How many of us are still refilling ink cartridges?

[Artur5]

I refill on a regular basis my two current printers :

- Pro10s : mix of OEM and Octoinkjet inks.
- Maxify MB5150 : OEM ink from G56 bottles for CYM colors and Inktec ink for Black.

Fact is that nowadays I print very little. Almost no photos and not much text, so I guess that my Pro10s wastes more inks on cleaning cycles than on the actual photo.

 

[The Hat]

my Pro10s wastes more inks on cleaning cycles than on the actual photo.

A tidy printer is a clean printer, just think of the issues you’d have if the Friggin head clogged up..

 

[Artur5]

I'm not complaining. The present printhead (the second of my Pro10s ) has behaved nicely for several years. Nevertheless, we all know that Canon printheads sometimes die suddenly for no apparent reason without a B200 error warning. Touching on wood.

 

[MikeH]

I'm refilling both my:
Pro 100 for photos, and
Canon TS302 for work. I print much less that I did, say 10 years ago, as I'm migrated over to pdfs for business stuff.

 

[Jessica421]

Still doing it! Saves money and is better for the environment.

 

[wilko]

So refreshing to see so many still doing the dirty work and refusing to pay the inflated prices of OEM cartridges. Long may it last

 

[Paul Verizzo]

Just wondered how many of us are still refilling. Personally I am still using refillable ink cartridges on my Canon TS700 printers but I must admit that my G500 ink tank printer produces some fantastic photo prints using Canon ink. However, for everyday DS prints I still rely on my TS 700 printers for print outs. Is refilling still alive? Just wondering. I have so much respect for the advice I have received on this site, back to the days when the likes of my Canon IP 4000 print head failed and it was like a major loss. Amazing now we are in a throw out society but it was tortuos then. Ridiculous when you think about it now. Wireless connectivity is essential now and rightly so but like everything nostalgic itmakes us think of the days when we were battling against the large corporations who were doing everything to prevent us from accessing ink that was not provided by them. Perhaps the introduction of ink tank printers shows that our protest against refusing to accept that the restrictive corporate ink cartridge supply has led us to this conclusion.
However, I will continue with my refillable ink carts for my TS 700 printers for as long as I can. Good luck to anyone who is managing to find ways to circumvent these restrictions by the likes of Canon, Epson etc.

Thank the printer goddess for the Megatank printers. My G6020 AIO is fine for 98% of my print needs. Yeah, the inks aren't Chromalife 100+, but how many non artsy prints do we need to have a long life? And the inks cost less than a single CL cartridge with five times as much ink! If that isn't cheap enough for you, you can get a set of all three colors for the price of a single Canon bottle. But the latter are so cheap, why risk a third party inks?

Canon even has a six color Megatank printer, the G620 with Chromalife inks! $270 on Amazon. If a guy doesn't need bigger than letter size, this would fill almost any conceivable printing need.

Of course I will continue to refill my PRO100 carts, or gird my financial loins and used the official Canon cartridges when I think the need warrants, like a print for sale.

A couple of weeks ago I asked Precision Colors about their light stability. They were honest enough to say that PC inks can't equal the Chromalife inks. For US buyers, some good news. They used to be in Canada. Trump eliminated the $800 "de minimus" tariff exemption, so if they were still in Canada there would be a huge tariff. Anyway, not to worry now!