Canon 245 (USA) ink cartridge

Has anybody had any experience refilling the Canon 245 (US) ink cartridge???

Are not the HP cartridges very much the same as these Canon cartridges are ?

These cartridges are similar to other combined sponge/print head cartridges from HP and Lexmark and other manufacturers, and the refill procedure is the same. Here is an instruction from druckerchannel.de, and here is a Google translation into English. These Canon cartridges are older, but the design is the same as the PG-245/CL-246 cartridges, only the capacities might be different.

Druckerchannel mentions that the capacity of the black cartridge drops with more refills. It seems that they do not put the label back in place after refill. This could lead to the cartridge drying out, as the vent labyrinth, designed to minimize evaporation, is bypassed. If the label won't stick properly, it can be replaced by a piece of tape.

With Hp when you install a refilled cartridge you get scare messages, but with Canon you have to turn off the ink monitor in order to resume printing. Has anybody tried or had any experience tuning the ink monitor off on Canon printers that use these cartridges?

PeterBJ said:

These cartridges are similar to other combined sponge/print head cartridges from HP and Lexmark and other manufacturers, and the refill procedure is the same. Here is an instruction from druckerchannel.de, and here is a Google translation into English. These Canon cartridges are older, but the design is the same as the PG-245/CL-246 cartridges, only the capacities might be different.

Druckerchannel mentions that the capacity of the black cartridge drops with more refills. It seems that they do not put the label back in place after refill. This could lead to the cartridge drying out, as the vent labyrinth, designed to minimize evaporation, is bypassed. If the label won't stick properly, it can be replaced by a piece of tape.

Click to expand...

The reason it keeps dropping is the same reason why I am advocating not using cartridges like the CLI-8 beyond when the reservoir is empty.
Each time the ink is withdrawn from the sponge, the refill will not be able to refill all the air voids left behind. Each subsequent refill has less and less capacity and more and more air voids, eventually two things happen. The useable capacity of the cartridge has dropped appreciably and the flow characteristics also changes towards promoting ink starvation.... and head failure.

So once you buy into the idea of how the CLI-8 works and that the "real" useable capacity of the cart to a refiller is just the reservoir side, you see why these sponge cartridges are compromised for a refiller from the start. They can only draw from the sponge which is a no-no for a refiller. That is the principal reason I do not recommend these things to a refiller....it is highly compromised by the physics from the start. If you consider them disposable, then that is fine but they are highly flawed from the start and there is nothing you can do about it.

So for those looking asking how many times refilling can take place.....it depends on how much you want to draw from the cartridge before refilling.

I must be doing something wrong because my single set of CLI-8's keep working for years without flushing like the Energizer Bunny even though I don't pull and refill until one is deemed empty by the MP830.

(Usually Magenta or Cyan depending on what I'm printing)

To refill the Canon combined sponge/print head cartridges the Druckerchannel staff removed the labels from the cartridges and drilled the vent holes larger using a 2mm or approximately 5/64" drill bit. It seems they didn't put the labels back after refill, so I think evaporation could also be responsible for the loss of capacity.