We will provide tips and tricks to refilling the newer cartridges. The newer cartridges are harder but with the techniques we will show you will have a greater chance of success.

The new cartridge is much smaller now this changes things a lot with regard to refilling. The problem is that the entire sponge must be filled with ink in order to hold the recommended amount of ink. This is hard to achieve for the amateur because of air in the sponge.

The professional filler fills the cartridge under a high vacuum this removes the air and then the ink is injected. Only after the sponge is filled completely is air let back into the cartridge. This works very well and if the empty is a good one it almost always results in a working cartridge. Now we are talking about the small cartridges produced in the last 2 or 3 years. That is like the small the HP 56 and 57and The Lexmark 16 and 26.

So what can you do to increase your chances of success? First thing is don’t try to fill the cartridge to it’s full capacity. For instance the HP 56 originally had 19 ML so only put in 8 to 10 ML of ink. Trying to fill it full will only result in leaking and other problems.

Because of the air problem I recommend that you insert the needle as far as possible and angle it toward the print head. Another thing that can help is to use a gravity feed. Remove the plunger from the syringe and put in the correct amount of ink. Let the ink slowly enter the cartridge by gravity.

Don’t try and fill a cartridge that been sitting around for weeks or months. Even the professional have problems with these. Fill the cartridge at the first sign that it’s going dry.

After filling your cartridge you may find that it won’t work at all. When you touch it against a paper towel nothing at all comes out. There’s a channel between the print head and the compartment that has the sponge. If this channel gets empty it can take some effort to get it filled with ink. You can buy a cartridge primer to solve this problem. These clip onto the cartridge and the syringe hooks to it. You pull out on the plunger of the syringe and this sucks ink into the empty void I was talking about. You can find these by doing a search on Google or another search engine.

The other way of forcing ink into the cartridges uses centrifugal force. Don’t do this where ink can get on anything! Start at about shoulder height and bring the cartridge rapidly down to about your knee. Stop abruptly and the ink tries to keep going forcing it up into the print head. You may have to do this several times before your successful. Keep checking by touching the print head against a paper towel. Ink should come out freely. Buying a primer is by far the best method.

The other reason the cartridge won’t print at all is that it is dripping ink. A dripping cartridge won’t print right and in most cases it won’t print at all. If you have over filled then you can suck some of the ink out. Or you may let it set for 2 or 3 hours a will usually do the trick.

Remember we are talking about cartridges that aren’t dried out. If your cartridge are dried out I would recommend buying new or refilled cartridges, as you will probably have a lot of problems. Also we are talking about Hp And Lexmark cartridges. For the others I recommend buying new compatibles, as it’s cheaper in the in the long run.

WE will begin with the simple easiest methods and then get into some of the ways the professional printer tech gets them unclogged.

Dealing with a clogged print head can be frustrating but this is no time to get into a hurry. Cleaning solvents can take many hours to do the job. And remember your trying to save the life of a printer. If all fails you printer may be ready for the printer graveyard. I’m talking about printers with the built in print heads here. It’s probably best to explain the different types of printers now.

There are two rough categories of printers one with the print head built into the printer. For example Epson some Xerox and Canon .The other are Hp and Lexmark, which have the print heat built into the cartridge.

On most of the printers with built in print heads it is a major job to remove the print heads so all of our cleaning methods are with them left in the printer.

Most of the clogs that occur while you are printing aren’t severe. The ones that are in many cases tough are when the printer has been sitting for a long time without being used. In this case the ink can dry as hard as a rock.

The first thing to do is to run the print head cleaning cycle 3 to 5 times. If you don’t know how to do this check your manual or check online for a manual if you don’t have one. After running the cleaning cycles, check the print out for the slightest change for the better. If it’s getting better let it cool for a few minutes and continue. If it stays the same or gets worse move on to the next method.

Epson recommends running the cleaning cycle several times then printing a test page. Don’t print a test page after each cleaning cycle on a tough clog. It does waste more ink this way but is necessary when you have one that is badly clogged.

If you still have problems its time to move on to more advanced methods. On Ebay you can purchase a Cleaner Called E.K.S. in small quantities. I’m in no way affiliated with this company by the way. Just type in Epson head cleaner and it will come up. This cleaner will work for all other brands also. I recommend that you keep some of this on hand if you have this type of printer.

Normally if you open the printer cover you can’t move the print heads around. So here’s what we do. Turn on the printer and watch the print heads move around while they are still moving unplug the power cord. Now you can move the print heads back and forth with your fingers. Take a piece of paper towel and cut out apiece about 3 inches long and 1 and a half wide. Fold this accordion style until you have a strip about one half inches wide. This isn’t critical.Put some of the head cleaner on the paper towel and lay the paper down flat and move the print head until it’s over the paper. You may have to work at this there’s not too much extra room to get the paper under there. The wet towel will stay moist for several hours and keep the head wet with solvent. This is one of the most powerful ways of getting the job done.

Check the towel every few hours and if it’s dried out apply a little cleaner with a syringe. Let it sit at least overnight for a real stubborn clog. Leave the printer cartridges out because it can wick all of the ink out of the cartridge. Apply a little of the solvent to the little pins that go up into the cartridge to keep this area wet also. Use the cleaner sparingly as you don’t want to get this cleaner down onto the circuit boards. This would cause a short and maybe ruin the printer.

When you get ready to run a print test remember that it may take awhile for the print head to get filled with ink so it might not print on the first tries even if it’s unclogged. There is one other method that techs use. Get a short length of one-eighth inch clear plastic tubing at a hardware store. Hook this onto a syringe. Slip the plastic tubing over the little pins the ones that go into the cartridge. Then push in on the plunger to try to force air through the print head. Always push the air through don’t try to suck air through by pulling on the plunger.

If the printer is under warranty you could just send it back for repairs instead of going through this. But if not under warranty it will probably cost you more than it’s worth to send it to the factory, as they will many times replace the print heads. If you don’t have any of the recommended cleaner and it’s an emergency you might try a solution of 50% distilled water and 50 % ammonia. Well good luck I hope this helps.

During my years in business many people have asked what is the best printer. After reading this article you will be in a better position to determine the best printer for you.
The major manufacturers are Hewlett Packard, Lexmark, Canon, Epson, Xerox and Brother. Lexmark makes many printers for other manufacturers such as Xerox and Compaq. So you may see printers with another manufactures names that are actually Lexmarks.

The biggest names are Lexmark, HP.Epson and Canon. There are two major categories of inkjet printers. On one the print head is built right into the inkjet printer cartridge itself. This is a cheap print head meant to last a short time. The other has the print head built into the printer itself. This print head is meant to last the life of the printer. Now the reason this is important is that there is a huge difference in the cost of cartridges between the two types. This may be one of the main factors in your choice of printers.

Hewlett Packard from now on called HP and Lexmark are the ones with the print head built into the inkjet printer cartridge. These are the expensive cartridges sometimes costing $35.00, $40.00 or even more. These cartridges are much more expensive to manufacture. Also these companies have patients that keep other companies from making cheaper substitutes. This keeps the prices up.

The other style of printer cartridge is just a plastic container with a sponge in it .Ink is injected into the sponge. This makes for a very inexpensive cartridge. Many companies are making substitutes for these costing less than 25% of the cost of the Lexmark and HP cartridges. The print quality of both types is of cartridges is excellent. So at first glance it might seem that the obvious choice of printers would be the printer with the lost cost cartridges.

However there are some other factors to take into consideration. If you print once a week or perhaps every two weeks the print heads can dry out on the printers with the built in print heads. These can be hard to get going again. In some cases You may not be able to get them going at all. This means a new printer. Never take the cartridges out of this type of printer for long periods of time. Such as for shipping as they can dry out so bad you may not be able to get them going. New printers are shipped without cartridges but the print head doesn’t have any ink in it so there is nothing to dry out. The other style of print head also dries out but On the Lexmark and HP this isn’t so much of a problem since you can get the cartridge out to clean it and in the worst case you can always get a new cartridge.

Now after all of this you may be confused as to which is the best one for you. It really depends on how much printing you do or if your willing to print a test page daily then The Epson, Canon or Brother type printer might be right for you. The print quality on some of these is incredible. Some of these manufacturers recommend printing a page at least every two weeks. I have found this is not nearly often enough. I suggest a page every day or two. If you don’t print often then one of the HP or Lexmark might be better. The print quality is very good on either type.

In this case you can use refilled cartridges to cut down on costs. Well I hope this helps I’ve been I the refill business several years and I have seen the problems people face with these. But it’s worth it the printing quality is incredible. Some of these printers are capable of gallery quality prints.

You might be surprised at the answer. Through the years I have been asked this question many times. People understandably would like to know the answer before spending their money. Many think that the only answer is in the big names that they have heard. And it’s no wonder these same companies have spent millions promoting their names.

What would make up the best computer? In my opinion it should have a minimum of these qualities. Be reliable, easy to upgrade, parts readily available, easy to work on and long lasting. The only one that meets all these requirements is the generic computer that is built by you or a computer dealer.

Computers are different than almost any other product. You probably wouldn’t want to build your own car for example. But early on manufacturers began supplying Cases motherboards and the rest of the parts to build a computer. So an industry sprang up and some bigger companies plus local dealers built computer to your specifications. These had many advantages the main one being that you could find parts anywhere at reasonable prices.

What sometimes happens for example is say a motherboard goes bad. Because of the way the major manufacturers computer is built a generic or another manufacturers won’t fit this has nothing to do with the electronics it’s a mechanical thing it physically won’t fit or screw holes won’t line up. Now the generic motherboard might run $80.00 to $100.00 while the major manufacturers could be $250.00 to $300.00 or more. After paying that much for parts plus the labor many are thrown in the junk rather than fixing. The same goes for power supplies. Many times the off the shelf power supplies won’t work in these computers. They will make you pay dearly and many times the power supply will need to be special ordered from the major manufacturer.

In other respects I think the computers are about equal. Taking into account that almost all of the parts in the major Brands are made by the same companies that make the generic parts. In selecting your generic computer do some research in is quality of product. What desktop computers will last, and which ones would not? What are the highest quality components? Does the company offering you desktop computer deals provide good warranties? Finding a cheap computer is less exciting when you find out that that computer is a lemon. The fact is that desktop computer deals are not real deals if you get a machine that doesn’t last out of them.

Our discussion has only covered desktops and the pc. The apple computer is a different story and isn’t covered here. Laptops are another story also and I will cover these in another article. If you were to ask almost any computer dealer I think most would agree with what I have said.

Lately the majors have started to make their computers more compatible. Maybe they have begun to see the light. In the mean time I hope you will consider buying your computer from your local dealer or repair shop.

Please read this article it could save hundreds or even thousands of dollars on ink cartridges. I’ve been in the cartridge refill business for 6 years now and there’s one thing that I have learned. There is a lot of BS going around about ink cartridges. I’m here to set you straight and save you plenty on ink.

Of coarse the manufacturers will try to force you to buy their cartridges and that’s understandable because of the very high markup on ink cartridges. They will try to make you think that compatible or refilled cartridges will damage your printer. Lets look at it this way if you used 5 compatibles you would save enough to buy that $99.00 printer. So what are you afraid of?

Now let me tell you I have customers bringing their printers to my shop all the time. The fact is print heads clog up just as often with originals as they do with compatibles. There is no magic in original cartridges, although billions in advertising has brought the manufacturers to almost the level of gods in some people’s minds. In fact some of the newer color cartridges with the pigmented ink are the worst of all. After the ink dries it’s almost impossible to dissolve even with their cleaner.

One of my customers bought a printer on Ebay and it was promptly shipped out and arrived 3 days later. But the sender had removed the cartridges and put them in plastic bags. This is not the thing to do! The heads were so dried out that that manufacturers own cleaner wouldn’t unclog it. This was with original manufacturers cartridges. If you ship a printer be sure and leave the cartridges in it.

With spectrometers and other equipment ink manufacturers can very closely determine what is in ink and duplicate it. You know scientists can tell the composition of stars billions of miles away, do you think it’s a problem to tell what in ink?

I had a customer come in one day and he had on of those expensive printers that take 6 cartridges. He said well I’ll try just 2 to see how they work. He didn’t sound very convinced. He came in a few days later and said I couldn’t hardly believe it If anything the pictures look even better.

What happens is that when a printer clogs up it is immediately blamed on the ink compatible or refilled cartridge. When the problem is that the printer hasn’t been used often enough. Another thing that happens is that printers have a parked position where the print head sometimes drip some ink. This area usually on the extreme right of the printer is always black with ink and most people don’t even notice it. But after getting a cartridge refilled or using a compatible they go looking for ink and then they spot this ink and say your cartridges is leaking all over the place. They have heard that refills leak. Properly filled cartridges do not leak

What basally causes clogs is the printer isn’t used often enough. I recommend printing a page every day or two. I see some manufacturers recommend printing at least every two-week but I have found this isn’t nearly often enough. I have seen on the Internet a free utility made for this that automatically prints a page a day. Maybe you can find it. . On refills if the empties have been sitting around for weeks or months there may be a problem with clogs. The fillers may have powerful equipment to clean cartridges but dried up ink inside the cartridge can break loose later causing a clog.

At my business we basally fill the customers own cartridge. So if the customer brings it to us in a reasonable length of time there is no problem. However after years of trying to educate people it still happens that some still let them set around for months before getting them filled.

So after all this how much can I save? If you can use compatible cartridges you can get good American made cartridges at a savings of 70% or more. Now that’s like buying gas at 75 cents a gallon, now that what I call a savings. If compatible cartridges aren’t available for your printer you must use refills and can save 25 to 40%. In another article what’s The Best Printer and Why I explain the difference between these types of printers.

Money gets tighter and tighter for many people. It makes sense to save money where you can. Some schools and other large users could be saving thousands and the taxpayer is paying the bill. You can also do refills yourself but some of the newer cartridges are difficult. I will have an article on this later. I’m for the little man. I see on some forums people recommending that you use originals only. I can only say I think they are repeating what they have heard from others. I doubt that they really know much about the subject. I f you use refills and let your empties set around for months before refilling