newbie here (and i mean really new)

[mikling]

Now what happens when people run their printer dry while on warranty and cause major costs for technicians servicing these printers. Come on guys be reasonable. You can buy a C88 or 4600 for less than 100 bucks. The retailer gotta pay wages and salaries, the goods have to be shipped and Epson has to have it made. Now what if people start resetting to have every last drop of ink used then sucks air into their heads. Take it back on warranty or exchange or refund. Major costs ensues.

Don't believe it, how many people heed the maintenance requirements of autos to the letter???? very very few actually as long as they find a way to keep it running they will until it quits. So do you think they will not reset before the ink runs completely dry and say they didn't do that?

The fact that you visit this site puts you in a small minority of users who are looking for knowledge.... and I mean small.

 

[chippedoff]

Now what happens when people run their printer dry while on warranty and cause major costs for technicians servicing these printers. Come on guys be reasonable. You can buy a C88 or 4600 for less than 100 bucks. The retailer gotta pay wages and salaries, the goods have to be shipped and Epson has to have it made. Now what if people start resetting to have every last drop of ink used then sucks air into their heads. Take it back on warranty or exchange or refund. Major costs ensues.

Don't believe it, how many people heed the maintenance requirements of autos to the letter???? very very few actually as long as they find a way to keep it running they will until it quits. So do you think they will not reset before the ink runs completely dry and say they didn't do that?

The fact that you visit this site puts you in a small minority of users who are looking for knowledge.... and I mean small.

Agreed.

I don't paticularly care to dry out the cartridge and have the nozzles block. 10-15% left is acceptable. HP cartridges are notorious for drying out in no time flat.

My concern especialy with foam epson cartridges is the residual ink that is left , considering that it's been exposed to quite a bit of air that replaced the ink during printing. I normaly squeeze out most of the air out of my ink bottles before sealing them.

Granted i've never had problems and know how to clean the carts. Most from my expierence , especialy people in offices simply stick the bottle with needle into the vent holes and squeeze. Granted it's not thier fault, they follow what they see on TV or rather poorly conceived instructions.

Personaly i prefer the bottom fill technique for epson cartridges, though it requires more expierence as to amount of ink that can go in (OEM cartridges are not transparent).

I'm working on a Bottom filler for Canon BCI6/3BK cartriges. Should not be difficult to make, and should work for PGI and CLI as well.. At least you see what your dooing.

Enjoy.

 

[snoopy]

Now what happens when people run their printer dry while on warranty and cause major costs for technicians servicing these printers. Come on guys be reasonable. You can buy a C88 or 4600 for less than 100 bucks. The retailer gotta pay wages and salaries, the goods have to be shipped and Epson has to have it made. Now what if people start resetting to have every last drop of ink used then sucks air into their heads. Take it back on warranty or exchange or refund. Major costs ensues.

Never intended to hit the technicians or all the repair people and connected to them. In my ignorance i always thought that the ink left in there was a waste and you gave me an explaination for it that makes perfect sense, i still think that 1/4 of the ink being not used its a little too much considering the prices of a new cartridge, or maybe its a necessary compromise, or a bad market move, whatever . Seems that making printers cost nothing nowadays, lets face it i had mine for 74$can and a mail-in rebate, ok was a clearance but thats peanuts considering that a set of new cartridges costs me as much as the printer, looks a little like "here is the car you bought, now this key will turn it on and off for the first 50 km, from then on you need to buy another key that costs like a new car"
Considering that when i got the printer the carts were already in the box then maybe buying a new printer at the same conditions would save me money. Thats sort of ridicolous.
There could be better market choices other than making money on the carts, id like to see if people here in the forum would spend more for a machine that was built to be refilled with ink, no carts hassle, i would (i know some run refilling businesses). Maybe we should make a poll and email the result to the manufacturers, who knows?
but thats just babbling, id just be happy with a manual that would answer some questions thats all and im not goint to ruin a decent forum like this one with rants so this will be the last time, promise.

 

[chippedoff]

Hi Snoopy.

In the begining Epson printers were much more expensive than the cartridges . I remember the old Stylus Colour IIs series.

An OEM epson cartridge came out to about 9-15$ CDN, the soon after modeles with seperate black and colour (3 colour cartridge) cartridge stayed at much the same prices. 5$ for blk and 12$ for colour

 

[AlienSteve]

There is another side to the cartridge that will expose the damper valve that is that big round thing. That "big round thing" is never seen on compatibles..... wonder why? In fact none of this complexity is ever seen on compatibles and this is why it works so darn well on the original and no problems at all if you stick to the original.

Yes, I think that round thing is a regulator valve meant to lower the virtual pressure at the ink outlet. Make it so the print head must draw ink out, as if it were at a lower level than the head.

If you don't have a vacuum pump, refilling from the bottom can trap major bubbles in there and if that gets ingested into the valve then to the head..... when you refill, it should weigh in the 40 grams region. If not, be careful.

Without a vacuum: Refilling from the bottom, upside down will only refill the lower compartment. Refilling from a hole in the top, rightside up, will only refill the upper compartment. And any air that got sucked into the regulator valve can only be cleared by multiple cleaning cycles. You don't need a pump. You do need a good airtight seal between the filling syringe and the fill hole, and you need a syringe to draw air out of the ink outlet.

Because of the physics involved, it's better to have a drawout syringe at least 2x the volume of ink. IE, if the cartridge takes 14ml of ink, the fill syringe can be a 15ml but the drawout syringe should be about 30ml or larger. If things are set up correctly, just pulling on the drawout syringe will pull the fill syringe down by itself.

The first image shows the path of ink while printing. The 2nd where the filling stops if you just squirt ink into the bottom hole. The third where the air and ink flow if you use a vacuum pump or drawout syringe on the ink outlet.

 

[mikling]

Alien, I've refilled through my method for over 50-60 times and I fill all compartments. Are you making it more complicated than necessary? And I've never had any air in my heads in all those refills. I've had to One (1) head cleaning once in all those refills. So what is wrong with my method?

 

[snoopy]

I know im new here and i dont really know much but i bothered opening a TO441 cartridgeto see how it was working. So here are both sides of the cartridge (for the casual visitors: its not a cartridge cut in half, just the same piece of plastic with one picture per side one beside the other), with labels peeled and hardware (springs and gaskets) separated from the cartridge, the yellow outlines show where the hardware goes (if someone ever wonder that white stuff with diagonal blue lines its a paper seemingly "fabric" backed that seal and separate the compartment in two, air on one side ink on the other, maybe is a sort of drum used to equalize pressure or maybe its permeable to the air and not to the ink, i have no idea), 'nyhow here is the pic:

A is the fill hole (refill too for someone)

B is the one right beside A(doh!) i have no idea if it exhist for some mechanical reasons or if its there for simple manufacturing ease. Right under there there is a little slit in the cartridge's plastic shell that lets ink travel upwards in the next comparment, like the red arrow shows

C theres a plastic pin that pushes here once the cartridge is in place, and pushes up the valve (at the side just under the spring in the pic) permitting flow of ink like the red arrow shows

D this hole is on the side, it doesnt show well in the pic, so i marked it

E and F this two holes connect, from the back, the "valve compartment" (where the spring is) with the lower ink compartment.

G this hole goes to a compartment on the back, the one that is sealed with the" fabric backed paper" with the blue stripes i was talking about above. When the cartridge is out of the printer the valve is closed and this compartment is virtually isolated, whats the reason for this?

H this one could even not exhist, its completely shut closed by the label and doesnt go anywhere. Its even where mikling punches the pinhole in his refilling method.

Once the back label is peeled off it reveals a path, signed by the blue line, opened to the outside on the top (peek under the label edge) it brings air to the back of the compartment with the "blue lines fabric-paper" thingy.

In red i marked the paths of ink flow as i assume it is, i might gotten them wrong if so correct me, some dividers are low (totally or just partially) so a chamber that looks like two compartments its in fact just one single compartment, i guess they exhist to regulate the way air fills the gizmo. The thing im really sure of is that the lower compartment its the first to fill with air (it was the only one completely empty when i opened the certridge) and thet would make sense pushing the ink upwards so that it can be used, the only way the air can come in is from F

NB: contrary to what looks like in the yellow cartridge of the posts above, in this one there were no empty compartments, meaning that the upper one on top of the round damper was full too, or at least it was at one time (that compartment its the one mikling drills to refill the cartridge), comparing the two pics looks even like the TO45x cartridges are slightly different in the compartments.
The round thing you see in the pic is the damper and its composed of the round plastic cover, the round rubber and a spring in the middle, it seals the central hole in the cartridge shell.


It seems to me that at the end there could be another couple places where the cartridge could be drilled to refill, but about the refilling method, being a first timer i feel a lot more comfortable about having to open an hole on the top of the barrel rather than the bottom, with all those slits, compartments, passages etc doesnt seems like any bubble could easily reach the damper part. Mikling: i dont think Alien meant your method was wrong or anything, he just expalined how to fill from the bottom without risk of air bubbles and without the need of a vacuum... thing.
Now, i have no idea how the air goes in the cartridge to replace the used ink, nor i know whats the reason for that valve in the corner unless its to protect the content of the cartridge from spillage while its shipped and stored or handled after its taken out the printer. If someone knows can they explain me?

 

[AlienSteve]

Alien, I've refilled through my method for over 50-60 times and I fill all compartments. Are you making it more complicated than necessary? And I've never had any air in my heads in all those refills. I've had to One (1) head cleaning once in all those refills. So what is wrong with my method?

I guess I was responding to the BobPowell.net link that just squirts some ink in the bottom.

Your method looks fine. I figured out my method when I was refilling for a Cartridge World, it had to be fast and no mess. I rarely have any ink to clean up and it takes literally seconds for the cartridge to be filled to capacity. And no ink ends up anywhere it isn't supposed to be.

On the other hand I do end up with a waste ink container to empty at the end of the day.

Your method has the advantage of not requiring any other equipment. If you are only filling a half dozen of your own cartridges, a few more minutes filling makes no difference.

 

[AlienSteve]

Nicely done! I think I can offer some slight corrections and explanations.

Yes, the white with blue lines is a filter that lets air pass while not letting anything else in. The valve that opens it to the cartridge is so ink doesn't leak out when the cartridge is not in the printer. It would probably prevent ink from flowing out, but that is not it's primary purpose and in fact ink in that filter will severely impede air coming in.

The disk thing is a regulator valve, a simplified version of a scuba diver's 2nd stage air regulator. Scroll down this link to the animated graphic, picture ambient air where they show water, and ink where they show air:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/scuba.htm

Yes, I was not saying Mikling's method was wrong.

I think Mikling's second hole is in the region between the holes you labeled E and F, on the side you show on the left. That is the air inlet from the air filter and air inlet valve, so the result is that as he fills from the top, air can escape from the bottom compartment. Since the air valve is closed, this prevents any ink overflow from flowing back into the air inlet filter.

Mikling's method does a very good job of filling completely as possible without requiring the use of a vacuum pump. And it is miles ahead of the instructions on BobPowell.net, no offense meant to Bob Powell, his method works better than trying to force ink in through the outlet.

 

[snoopy]

there is actually another valve, after the damper towards the outlet hole inside that "pipe" that can be clearly seen in the pic, i think the "damper" and that valve work together to form a sort of pump so once that last valve opens and create a litle negative pressure the damper sucks ink into the circular "drum" lets call it etc, i think its mora a diaphram than a damper it avoids backflow into the ink compartment, but thats because i think the printer sucks the ink from the cartridge. i might be totally wrong there.

The pinhole is made on H (thats where mine ended lol) but it doesnt make much difference bot H and E are in the same compartment, the one with the spring, just one is at the top the other at the bottom, the ink that comes out from the pinhole is from the lower compartment, should go out F back in through E, fill the spring chamber and out from the top of it H. the bottom compartment is where the air is anyways the top ones are almost all filled when it signs empty, its more than a 25% i guess

I think it could be easy to isolate the spring and the bottom compartment and the spring valve with the air intake from the rest simply sealing the B region, attaching a tube to the top compartment and the thing should suck in new ink instead of air, if the ink is stored in a bladder outside the printer with a refill sistem of the kind of an hospital I-V replacing the used ink with air wouldnt be a problem anymore (the bladder squeezes), just refill the bladder with a needle. through the rubber plug I-V style.. but thinking about it theres still to reset the chip so the carts have to come out anyways, maybe with an "always full" chip...