Best Pigment ink for Ricoh

NickC

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Anyone have experience of refillable Ricoh GC-31 cartridges (in a GXe3350n)? Suggestions for best brand of ink etc.
 

The Hat

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NickC

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There are some refillable cartridges available but no reviews so unsure if they work properly or not. Also which is best manufacturer to buy ink from?
 

The Hat

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I have never read or purchased inks on the hearsay of any on-line reviews, simply because they can easily be self-generated and most are, Porkies come to mind, and ink sellers don’t manufacture anything, they just refill and resell, and the only guarantee your liable to get is from the purchase of OEM ink and cartridges.

“Caveat emptor” come to mind... sorry...:(
 

Tintenklecks

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hey there, first post

I kind-of ended up getting a slightly newer Ricoh "Gelsprinter" (SG-3110SFNW) that uses the GC-41 cartridges.
It appears this line of printers was widely converted for sublimation-ink application until Ricoh withdrew from the inkjet office-printer segment earlier this year. The good news: I used my printer with cheap aftermarket pre-filled cartridges. And I have now proceeded to re-use these exact cartridges by refilling and resetting them.

Tools used: empty aftermarket one-time-use cartridges that I saved, resetted using an aftermarket resetter (marketed for resetting the waste-ink collector), a 60ml syringe per colour with blunt, narrow-diameter needle-tips. Why? The seal on the ink-outlet of the cartridges is a simple foam-seal that gets pierced by the printer's own needle when a cartridge gets inserted for the first time. The inside of each cartridge consists of a simple air-tight, elastic ink-bag. By carefully injecting ink back into that bag (using vacuum-fill method with an over-sized syringe and the matching volume of ink, 32ml-CMY/40ml-BK), taking care not to damage the seal or the ink-bag I was successful in re-using these cartridges. Currently converting one colour at a time since I ran out of pre-filled cyan first. The smarter decision would have been to do black&cyan together, since the self-cleaning-function (priming-action) pumps two colours at a time in this machine, but I digress. Why re-use the one-time carts? Because of the ink-counters, to prevent introducing in air into the ink-lines by running-dry refillable cartridges.

What ink did I use? I used ink formulated for Epson Workforce printers (durabrite-compatible ink-set) sold by a reputable 3rd-party ink-reseller specialising in photo-printing and paper supplies. Ricoh uses piezo-type printhead-technology in their Gel-ink printers, so I took the risk and tried this "thinner-than-gel" normal ink formulated for Epson (that are based on piezo-tech, as well) and so far it seems to work without spills and such. I also purchased 1 set of empty, aftermarket "fill-in" type cartridges and actually fed deionised/distilled water through the internal-ink-lines until they looked clear just to make sure the two ink-types (unknown generic brand from before; reputable bottled ink after) did not react with each other. That wasted some ink for sure! Keep in mind: those ink-lines contain some sizable volume of liquid (usually ink). Once I had water inside those lines, it took about 3/4 of a cartridge-load to get back to the desired output-density.

But then again: This printer appeared "dead" after it had been working well on light-duty, home-use for about 9 months. I replaced it with an Epson Workforce and relocated the Ricoh... ...just to find it coming back to life after that. So from that moment on: it became a toy-like oportunity for playful experimentation. I suspect it's prior home was a bit too close to a heater/radiator for comfort. Measures were taken to not repeat that mistake.

The above mentioned purchase of the Epson was another reason why I started experimenting with this printer using third-party inks: I knew this printer takes care of itself by performing cleaning-related wipes and small ink-purges periodically throughout the day - so I knew that running this machine as a light-duty document printer takes probably as much ink for maintainance as it does for actual printing. I was already going to refill the Epson I got as a replacement and I figured: "both piezo, let's try this!". Ricoh was getting out of the market and if I wanted to continue using the machine - it would be a wash financially either to continue using pre-filled carts of unknown quality or refilling my own juice - let alone original carts. Yes I know: there are more cost-effective printer-models for light-duty / home use, but I like the fast print-speed and the seemingly good mechanical build of this machine, so there it took me.

Summing up: if you happen to have saved some of your empty carts, I suggest trying to locate a resetter for your model. Try searching for resetters meant for the maintainance-tank. Not gonna lie: that one item was quite expensive at around €45. The set of auto-reset fill-in cartridges that I got was around the same. So yeah: another reason for me to try the cheap-skate aproach first, re-using those aftermarket cartridges. To my surprise: those chips actually reset! I was jumping with joy the moment that I inserted that re-filled cartridge into the printer and the ink-monitor read "full" - lucky me or what?

This may or may not work out for you in a similar way. The bottom line is: my experiment in supplementing the OEM "gel"-ink for durabrite-compatible, known-good bottled ink seems to work well. Does this prove my theory as in:
"piezo-type printheads designed for similar/matching application should be expected to offer similar capabilities and ink-compatibilty" hold true or is this an isolated fruitful result?

Anyway: good luck!
 

NickC

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Many thanks @Tintenklecks, lots of good information in your post there. For the moment I purchased a set of after market cartridges but when they run out I might have a go at refilling with Epsom compatible ink. Think when I do I will probably buy some refillable cartridges because they come with automatic resetting chips.
 

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