Remanufactured Ink Cartridges

[HoppaLong]

When technical publications were still printed on paper I remember countless
articles about buying refilled or remanufactured ink cartridges. A friend
purchased kits with ink and syringes. He kept telling me about all the money
he saved by refilling the same black cartridge dozens of times. I tried it once.
It was a complete disaster!

I've purchased remanufactured cartridges a few times. Some were ok, but the
color ink was always less vivid than a factory cartridge. After buying a few more
that were not recognized by my printer I quit. It seemed like a waste of money.

Are there companies buying the best inks and refilling cartridges? If not, why not?
How difficult could it be to buy bulk quantities of high grade ink?

I'm about to order several new factory cartridges. Is there anyone selling really
good remanufactured cartridges at a substantial savings over factory ink?

[PICINK]

Well, actually there are 3 types of aftermarket inkjet cartridges.

1. Clones - typically these are very cheap most often chinese cartridges filled with the cheapest ink

2. Compatible cartridges - a little bit more expensive made of higher quality materials and filled with high quality ink

3. Remanufactured - empty cores from the original cartridges were filled with high quality ink.

[Ponch]

A friend purchased kits with ink and syringes. He kept telling me about all the money he saved by refilling the same black cartridge dozens of times. I tried it once. It was a complete disaster!

Either he was lying or you did it wrong. I can't tell.

[bphlpt]

I have successfully refilled ink cartridges back several years ago, and it was cheaper, but I haven't done it lately.  I think it's more likely to work well on older printers with older style ink cartridges, but that's just a feeling I have.

 

Cheers and Regards

[puntoMX]

Well, this is what I've seen over the last 11.5 years living in a country where 99.9% of the people do NOT buy new or original cartridges:

 

You can buy good ink from eBay (US) but you have to select the right ink. The external systems are okay with the autoreset fuction. But, then you have an Epson, it will stop to work after 25k sheets of paper that went trough the printer, printed on them or not; you have to change the waste collector, some sponge in the back of your printer, and reset the firmware to 0 prints. What a joy isn't it? I can tell that other manufacturers do the same crap.

 

With other words, if you want to print cheap, get a laser colour printer; period! Get a good used one, one for office use and that has a good capacity cartridge (say 5k per color) and buy any brand cartridge that fits the printer if the toner (die) is done. Refilling stuff brings you nowhere if you want to have quality prints.

 

Inkjet/Bubblejet is real expensive. I've had customers that had bought a cheap, 30USD, printer and needed to buy 15USD cartridges (times 2 (B/CYM) or times 4 (B/C/Y/M)) to print just 200 pages. Most of those customers didn't need color printing at all so the went for a cheap Samsung laser printer that would spit out 1000 to 1500 pages with a 45USD cartridge.

 

I gave away all of my inkjet printers after 3 months of use as I could not stand them, not even the deskpro ones from HP, what a junk. I bought different samsung laser printers, modded the firmware to make it autoreset itself after a powerup and refilled the cartridges 2 to 3 times and that worked well fo so-so prints. But to tell you the truth, also they went out the door as I don't need the color and I went for another Samsung (TallyGenicom 9330ND) printer that has a 8k page cartridge and I'm happy with that one although it's just black that it prints. The cartridges can be found for 60USD on eBay, rebuild or no-name aftermarket.

 

For my color prints I walk into officedepot and print for 1.1USD a page, that is 3 times a letter size, at photo quality.

 

Anyway, those are just my $0.02 .

[jaclaz]

I would add, as a corollary to puntoMX's experience/report , how you never actually print "decently" in colours.

I mean apart from the nice (and quick) colour prints you can get from a "normal" Laser colour printer, let's say some Excel graphs, or similar, most of the people thought that having a colour printer was cool to print photos/pictures economically.

 

This has never happened (at least for me), what happens is that either you do print very often photos, and you have a "dedicated" and suitable printer for them (which usually resolves in a real life cost per print at the same level as the "better" commercial printing services) or you print a photo from time to time, in which case you make at the very least three tests on "common paper", and when you think to have got right the colours/saturation/etc. you try on the "special" photographic paper that obviously gives a different result, so you have to adjust it again to finally print something as it should be, with an average of 5 (five) prints for each printed photo, three on normal paper and two on glossy paper, at an overall cost that is three times the cost of a commercial printing service, more or less.

Additionally, when you finally got everything fine and the stupid inkjet is slowly - ohh so slowly - printing the "final" photo at around 3/4 or 4/5 of the print one of the colour cartridges will either clog or simply be suddenly empty and you will have to start again after having procured a replacement, which will either NOT be available (remember this happens usually on friday evenings or during the weekend) or - since you are a smart peep - be available because you did buy a spare, but it will be old, and dried out and clogged, and you will ruin an additional couple of prints before the cartridge will start printing fine. 

 

So, get a laser, actually get a B/W Laser^[1].

Leave colour to the pro's.

 

jaclaz

 

^[1]Please understand that even if you can afford a colour laser (which is a nice device in itself) you will spend a fortune on colour cartridges anyway because nowadays almost anything you print does have - even if very often not really needed in the printout - colours, and even without ever printing intentionally colour pages your colour toner will be used up by these "common" and "unwanted" colour prints. 

[puntoMX]

Thanks Jaclaz for the additional info .

 

 

I also wanted to add that if you can set the date on your printer you might be screwed even more as some printers, like HP all in one (like you want to live in your mobile home and use it to go to the grocery store as well with it?), have an expire date for the cartridges as well.

 

Man, don't you want to put that behind your rear-wheel of your truck and backup? I know we sound like ink-jet/bubble-jet haters (Jaclaz thinks they are a nice device ) but the are simply un-economical, well, for the consumer that is .

[jaclaz]

Also, for those that are concerned about a conspiracy theory (or the other ) let's not forget the not-so-trifling issue of

...the small yellow dots....

 

(if you cannot see anything after the "of"  above, you are getting the point just right )

https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots

http://seeingyellow.com/

 

jaclaz

 

[puntoMX]

Darn, all that extra you get when you think it's only printing in black? So it does do yellow dots as well! What a bonus  .

 

Now, make sure you are wearing your clean-suit, mask and your gloves, using the most commercial ones made in China to make it harder tracking you down. Only buy your paper at Walmart and don't forget to put up those aluminum foal heads. I'm sure Jaclaz has some better tips than this   .

[Guest]

My hp OfficeJet from 2000 still works. Just needs Java to use the scanner--was designed for MSJava. Glad I haven't gotten rid of it.

[jaclaz]

... don't forget to put up those aluminum foal heads. I'm sure Jaclaz has some better tips than this   .

Sure, tin foil is so '90's, we are much ahead of that :

http://reboot.pro/topic/13177-an-improved-electromagnetical-shielding-device/

and be aware of light bulbs and plastic coffee cups :

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/168921-lightbulbs-that-emit-wi-fi/

http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=10944/

 

jaclaz

[jaclaz]

To be fair, *someone*, most probably seeing that they had already milked all the possible money from users over the years by saying that you should only have ink cartridges (because they are better) and only new ink cartridges (because they are better) and that by the clever replacement of the cartridge you have always a new item (it is better) and that you should never refill a cartridge (because the quality of ink may be sub-standard and contamination in the process and bla-bla, etc.) and after hving attempted to milk even some more by progressively reducing the amount of actual ink into a cartridge:

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/feb/23/printer-ink-cartridges-paying-more-getting-less

have come out with what should have been the "normality" since day one.

 

Consider a common tablet, laptop or cellular phone.

You don't (every day or so) replace the battery with a new one , you have a device that you use to recharge the battery .

 

Consider a common car.

You don't (every 600 Km or so) replace the engine with a new one. , you have a tank an you refill it with fuel .

 

Consider what (hopefully) will become a common inkjet printer:

You don't (every 5000 printed pages or so) replace anything ,  you have §@ç#ing tanks and you simply refill them with ink :

 

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/oct/02/printers-refillable-tanks-revolution-home-printing

 

https://www.epson.co.uk/gb/en/viewcon/corporatesite/cms/index/11409

 

NO INK CARTRIDGES REQUIRED

With integrated high-capacity ink tanks, ink is supplied continuously to the printer. There are no cartridges to replace; you simply top up the tanks with Epson ink bottles and keep on printing. Not only is it more convenient, but because you buy in bulk, you also benefit from much better value too.

 

 

 

jaclaz