OT: Refilling ink cartridges? Anyone?

So I read an article in the Denver Post last week about the emergence of a number of companies that will take your empty ink jet cartridges and refill them with ink. One I know has a few shops here in the Denver area, Cartridge World. I stopped in to one the other night just to check it out and see what the story was. Has anyone used this type of service?

Of course, they are not able to reload your cartridges with the same exact Epson brand ink(or Canon, HP, whichever), but they say that the ink they use is so close to the original, but not close enough to infringe on any patents. For an example, to refill my color ink for my older Epson 1280, it would be ~$11, black is ~ $8. Quite a bit cheaper that the new ones of course, BUT.... is it worth it?!

Now I know what the most likely reaction to this inquiry might be. I personally am a bit nervous to try it, thinking that any paper profiles I've done would be thrown out the window. I'd hate to try it, find crap results, and then have trouble getting the bad stuff out of the system.

Any thoughts? Anyone tried this?

I realize that their main market is most likely businesses and everyday folks who don't have the higher expectations that photographers looking for the perfect print do, but just curious about the whole thing. Thanks for any input!


PS: if nothing else, they do sell new, brand name cartridges too, and are at least a few bucks cheaper that the big box stores.

An office I used to work at tried using refilled cartridges for the office inkjets, with pretty bad results. But that was years ago. I assume the quality has gotten better over the years.

I have several Epson Printers at home. On my Epson R800 I have installed the least expensive inks I have been able to find on EBay on it. Primarily since i only use that printer to make greeting cards and small cards/prints. The biggest deal is that I needed to develop a custom profile for the inkset. Once I made myself a profile it works great. (Normal inkset costs about $90 and the cheap stuff is about $25-30 for a complete set)

I wouldnt use the cheap inks for archval prints to sell to people though. Even though the formulas for the pigmented inks are commonly known and manuafactured. FWIW the cards seem to be holding up fine colorwise but I do not have them in direct sunlight.

RichieV

If you're using a pigment ink printer, most 3rd party inks will not be pigment inks - beware. Also you do lose the ability to really certify "archival" properties on your prints.

For that cheap, why not give it a shot? If you don't like it, chuck the refills and go back to buying new.

Here are a couple articles from PC World. They mostly deal with personal printers, but I think the results would be relevant to higher-end photo printers as well:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112199,00.asp
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,111767,00.asp

I've thought about it, but I'm definitely not very capable when it comes to profiles and the like. The thought of having to mess around getting colors right has kept me from looking into cheaper cartridges and refilling. This may not matter if your printer is older, but does using 3rd party inks/cartridges nullify your printer warranty?

I would concider it with a cheap HP printer, where there is no loss since the head is in the cartridge, but I wouldn't do it with a fixed head printer.

At one point, I refilled an HP cartridge myself to see if I could get it to work. It wouldn't print correctly.

Brent - I have heard that the total number of print head cleaning is about 3-4 times that of manufactures inks. Last year my brother used Cartridge World ink in his printer and it plugged a couple of his jets so he not longer gets good prints.

I have also heard about using 3rd party inks wreaking havoc on the print heads. Maybe on an older / cheap printer might be ok??

It appears that Becky has mastered the art of time travel!!

Reply posted by Rebecca Lehmann on 04/05/30 at 11:30 am MDT