Official PK Poll - Is there any future in refilling?

[PeterBJ]

I'm going to refill as long as possible, which is very long. I'll keep buying older (second hand) printers with refilling possibilities, so the answer to me is 'yes'

I agree. I do the same

 

[John R]

Did I miss a news article that is pushing the facts towards no? I only buy printers that are refillable, both laser and inkjet. The newest printer I bought was due to speed, paper handling, and the fact that refillable supplies were widely available. Refilling isn't going away; paper and ink are both too cheap and too ubiquitous.

 

[Tigerman]

Look question not clear as enough -for me - what refill mean to cartridge or third party inks ? if general mean refilling in any way then I agree with yes. @sumi ?

 

[sumi]

Refilling in any way vs going out and buying a new cartridge when yours run out of ink. Yep, been there, done that and it got expensive.

 

[palombian]

Since with every new printer series it becomes more difficult for the refilling industry to develop a solution, in the long run I am afraid refilling will disappear.

I continue to hoard printers from the last refillable series, but since they become older, little used machines become scarce.

As long as spare print heads are available this will be the most economical solution in the future.

 

[PeterBJ]

With a little luck you might even find one of the better PGI-5/CLI-8 printers in a thrift store or similar. In my opinion those printers were the best Canon ever made for small office/home use. Here is combination of service test prints from my best dumpster find:

But continue searching for anything older than PGI-x50/CLI-x51 printers. This x50/x51 generation of printers is flimsy and noisy, I salvaged and cleaned a MG5550 and I was really disappointed even if a few regular nozzle cleanings gave a perfect nozzle check:

I'll write about my opinion of this printer in a new thread. I don't understand why Canon put such a nice print head with a lot of nozzles into such an inferior plastic thing!

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I continue to hoard printers from the last refillable series

- I still have a few new R265 as a backup , as I call it...but drivers may become a problem with particular models once everybody has been converted to Win 10, and this and that may not work anymore , it happens that some driver may still work, but not the status monitor anymore, or only the printer driver, and not the scanner etc.
It took a while for the hackers, but now various solutions for the Epson P600/800 are becoming available. And sure it makes sense to buy a printer model being phased out to bridge such time as long such solutions are not available for a new model .

 

[The Hat]

The problem with hoarding and using very old printers doesn’t have to be a big deal at all, it just take a bit of extra thinking to get theses babies to print, why not store and hold onto an old XP computer and use that to print..

 

[peter D]

I've only ever used a Canon Pro100 dye printer and Precision Colors inks for photographic printing. I'm satisfied with the generic profiles that Mike at PC provides for his ink set and use the Canon Print Studio Pro software to drive the printer from Photoshop CS.
I print for myself and one other serious amateur photographer using Canon papers and with patience I find that excellent results can be obtained. I'm careful with my ink storage and always keep it refrigerated as well as flushing my filling syringes with distilled water. If I have any doubts about the age of the ink I add a sterile syringe filter to make absolutely sure the ink is clean.
I've never had a head blocking issue that even needed a deep cleaning cycle so consider myself lucky with in that respect up to this point, but keep a spare brand new head on hand just in case.
The fading problem with dye inks I've found manageable with proper framing and/or use of protective sprays and for me the amazing colour rendition of dye inks is a bonus.
I would hesitate to make as many print variants ( trial attempts at various improvements) that I do now because of the cost of OEM inks so refilling was and hopefully always will be in my agenda unless Canon slash the cost of their inks..

 

[The Hat]

@peter D, Long may you have continued success, your obviously doing everything just right..