printerfillingstation.com Bulk Ink Quality?

[GeekStyle59]

Does anyone have any experience with the bulk inks from printerfillingstation.com?

I ordered them pretty soon after receiving a used HP Photosmart 3210 printer so I don't really know if my problem printing photos is the ink, the printer, or the lack of hardware color calibration of my display. (My photo club buddies don't seem to complain about the prints they get out of their printers even though most of them have not calibrated their display.)

I ordered the inks because the company also offered the HP 02 refill friendly empty cartridges so it seemed like a deal at the time. I had no idea I would be wanting to print photos at the time of my purchase. Is this a case of lousy 3rd party ink ($6.00 for 2 oz.)? Should I try the MIS ink (or other quality third party ink) before I decide it's my printer's problem and not the ink?

My current results are S***!!!!!.

Thanks to all in advance.

 

[qwertydude]

You should put up a scan of a print along with the original file. Then we can be able to help diagnose your problem.

 

[GeekStyle59]

This is the Photoshop file:

While this is the scan of that file from my printer (note both color shifts and loss of detail in the Zone Squares):

 

[ghwellsjr]

I'm confused. Did you put a refill ink into some new refillable empty cartridges and that's what you are having your problem with? If you put back OEM cartridges does the problem go away?

 

[GeekStyle59]

I never had all the OEM cartridges so have not run it with them. The printer was given to me. Do you suppose there was a reason behind that? Yes, I bought a set of the refill friendly cartridges as well as the bulk ink for the printer. Pretty wild results, huh? The inks are all placed in the appropriate carts, too. I'm on a fixed income due to disability so I have to make do, but I'm always getting very weird color casts in photos. Routine print outs don't bother me as I'm only interested in the info.

 

[GeekStyle59]

Think I figured this one out, at least for a little while. When I first installed the refill inks initially, magenta stopped printing. I just went back and used the HP Photosmart 3210's calibration "reset to factory defaults" and the resulting output has the heavy green color cast. A couple of days ago, instead of doing my usual refill to the magenta cart, I inserted the OEM magenta cart I had purchased when the no magenta printout first occurred. Obviously, the two inks don't seem to like each other, wouldn't you say? But why this happens only on magenta is a total mystery to me! I'm going to reinstall the refill friendly cart and run a purge file. Then I will repost the results. I may not get it all accomplished today though.

 

[GeekStyle59]

Conclusion: the printer needs a trip to the repair shop! Something major is wrong. Got the magenta printing through much ado in two steps: 1) rinsing both magenta carts with a warm water and ammonia mix, then running the purge file with that combo (though saw little improvement); and 2) even though I got no error message, I ran the ink failure solution of holding down "color, black, cancel and OK" all at the same time while powering the printer off.

When it's turned on again, it cycles through a major -- 5 minutes or so -- process. Ran the purge file a few more times and it came out perfectly even with the ammonia/water solution still in the carts! Emptied them, replaced the ink, and ran a few more purges and voila! But when I then ran the test file above, it came out the very same weird colors!!!

The ink: I now remember that it is the Durafirm that no one seems to be able to get info on, at least not here in the forum. Also decided -- after looking around the forum threads -- to go with the Image Specialist inks from Precision Color when the printer is fixed.