Canon Chip Resetter For Sale. Read This!

canonfodder

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A RESETTER MAY EXIST! I AM MOVING WITH CAUTION. THERE HAVE BEEN FAKES.

I have been communicating for some time with a company in Taiwan. They specialize in making replacement chips for toner carts and inkjet carts. I was interested in them as they claimed to be making progress on a resetter, and they do have lots of engineering skill.

This company makes quite a few different chips, but in the case of the chips for CLI-8 carts and the PGI-5 PGBK, they have not made new chips, but claim to have finally made a resetter. Here is the text from this mornings email from my contact in Taiwan.

"We can sell you our Canon IP 4200 resetter ------3300 USD /per set.
Can reset up to 5 cartridges at a time. Unlimited resetting counting."

That is not exactly your home accessory, but someone who wants to recycle the chipped carts may find $3,300 a tolerable expense. There will undoubtly be some more charges, for shipping, and perhaps for inport duties. I would guess that the price includes what some might consider an extreme markup, but they did do the job that no one else had succeeded at. For now, their price is fair, even if the equipment only costs $50 to make.

I propose sending my contact an empty cart or two for him to reset, and I'll check them out when he returns them.
I have not spoken to him about this but I'm fairly certain he will agree.

Are any of you who are in the refilling business interested? I know I would be if I were.

The next message I received from my contact included the instructions for the use of the Chip Resetter, with photos. The resetter is a box that is about 1/6th the volume of an iP4200, and you use it with the printer. You have the carts to be reset in the printer, and connect a USB cable from the resetter to the printer. There are several indicator lights on the resetter. It takes 1 second to do the actual reset on a set of 5 carts. Since the first message, the quoted price has gone up from $3300 USD to $3500 USD. ?

I had asked my contact to reset an empty cart or two for me, so I could see the real results. My request was not mentioned in this second email. ?? He forgot? He doesn't want to ? He is sneaky?

Well, I will insist. I am not a real customer, but he knows that I represent contact to some real customers. We'll see how the next round goes.
 

canonfodder

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O.K. I asked my contact again about resetting some sample carts for me. This time he paid attention to the question, and said:

"Hi,
It is better you send us your empties (do MARK on the chips and empties). After resetting, we send them back to you and then you can check if the ink volume is full."

So I will send the carts, of course. His ready answer, including that I should put my mark on the parts, shows that he understands that I might not believe, and need convincing. I will mark the parts. I had planned to all along.

I am beginning to accept that this is a real, working chip resetter. It is obviously not that low-cost, everyone-can-have-one solution. Considering the complexity that the resetter's mother board shows, it is not likely to be turned into that.

At a wild guess, there is about $2500 extra markup on the $3500 price. That is easily justified for a low quantity, highly specialized, engineering rich product.

More when my carts are reset!
 

Defcon2k

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Sounds interesting, although I can't imagine how to mark the chips in a way that the marks are not easily reproduced; they are too tiny for a fraud-resistant signature. Perhaps the borders of the chips are unique, so one could try to make a photo of that part under a microscope.
 

canonfodder

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Defcon2K,

I work at a company that makes microelectronic assemblies and hybrid microcircuits. I can do something microscopic with a laser.

I have begun to have confidence in the maker. I have a moderately complete instruction booklet for the resetter's operation. It is a fair sized company that sells many copies of chips used on Epson and HP inkjet and also HP laser printers. They have a decent engineering staff. They apparently chose to try for a resetter rather than make copies of the Canon chips. This could be due to a patent situation or other legal concerns, or maybe they found the resetter easier to figure out than to reverse engineer the chips.

I have not sent my carts for the offered reset trial yet due to strong occupation with other issues and some illness which interrupted everything. I will be getting to it soon though and will report everything that happens.
 

Defcon2k

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Hi canonfodder, any news yet on the chip resetter?
 

canonfodder

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Today I received an email with the latest information on the chip resetter made by Hi & Bestech company of Tiawan. The email said:

Hi,
We have CLI-8 ECONOMIC reseter at 1500 USD /each unit.
If interested, pls let us know.
Ciao!
alvin
alvin@tonerchips.com .

This price is much lower than the original offer of USD 3500.
 

Pistos

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Hi Gang,

I just received a chip resetter from thInktank. It uses a Canon printer and a modified cartridge to reset the CLI-8/PGI-5 cartridges.

The price on the unit is 295 Sterling ($595 US - $593 Canadian :-> )

They happily and quickly shipped it to me in Canada. The unit seems to work as promised although we're still playing with it and figuring out all it's little idiosyncrasies.

If anyone is thinking about acquiring this unit I would advise finding a ip4200 or similar older vintage printer. The resetter uses the printer to write to the chips and was developed during the ip4200 era - newer printers write to the chips in a slightly different manner and do not work as well. Once reset with our ip4200 the cartridges worked identical to the OEM and could be used in any other printer.

In the week we've had it, we've received pre-orders for over half the value of the resetter :)


Contact info for the manufacturer is:
Dave Gilbert - sales@thinktankuk.com
thINKtank UK
Lancaster House
Norbeck Lane
Welton LN2 3JP
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 1673 862176
Fax: +44 (0) 1673 860844
Cell: +44 (0) 7990 588810


Cheers,

Jeff Hipson - jeff@papertrail.biz
Paper Trail Office Pro
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia
 
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