Ink Maker Magazine Article
Refilling Those Printer Ink Cartridges
You have probably seen ink cartridge refill kits advertised on television or on the internet, and if you own a printer, you have probably asked yourself if they really work. More importantly, you might have wondered whether they will work with the type of ink cartridge you use in your printer, because it always seems like everytime there is a "universal" product that is supposed to work with or be compatible with everything, the item you have is the one item it does not work with.
The deal with printer ink refill kits is this - you must check to make sure it works with the type of cartridge you use prior to purchasing it. The odds are pretty good that once you open the kit and think you are going to refill your cartridges and then find that it does not work with the ones you have, you will not be able to return it for a refund. You do not want to get stuck in that situation, so do your homework first just to make sure.
Assuming that the type of ink cartridge you have is able to be refilled with one of these kits, this is what you can expect to receive when you buy one.
The kit is going to come with ink, of course, an injector or syringe type device, and in some cases they will include a plug extractor.
In order to refill your ink cartridge, you will need to get inside it somehow, in order to inject the new ink. This is normally done with the plug extractor mentioned above, but not all kits include this. If the one you bought did not include a plug extractor, simply use a small pliers, preferrably needle nose, to remove the plug in your ink cartridge.
Once you have removed the plug, you must now inject the new ink into the cartridge. This is done via the injector, and you will need to read the instructions that came with the kit to determine how much ink must be drawn into the injector and then injected into the cartridge.
Once you have done all of this, your cartridge should operate normally.
The one thing to remember when using ink refill kits is that you have to do it relatively quickly after the cartridge runs out of ink. There are devices on the cartridge called "heads", and if they dry out due to being out of ink for too long, the only thing you can really do is buy a new cartridge to replace it. If you intend to use ink refill kits regularly instead of buying new cartridges, you will save yourself time, hassle, and money to keep a spare kit around so that when your ink cartridge runs out, you can refill it immediately.
Another thing to remember when you are using these refill kits is to perform the refilling over a large piece of plastic or several layers of newspaper. This will ensure that if you happen to spill any of the ink while injecting it into the cartridge, you will not get it all over your clothing or other porous materials.
