Inkjet Printer Forum / Ink Jet Refill Forum

This happened a few weeks ago and I posted my problem on another long thread.  After removing, quickly refilling and replacing the whole set of carts I got banding   After a cleaning cycle, good print head check, and purge print, the banding actually got a bit worse (as I recall.)  I removed the whole set and put a full set of newly MIS filled MIS virging carts which are working perfectly.   I then blew through the air vent holes of the old carts as you suggested to see which carts flowed less freely than others.  As it turned out, the only one that flowed with not much air pressure applied was the Magenta cart.  The other five flowed less easily. This test didn't serve to isolate the one cart that is probably the problem.   Possibly some ink that had dried in the exit filter area so that there is more resistance to ink flow.  Possibly from being in and out of the printer to be refilled.   These carts have been used continuously for about six months with MIS refill ink and have worked flawlessly until the banding started.  I'm certainly not reluctant to discard one or all of them and start over with either someone's virgin carts, filled carts which can then be refilled, or a new set of OEM carts to start the cycle over again.  Would be nice however,  if I could, with little time spent, get these going again, but not essential.   I also have a dozen Alotofthings carts, but I haven't opened the boxes yet due to Rob's report about some of them not feeding properly when first installed.  I haven't seen him post a followup to see if, after opening the fill hole and watching the ink level in the reservoir drop, they worked ok.  I followed your thread on the dissection  of these carts and the smaller air vent channels.  I have also seen posts to the printer newsgroup from people who have used the Arrow carts with no problems at all and excellent color balance (Formulabs inks).

Sorry, Nifty, so much information, so little gray matter to hold it all!  I'm planning to use the Arrow carts on my wife's printer and her printing volume is so little that it may be a while before I use one.  The reason I will use these carts on hers is that I am continuing to use MIS inks on mine but don't want to get into refilling for her printer.  I will, however, open some of them in the next few days and pull the fill plug to see if the reservoir level drops.  I'll report back.

Do you have the arrow carts with the tapered rubber translucent plug in the fill hole?  I've found that putting this tapered plug back into the fill hole creates a pretty good seal and then some duct tape for insurance.

BUT... if you have the screws and o-ring, you are in luck.  The #6 screw and #60 o-ring fit perfectly into the arrow cartridge refill hole once the plug is removed.  This refill hole is smaller than the refill holes in the OEM carts, so the screw doesn't fit in those and you need to create a new hole in the OEM carts.

Hope that helps!

Granddad - I did the whole treatment on my 8 month old set of OEM carts that had many MIS refills.  Before doing anything I opened the exit port and blew into the air vents.  The ones that had been removed and filled the most, light cyan and light magenta, were also the most free flowing!  I was surprised.  Perhaps that is due to their having lower dye loads and therefore less dye material to harden in the filters.  I steamed and alchoholed the filters, microwaved, refilled with some dripping to purge the alchohol-thinned ink in the filter.  All were improved substqntially (the least improved, oddly enough, was the PM cart) and will be used when i need to refill the MIS virgin carts with MIS inks that are currently in the printer.  Thanks for pulling all the info together in one post for me.

Nifty - I mentione months ago that the Computer Friends plugs worked as  Neil said for OEM carts, but that one kept creeping out of the fill hole.  You mentioned that the hole was probably too small.  When I was working on the carts today I got my drill bit set out and checked the fill hole sizes of the six OEM carts.  Two of them were constricted at the bottom.  Apparently, when you drive the plastic ball into the cart to permit refilling there is a little shelf that must usually break off to give you a full diameter hole that seals well with the CF plugs.  A 5/32 drill fit all the holes except the one that the plug didn't work well with.  I used the drill to ream the bottom of the errant fill hole and now the plug works just fine.  These are great for OEM carts.  Too bad the MIS and Arrow cart plugs don't have a tab on top like the CF blue plugs do.  They would be easier to manage.  Even easier than the screw/O ring.