Anybody try "spongeless carts" ???

[Fish Chris]

I can't imagine that there wouldn't be a good reason for having a sponge..... but then somebody must have tested these before they started selling them, huh ?

http://alotofthings.com/catalog/Promotions_arrowjet_skyhorse_canon_spongeless.htm

Your thoughts or experiences please,
Thank you,
Fish

 

[Osage]

There has been some past threads on spongeless cartridges. The latest one from spongeless from weink. Its on the same page as your post and about half way down.

But bottom line in my mind---spongeless may be a good idea in theory but does not seem to work in practice. Too many trying spongeless posted back reporting leakage
for me to consider trying them.

 

[websnail]

I've got some spongeless carts from MIS for Epson printers (C84, D88, etc..) and they're working just fine...

Couldn't say the same for any Canon models as I wasn't even aware that any existed for that type of printer.

 

[Osage]

Have to agree with Websnail,

I should have restricted my remarks to Canon spongeless. Why they seem to work better in Epsons beats the heck out of me. But may have something to do with the design of the ink outlet on the printhead.

 

[Fish Chris]

Thanks guys. Of course with all my problems lately with the G & G "sponge" carts, maybe I should try to get this all straight, and then leave well enough alone !

Peace,
Fish

 

[fotofreek]

Fish - did you read the posts by Neil Slade (extremely knowledgeable - click on his link at the top of the page and read his inkjet stuff) about the G & G carts? He had been very happy with them but they apparently changed suppliers and the newer carts leaked into the printer. If you are in the US Alotofthings has procolor carts that they say are filled with formulabs inks. I don't know anything about the quality of the carts but you can call the owner and ask him if he's had any negative feedback on them. I prefer refilling and use MIS inks with OEM, MIS, Hobbicolors, and some old Arrow carts. All of these carts have sponges and teh reports on spongeless Canon carts hasn't been good. Good reports on bulk inks from Formulabs and Hobbicolors from knowledgeable people on this forum and the printer newsgroup as well as the MIS inks I use.

 

[Fish Chris]

Hello fotofreek. Did I read Neil's post about the G & G carts, you asked ? In fact, I contributed to it !

When he said: Here's a letter from someone else with exactly the same experience- (same thing happened to his friend as well:
Hey Neil,

I don't mean to keep bugging you.... But just for your own info, check this out :-( Remember I said that after all of my efforts, and replacing both the yellow cart that leaked, and the p. magenta that was contaminated by it, I finally had the printing working great ??? Well this morning, 12 hours later, I go to do an 8.5 x 11 for a friend, and find that my black cart which was full had completely drained out, and contaminated my p. cyan :-( Two more carts wasted !

This was me !

So unfortunately, I had to send back all of my carts, the failed ones, the ones in my printer, and the ones still in the package, plus all of the same from my buddy who always orders his ink along with mine. And now I'm sitting here with an empty printer beside me :-( Inkgrabber says they are going to replace all of these with Rainbow brand carts. I never had any problem with these when I used them before, but now that Neil has mentioned that these have a poor quality cyan, I'll probably notice this, and not be as happy with them as I was before..... Then I will probably consider Procolor carts.... Hmmmm.

Peace,
Fish

 

[ocular]

I have tried some skyhorse spongeless from ebay here in Australia.

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=842

As the thread says they are easy to refill, but

two of the color cartridges have leaked whilst in the printhead -

their dimensions seem poor.

I have ordered some more from Skyhorse direct that are a newer design.

I haven't heard of any opinions from users of the skyhorse spongeless purchased from alotofthings.

The other type of spongeless canon cartridges are the jetyoung and cutemaker spongeless cartridges. Panos has tried these and so have I. They do not work as individual cartridges. There is more success as part of a CIS where they are not removed from the printhead.

 

[easyrefill]

I happen to sell spongeless cartridge, these products are new. The customer wants it so someone has to make it. My supplier ( I am not sure they make these themselves, even though they do manufactruer Epson compatible cartrdiges ) told me the spongeless Canon is not very reliable. I cannot say this is the particular kind this supplier was talking about. Based on that, I had customer decided to go back to the sponge type cartridge.

There are plenty of Epson compatible spongeless cartridge that works, but what I heard about spongeless Canon is not good enough just yet . That's from my suppliers.

 

[Osage]

Re: this thread,

From what I have seen over time that seems to be the concenus view---while spongeless may work in Epson printers--as of yet no spongeless design seems to work reliably in Canons.

My question concerns the binary aspect of the question--on one hand you either have a sponge or you do not------but existing sponge designs--at least in canon BCI-3&6 cartridges have the sponge section much larger than the reservoir section-----so we could think of the sponge vs. reservoir volume ratio as a variable.

And if that ratio is varied--at what point does performance fall off?--and it seems to me the tradeoff is the maximum amount of ink that can be packed into the
cartridge without getting an overfilled condition. And that an OEM manufacter and a home refiller may look at the question quite differently---with the OEM manufacter always wanting to short shot the cartridge to maximise their profits.

To a certain extent the third party vendor of prefilled Canon cartridges may look at it the same way--they are buying empty blanks and adding ink--while the blank cartridge could be modified to hold more ink for the same cost--the added ink costs them more---and they market to the great unwashed masses in cartridge form--and must compete on cartridge price--only the more discriminating buyers would understand their cartridges have more ink--and are worth more.

So only the vendor vending empty blanks would have an incentive to produce cartridges that hold more---maybe a very small segment of the market--but an innovative vendor could make some bucks in that area.

While what I write here is basically alot of whatifs, I would be eagar to hear from any who can shed some light on this question.