Is Cartridge Refilling Dying?

[wilko]

As one of the hmmm, older generation, I prefer to look at printed photos and even, gasp, to keep them in an album. We have just bought a new turntable to listen to all our vinyl, too.

You will no doubt be regarded as a pacesetter in a few years time.

Digital is great for ease of access but there is still something magical about holding a photo in your hand or perusing a photo album. Vinyl is making a comeback and I'm still hanging on to my turntable and amp.

Everything comes in cycles and yet we somehow we never let things go. Someone said to me the other day than "No-one prints photos anymore." Oh yes they do and I'll bet many members on here do.

Printing photos has declined and most people are using MFPs for scanning and occasional printing. Printer manufacturers have done everything they can to stop re-filling but non OEM cartridges are readily available so it's possible that photo printing will continue for many.

If quality empty non OEM carts become readily available then re-filling may still prosper amongst the relative few who do so. However, Canon has done everything possible to prevent refilling of OEM carts.

I'm not suggesting that refilling will end, merely that refilling OEM carts is perhaps at an end.

 

[mswannie]

I love looking at actual photos and I get bored when squinting at the photos on someone's phone, first of all because they are small, and secondly, because people just take thousands of boring photos instead of choosing a few worthy ones.
Speaking of ink.....
Price comparison:
OEM cartridges for Canon MG6150 at the cheapest store in my town €13 x 6 = €78
Cartridges refilled at a shop which does this €5 x 6 = €30
Non OEM cartridges bought online including shipping cost €1.07 x 6 = €6.42
It speaks for itself.

 

[The Hat]

@wilko While I agree with you that photo printing is dying, almost dead in fact, but the young people are just that young and stupid when it come to memories.

My memories fade and so do photos but it’s still nice to have them to look back upon, and that is something the young of today will have to forgo because their memories too will also fade and so will the digital gadgets that have their photos stored on.

As for OEM cartridges they still provide the best option for refilling and when not available then we are forced to use good compatible ones, but not every 3rd party cartridge can be filled repeatedly successfully, so beware.

OEM cartridges for Canon MG6150 at the cheapest store in my town €13 x 6 = €78 (1)
Cartridges refilled at a shop which does this €5 x 6 = €30 (2)
Non OEM cartridges bought online including shipping cost €1.07 x 6 = €6.42 (3)

(1) Nobody likes over paying for very expensive OEM dye inks, but if you’re selling your prints then it’s vital to give the best quality to your customers and not to penny pinch.

(2) Your second option seem much more reasonable but still fairly expensive too and refilling your own OEM cartridges is still the cheaper option, by a mile.

(3) your third option is, lets say not an option at all, because they are actually selling universal ink (Coloured water) and should be avoided like the plague, yes it’s cheaper but at what cost to your print head, one single OEM cartridge (priced above) is just about the total cost of this rubbish..

 

[Paul Verizzo]

@wilko While I agree with you that photo printing is dying, almost dead in fact, but the young people are just that young and stupid when it come to memories.

My memories fade and so do photos but it’s still nice to have them to look back upon, and that is something the young of today will have to forgo because their memories too will also fade and so will the digital gadgets that have their photos stored on.

As for OEM cartridges they still provide the best option for refilling and when not available then we are forced to use good compatible ones, but not every 3rd party cartridge can be filled repeatedly successfully, so beware.


(1) Nobody likes over paying for very expensive OEM dye inks, but if you’re selling your prints then it’s vital to give the best quality to your customers and not to penny pinch.

(2) Your second option seem much more reasonable but still fairly expensive too and refilling your own OEM cartridges is still the cheaper option, by a mile.

(3) your third option is, lets say not an option at all, because they are actually selling universal ink (Coloured water) and should be avoided like the plague, yes it’s cheaper but at what cost to your print head, one single OEM cartridge (priced above) is just about the total cost of this rubbish..

While I readily admit that The Hat knows a hell of a lot more than I do about inkjet printing, I also have to say that he is strongly prejudiced about certain matters without evidence. In this case, aftermarket cartridges. He dismisses them as "colored water," as if they drop food coloring and water into them. While the Chinese supply chain of inks and cartridges is probably impenetrable, you can be sure that A) a lot of OEM parts and/or stolen knowledge is throughout, and B) everything has been reverse engineered. It's damned easy these days, not like when body shops had to match paints using just a trained eye.

I have used non-mission critical cheap eBay cartridges for years on my Canons without one Be Very Afraid head failure. I have also used bulk inks from both "name brand" places like PC and MIS, but also unknowns long out of business. Again, never a problem. Some of these inks have been as color accurate as an OEM, some haven't been. That's the biggest variable. I wouldn't trust a Chinese/generic to have yet done a reliable job on the Chromalife 100+ inks; they might well have a color match, but not the newer technology.

Mi dos experienced centavos

 

[Paul Verizzo]

As one of the hmmm, older generation, I prefer to look at printed photos and even, gasp, to keep them in an album. We have just bought a new turntable to listen to all our vinyl, too.

I have a very good friend, a Brooks trained photographer, and we have been having discussions for several years about the whole Retro movement in technology. He is now into tube (valves to you who speak funny English) audio amplifiers. There are companies designing and building new tube/valve amps, let alone people restoring classic Marantz's, etc.

I was an early adapter of digital, 1999, but now use it just for utility. For fun, I'm back to film. With the demise of local C-41 processing w/o a long drive, I develop both B&W and color negative film; I have been for years. With the advent of good flatbed film scanners and excellent color printers, my wet darkroom is history......and sold. (This is called a hybrid darkroom, if you didn't know.) The use of film seems to have bottomed out and is back on the rise per a number of sources including retailers. The landscape has changed a-plenty, you have to mostly buy online, the brands and films have changed radically, but you can still do anything you want to.

I started collecting New Wave (a 1980's genera) and some older jazz vinyl almost twenty years ago, bucking the CD trend. Which, of course, I also used. Vinyl is back, I heard on NPR recently that a stamping plant in Nebraska (!!) is running 24/7 getting NEW releases out the door. And we all know, there's nothing like those large LP covers, what cultural art!

Larry and I think that although we keep striving for perfection, when we get there, we find out that it's boring. Imperfection is part of our humanness, and perhaps we need imperfection in other endeavors to let us fee at home in our existence.

As I observed about the differences between the old two lane highways and the Interstates in a piece I wrote some years ago:

As America flew down each new section of the new Interstate system
unimpeded by timber trucks or jalopies,
grateful of our cleverness and hard work
We died.

The giant paving machines were the bullets of this American mythology.
As the AM radio became FM
and the battle between eight tracks and cassettes took place in our unpadded dashboards
As we rolled up our windows no longer wanting blessed, real outside air
We died
and we didn’t even know it.

We woke up in motoring heaven.

Heaven, we found out, was boring.
Heaven, we found out, was homogeneous like the color of forever asphalt.
Heaven was the same from Santa Monica Bay to the Bay of Fundy
there is no respite!
Heaven, we found out, has no road soul.

 

[mswannie]

The thing is that I rarely print my own photos. I get my friend, a photographer who has all the gear, to do them for me and I pay him.
I use my printer for printing lesson related material for my teaching job, knitting patterns, online booked plane tickets, articles, and so on. I am printing onto standard matt paper. Or sometimes Professional matt paper. And those 'coloured water' inks do a fine job. And no problem with print heads yet (fingers crossed).

 

[TimSm]

in recent developments, some inkjet cart's have aftermarket one time use and sometimes auto-reset chips developed! stay tuned for the latest cat & mouse games by printer MFG's!

 

[Dean]

I think that most people don't bother refilling cartridges mainly due to the low price of generic ink cartridges.

 

[The Hat]

Thankfully I am not one of the most people, plus I like filling cartridges because it gives me a better understanding of a printer needs, I am still using pre-generation printers that have been refilled from day one...

 

[Roy Sletcher]

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I think that most people don't bother refilling cartridges mainly due to the low price of generic ink cartridges.

Do you have any facts to sustantiate this point of view.

I am not disagreeing with you, just saying an opinion is not a fact.

My observation, and again merely an opinion, is that printing generally is declining amongst the amateur photographic community.

The club I belong to runs some 10 print competitions during the club year. Over the past 3 or 4 years average entry per cometition has declined some 50% - From an average of about 100 entries to approx 50 entries per competition. Friends who entered and printed regulalarly now barely print at all. Sign of the times I fear.

It is possible that that generic refilling popularity is on a similar downward curve. Although on this and similar websites I note an increasing interest in REFILLING QUALITY and RELIABILITY.

However serious refillers are probably NOT buying generic ink cartridges (Just a guess) because for the most part generic cartridges are a world of pain for the serious printmaker. Also depends on your defintion of generic. I do not class the tier one refill brands PC, Octoinkjet etc as generid, yet they are very cheap by comparison with the OEM product.

My guess from all this is that serious refilling is alive and well. Suppliers of quality refill products have a sustainable market and can prove their products compare well with OEM for the most part. The remaining elusive property being longevity.

Enough from me. What do others think?

rs