Life of Carts with print heads

[InkMon]

I keep reading that you can only refill a few times. I have refilled my old HP720c carts more times than I can recall without any quality loss. What is this short life of a cartridge I hear all the time?

It does not seem to apply to me which is perplexing. The best of all, this kind of comment is made by those selling ink. I wonder how others fair with the life of their cartridges.

Terry

 

[stratman]

For Canon printer owners, the issue refers to cartridges that have sponges inside. Newly designed Canon cartridges have a sponge in half of the cartridge. There are no universal reports of a well working spongeless replacement. Even aftermarket copies with sponges do not seem to work as well and for as long as refilled OEM's.

 

[hpnetserver]

Aftermarket cartridges are massively produced at low cost. So it is reasonable to expect quality issues. But according to my experience if an aftermarket cartridge works at the time it is put to use the first time it usually will work for a very long time. If there is a quality issue, such a cartridge will probably fail to work early on. Canon OEM cartridges are made with high quality standard. You really can expect most of them to work as they should. However, BCI-3ebk and PGI-5 are different. If ink dries out of the sponge inside, the cartridge will stop working. It is not clear if it is the sponge getting blocked by the dried ink or the ink becomes thicker. When the ink becomes thicker it will not flow as fast as it should. Maybe this is the real reason why a BCI-3ebk or PGI-5 will not work when some ink dries out of the cartridge.

 

[InkMon]

For ink to get thicker there would have to be either a chemical reaction or water or spirit is evaporating off. The ink I use mixes freely with water so perhaps it is just dye , water and maybe alcohol.

I use some of my inks I refill with if I am doing a bit of calligraphy, They work a treat. They can be mixed to give different colours. There that gives my secret away.