Inkjet Printer Forum / Ink Jet Refill Forum

yupkime wrote:

Even black pigment ink cartridges with residual ink inside?

Color ones are easy and no problem but I've flushed some pigment ones as best I can and the
sponges are still dark. They are drying now but I wonder whether the ink will be able to "get through"
or not.

Let us know your experience!

ghwellsjr wrote:

But if you are going to flush your cartridges, you must get them completely dry before refilling or you will significantly dilute the ink. I have had no problem refilling very old bone-dry cartridges. You can always try refilling them without flushing them and then if they don't work, flush them and refill them.

Yupkime: I didn't realize until now that your question was directed at me. Here's my experience: I have vacuum refilled well over a hundred virgin BCI-3eBk cartridges that I bought off eBay with Inktec pigment black ink and never had any problem. However, the last time I refilled a batch of 35 similar cartridges, I used ones that I had previously refilled. About half of them had serious flow problems of the type that would warrant purging.

I am still trying to figure out what went wrong. Unfortunately, I did not cover the outlet ports on the 17 "bad" cartridges because I was periodically testing them but after leaving them uncovered for a couple months, all the reservoirs became empty. I believe the filter on the outlet port allowed the water in the ink to evaporate.

Vacuum refilling saturates the entire sponge area which I'm thinking is a bad thing for subsequent refills. This can also happen with traditional refilling if you simply fill up the reservoir because ink will flow from the reservoir to the sponge area at the same level. It would be better to only saturate the bottom sponge material and leave the upper sponge material dry. This is easy to do with the German refill method.

So I'm thinking that if you take a new Canon cartridge and refill it with the German method as soon as the reservoir gets empty and continue to do this, you should never have a problem and never require purging. But if you let ink get into the upper sponge material or if you let air get into the lower sponge material, then you can expect problems that require purging to fix.

If I ever find another vacuum refilled cartridge that has a flow problem, I'm going to poke a hole through the sponge material from the top adjacent to the wall separating the two compartments to allow air to reach the groves that go down to the hole at the bottom of the wall to see if that would fix the problem. If it does, that would indicate that flow problems can actually be a problem with air in the upper sponge rather than ink in the lower sponge.

SpideRMaN wrote:

nifty-stuff.com wrote:

As I slowly injected ink into the cart yellow ink bubbled out of the exit port (facing up) and the air hole (facing down)

Check the airvent cos it could be blocked

blow some air with your mouth through the air vent (take care cos ink will exit from the exit hole if the vent is clear)

I don't think the problem was a plugged air vent since ink readily escaped from that port during refilling... but since I'm stumped, I'm not 100% ruling anything out, so I'll keep that in mind.

have had some occasional bubbling out of the exit port and at times some excess ink filling up above the sponge side while the cart is upside down.  then when i flip it over i get a few ink drips.   i was able to resolve this by drawing ink out of the over saturated sponge.  see http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4589

only happens to my yellow CLI8 and black PGI5 both of which have been filled over 10 times and never purged.  the yellow is original, 2 years old, may be getting tired, but by drawing ink out of the sponge side using the reverse german method i have been able to keep this orig cart alive.

85 refills over the past 2 years using squeeze bottles and the german refill method, all CLI8's are orig.


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• Printers:       Canon Pixma MP830, IP4500, MP830(new spare in box)
• Method:        German Durchstich Method using Canon Cartridges
• Ink:             Hobbicolors, great guy to deal with
• Misc:            Squeeze bottles, needles, scabbards from Howard Electronics

Last edited by jimbo123 (12/19/2009 5:51:20 am)

nifty-stuff.com wrote:

Just an update that this method is still working amazingly well for me!   In fact, while I can't say with 100% certainty, it definitely seems like I'm having way fewer (i.e., none) problems with ink feeding properly (too much or too little) into my nozzles.   It seemed I had way more problems with the standard method than I'm having with the German method.  It may be any number of other variables, but so are I'm very happy that I moved to this method.

Not looking for a plug here but I'm curious as to which delivery method you prefer with this... There was some discussion a ways back about the syringe vs' bottle and the different styles and fine motor control required so wondering which you found easiest.

To keep it completely unbiased, email away

Hi Rob,

not bad this method, isn't it ? It is by far the most easiest way to refill your Canon cartridge (and also for the latest HP 364XL cartridges too), without the risk of ink dripping from the ink outlet as you you experience with the standard refill method from the top. No need to look out for the best plugs to seal or pulling out your thermal glue gun to seal the refill hole.