Inkjet Refill Kit - Refilling Process

Refilling Process

The refill process typically involves the following steps:

• Injecting ink: Depending on the type of cartridge being refilled, ink can either be injected through a hole on top of the cartridge, or directly into the ink chambers after the top has been popped off. The ink can be injected directly from a bottle (with a needle tip on it) or from a needle filled with ink. The ink must be slowly injected into the cartridge so as not to cause damage, or overfilling, or overflow to other-color ink reservoirs. (For colors, a label on the cartridge might have three ordered color-dots to indicate the corresponding three ink colors of the reservoir chambers.

Some refill kits include a final step where a small amount of air is removed from the cartridge in order to restore the ink-fluid balance that was present inside the cartridge before the refilling.

• Installing and running: Once the cartridge is filled, the top is placed back on (if necessary) and the cartridge can be reinstalled in the printer. Extra ink flowing from the cartridge print-head can be wiped or blotted (for a few minutes). On some cartridges, the ink has a problem getting to the bottom of the cartridge (especially the colored cartridges), it must be forced to the bottom either by suction through the jet plate or by putting pressure from the top with a syringe to purge the ink through the jet plate very gently. It might be necessary to run the printer cleaning utilities on the refilled cartridge, in case any excess ink is left over from the refilling process. A note to the unfamiliar: the capacity of the cartridge of some brands is much much more than the cartridge comes with when new (especially the colored ones), there may be room for 2 or 3 times the ink sold in some "kits" (this can be learned by doing an autopsy on a non-functioning cartridge, also why the ink does not reach the bottom in the case of some colored inks). In those cases, the needle must be able to reach to within 0.375" from the bottom or closer to be sure that the ink can reach the jets and not just saturate the sponge. The sponge can in some cases take two or more charges of ink and still not reach the bottom (jets).

• Print-head cleaning: Sometimes the ink flow might be blocked by dried ink on the ink cartridge print-head. For color cartridges, typically one ink-color fails to flow due to dried ink. The dried ink can be cleaned using isopropyl alcohol (50% or higher) on a swab or folded paper towel rubbed gently three or four times across the print-head. Another method is to let the cartridge sit overnight in a shallow cup or glass of very warm clean water (not necessarily distilled water). The water depth required is about .25 or .375"; remove and re-clean as above and try to use.