + additional toner + blank paper) was lower than that of any inkspitter.

Sell inkjet printer to somebody else who deosn't print very often and add a bit extra to get one of the more cost-effective laser printers. From what i read the Kyocera lasers have by far lowest per-page cost (supplies) and their price is comparable to that of other simple laser printers (they're making bigger models with PostScript emulation, network interface and the rest of the "bells and whistles" that home user usually doesn't need as well, but in higher price range).
 
But for mere mortal prices, isn't the inkjet going to be far superior when printing images? Thats something else to consider.

I'm currently using an Epson that uses 1 dollar black ink cartridges. I've ran several of these cheapies through it and its all good. The only problem I have with the printer is occasionally, ink somehow gets on one of the rollers and makes lots of roller marks on the paper.

As for laser, I have a xerox printer/copier thats just been sitting here for two years. Thats how long its needed a new toner cartridge and at 100 bucks a pop, I haven't been able to justify it. I keep hoping I'll see one on sale at Office Max or Staples...

Mark
 
Minjin said:
But for mere mortal prices, isn't the inkjet going to be far superior when printing images? Thats something else to consider.
Click to expand...

Laser printer will produce easier-to-spot raster than injket so they areb't eaxtly the best choice for top-quality raster images. The prins are way cheaper though and that's what i was talking about - if printer is meant for printing text documents most of the time (as indicated in first post) laser is IMHO the way to go, not only because of costs but because of other aspects as well.

I'm currently using an Epson that uses 1 dollar black ink cartridges. I've ran several of these cheapies through it and its all good. The only problem I have with the printer is occasionally, ink somehow gets on one of the rollers and makes lots of roller marks on the paper.

As for laser, I have a xerox printer/copier thats just been sitting here for two years. Thats how long its needed a new toner cartridge and at 100 bucks a pop, I haven't been able to justify it.
Click to expand...

That'd be a reasonable price for big toner cartridge (for one of the bigger Laserjets) over here too. Ink cartridge for HP would cost $30-4000 and would get used up way faster than 1/3 of toner cartridge. Epson ink might be cheaper because - as stated in my earlier post - Epson printers use same head over and over again, requiring just new ink. This will result in uglier prints over period time (unless you replace the head, of course) and the replacement printing head isn't cheap last i heard, especially for low-cost printers (in comparison to the price of entire printer). $1 is unbelievably cheap though,i wonder how it affects the quality of your print-outs :confused:
 
BTW, I think it borders on criminal the way they're doing this nowdays. Our first printer, an HP deskjet 720 or somesuch, came in a bundle with our first computer.
We used the thing for almost the entire year, and then ran off almost the whole run of our annual hand-made Xmas cards (200+) before running out of ink.

Now, the new deskjet 3650 model we bought recently has gone through two sets of cartridges doing just the Xmas cards, and we'll be lucky not to have to buy more.
Cheap printers, expensive ink.
 
Its a razor/blade business model. Nothing wrong with that. Its what the consumer wants. Everyone wants hundred dollar printers...

Mark
 
The last four times my printer has run out of ink I have come home from the store with a new printer. To replace both black and color in most printers will cost at least $50-$60 dollars. I have been able to buy a new printer for less than that every time. This is no longer a good bet with HP products as they now sell the printer with a "demo" cartridge that does not have much ink in it ( a rip off in it's self) but Lexmark still seems to come with regular cartridges.

Patrick
 
I have a KonicaMinolta Magicolor DL 2300 laser printer. I am waiting on a $60 set of refill CMYK ink bottles. I'll let you all know how it goes. The printer was under $450, but the ink is indeed the killer.
 
SPHayes said:
This is no longer a good bet with HP products as they now sell the printer with a "demo" cartridge that does not have much ink in it ( a rip off in it's self) but Lexmark still seems to come with regular cartridges.

Patrick
Click to expand...

A lot of manufactures are doing that with laser cartridges too, but they are still less expensive for B&W printing if you do more than 500 pages. Figure about 3cents per page for standard print($15 per ream)* as compaired to 6-10cents per print for inkjet ($30-50). Color pictures cost about 25cents-$1 per page for the inexpensive printers. If you print photos, it's MUCH cheaper to email them to a photo store and get REAL prints.

*NOTE: I manage about 25 printers for my company and spend over $1k per month on supplies. Lasers are much more inexpensive than ink for most applications.
 
Color lasers are not cheap (neither printers nor supplies). Alas. The threadstarter asked about B&W text printing though and that's where lasers excell, both in quality and in cost effectiveness, not to mention the speed (if large number of prints is needed).
 
Something else that is becoming more and more common with the inkjets is to not allow you to print if any of the ink is out. At work we have a 4 in 1 machine that uses seperate color cartidges and a black. It gets used mainly as a fax machine, and never prints color. Yet every few months it will stop working until all of the ink is replaced. I don't see why I need blue ink to print a black and white text page.

The other problem I had with my inkjet was that as I am a student I might go a long time between printing things. Most of what I print is for school, so when school is out for summer I might not use the printer at all. My inkjet would always get clogged up as the ink dried up in the heads, and required a long process of cleaning. This wasted even more ink, and then when the color ran out I needed to buy new cartridges even though I didn't need to print in color.

The speed of laser is also really great, sometimes I need to print hundreds of pages of notes at a time, and my cheaper laser does it in just a couple of minutes. Pictures print fine, though of course no color. It really depends on what you want the printer for. When I first switched I kept the inkjet printer as I thought I might miss being able to do color. I haven't missed it at all, and that inkjet is long gone.
 
Well...I replaced the laser toner in my MagicColor DL. It was streaming a message that all four colors needed replacing at once, which was strange, so I did some investigating. I took a tiny little Phillips head and undid every screw on the cartridges, and found that it was only the cyan and magenta that needed changing! There was still a TON of toner in the black and yellow. Now that is the sign of a racket, if you ask me.
 
I had a Xerox printer for years and refilled the cartridges. I think I paid $20 for the refill kit and threw half of it away when I threw the printer out. The printer stopped feeding paper reliably (which I don't believe at all related to refilling the ink), and I wanted a higher-resolution printer.

My current Epson is slowly bankrupting me on cartridges and it's rigged so you can't refill 'em. (Yes, I know that there's a hack on the internet that you can use to bypass that, but it's rather involved.)

And yes, the Epson really annoys me when it says I can't print a black-and-white document because the color cartridge is out.
 
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