Problem Refilling CLI-8 and PGI-5 Cartridges

[chrisdemont]

To Tin Ho :
Thanks for your response ! The attitude you suggested is wise and I will remember it. Anyway, I do think that repeated controls with withdrawing the carts from the printer head (at least when this is frequent due to frequent use of the printer) may introduce the risk of disruption of the liquid vein with insertion of air between the bottom of the cart and the filter at the entrance of the printer head (nozzles). The more frequently you do the control, the higher is the risk !
You did not comment another point of my post : did you observe, too, that it is perfectly possible to guess an empty (or almost empty) status for a cartridge simply by visual inspection above the rack (printer head, with the cartridges, lighted by the diodes). Or is it only just a mirage for me ?! The question is : how to see something discriminant between "almost empty" and "full or partially full", simply by eye, when the leds are not lighted (because of refilling). Any trick to suggest ?
Thanks again.
Christian

 

[SLR_65]

Hi Guys,

I found a "nifty" little product and I thought I'd share with you all . . . (I'm of course in no way affiliated with these people, just a satisfied customer!).

Although I haven't found blocking off the output port to be that big of a problem, it is a pain. I've found that black electrical tape stretched tightly works well but with the cheap tape I use it sometimes leaves a sticky residual that I have to clean off before installing the cartridges in the printer, and it's just cumbersome to have to wrap the tape around the cartridge.

I ran across a "storage clip" for the Canon BCI3 and BCI6s. It's a little plastic rectangle that has a square of soft plastic in the bottom of it that resembles the plastic used in the seals in the print head. It has little catches in it so you can just snap the cartridge in just like you would when snapping them into a print head.

I remembered that I read somewhere that the BCI6 and CLI8s were pretty much the same cartridge with just some minor differences to keep them from interchanging. Since this was just a storage clip I wondered if the CLI8 cartridges wouldn't fit? I ordered 8 for the color cartridges and two for the larger black cartridges . . . shipping was the same, they were cheap, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to have two complete sets.

They arrived today and the CLI8 cartridges clip right into them! The large black cartridge sits almost level when snapped in, the smaller color cartridges lean towards the front just a smigden but that doesn't bother me. I'm sure they are making a good seal on the output as they are really scrunching down when you snap them in.

They are really a "nifty" little gadget! Here's the link for where I got them - and they show orange ones and one clear one but say the clear ones are not available at this time, however all of them that I got today were clear!

http://www.inkjetsaver.com/bci6clip.html

Enjoy!

Steve

 

[Tin Ho]

Christian: I am not too sure how much impact air presents to the ink system when cartridges are removed for ink level inspection. It is reasonable to assume such impact exists. But the automatic cleaning cycle is probably sufficient to get the air out of the print head. If I am not mistaken, if you remove a BCI-6 cartridge from an ip4000 and plug it back in, the printer does not invoke an automatic cleaning cycle. Perhaps Canon decided that it is necessary for newer printers using CLI8 and PGI5 cartridges. They will sell more ink because of that and it probably reduces problems as well.

Yes, I think it is possible to peek into the reservoir tanks without removing the cartridges, especially because the LEDs are off. But I found that this only tells me if the cartridges are pretty full or not. It does not tell me if they are pretty empty. The reason is you can only see the upper 1/4 of the tanks. If I don't see ink in that top 1/4 of the reservoir tank it may still have 50% ink in it.

Remember the printer will invoke automatic cleaning cycles periodically. The printer may do many more cleaning cycles in one week. So it is not too bad if you make it do one per week because of checking ink level once per week. What I always do is I will watch my printer printing its first page after checking ink level. Because cartridges are removed, replaced and a cleaning cycle is executed it is really the window when problems are most likely to occur. By watching the first print I can be assured that the printer is doing fine after a round of visual ink level checking. I also watch the very first print whenever I start a print job of mutiple pages. If the first page is printed fine the subsequent pages are likely to be fine too unless the printer happens to be out of ink.

 

[chrisdemont]

To Tin Ho :

Hello ! I acknowledge your efforts to explain what is your own way (and which seems to be the right way) ... As I wrote it before, I take notice of your explanations.
Thanks again - Have a nice day.
Christian

 

[ghwellsjr]

If I am not mistaken, if you remove a BCI-6 cartridge from an ip4000 and plug it back in, the printer does not invoke an automatic cleaning cycle. Perhaps Canon decided that it is necessary for newer printers using CLI8 and PGI5 cartridges. They will sell more ink because of that and it probably reduces problems as well.

Actually, Canon printers that use BCI-6 cartridges have no way of knowing that you removed a cartridge unless it was empty, and so they will never invoke a cleaning cycle just because you take one out to check it. These printers can only detect an empty cartridge and they can't tell the difference between a full cartridge, a partially full cartridge, an almost empty cartridge and no cartridge at all! That is probably one of the reasons Canon went to the chipped design because now they can determine all those differences and thereby reduce problems.

 

[william91774]

I work for a large retail ink and laser remaufacturing company and the easiest way to seal any canon bci /cli cartridge is to use hot glue and use a steel rod with cold water and put the small dab of glue over the hole and then flatten the glue and you will never have any clearance issues at all

 

[InkMon]

Hmmm! Where have I heard that before. Works for me

 

[kelvinyany]

I don't know about hot glue; the stainless stain hard drive screws worked for me. I got them from ebay; 50 screws for $6.01.

Today, I successful refilled all cartridges after about 4-5 tries on the PGI-5. Very, very messy on the first try. I didn't read any instruction, going in blind, so learned from my mistake. What I learned is: you must seal the outlet hole with the orange cap and secure it rubber bands, and then drill a small hole above the ink reservoir. Fill the ink reservoir and screw in the hard drive screw. That's it. Not a drop of ink wasted.

It's important to squeeze out 2-3 drops of ink before putting it back to the printer. I squeezed them back to the ink bottle so no waste

this drill works with the hard drive screws I use...
http://www.printerfillingstation.com/Ink_Refills/accessories.htm

from ebay

 

[Trigger 37]

SLR 65,...Thanks for the link to the cartridge holders. At first I did not think that the new CLI-8 carts would fit in that clip because I had read someplace in this forum that the CLI-8 were slightly different in size. I just took one out of my iP6600 and checked it against an older BCI-3, and they are very close. I have some of those older cartridge clip holders and have used them for about 3 years and the CLI-8 fit just fine. I like this type of cart holder since they sit flat and it makes it much easier to refill. I also use a real clip that I get from a different web site. It is a "C" shapped clip with a small square hard sponge material on the inside bottom. This clips over the ink cart exit hole from the side and locks tight over the top of the cart. The only problem with it is that they don't sit flat.

ghwellsjr,... I believe you are wrong about Canon's reasons for going to the chipped carts. There is no difference at all in the old carts and the new carts and the inside detection system of the printer. The small prism in the bottom of the ink cart has not changed and neither has the detector in the printer. All it could ever do was to detect when the cart reservoir was about to go empty. Canon still uses the same method to monitor status of the ink,.... they count the total dots printed and they keep track of each and every cleaning cycle. They use the chipped carts only to write data to the eeprom there and keep track of Cart number and how much ink they think has been used. They really don't know at all. When I got my iP6600 there was a problem with the printhead, or ink, right out of the box,... so after trying everything the Canon tech sent me a new printhead and all new ink carts. Somehow is switching printheads and ink carts back and forth, the printer lost track of ink volumes used. After printing standard stuff for awhile, it told me that I only had 20% of my yellow left(this was by the level in the ink monitor display). When I check the ink cart, it was at 80%. So I ignored it. Then a couple of weeks later after just printing normal stuff, it came back with a error message saying the yellow was empty, and of course it was not, it still had plenty of ink but it was not going to let me print. I talked to Canon and they sent me a new Yellow ink cart. So the answer is, all that the new chipped carts do, is to try and force people to use only Canon ink, when it is time to refill,... and they really don't know if it is time or not.

Last item,.. does anyone know if it is better to refill the CLI-8 ink carts before they get to the bottom, or wait till Canon says they need refilling. Does it change anything in their "you have to push the @#%#$@%& before you can continue".

 

[stratman]

Hi Guys,
I ran across a "storage clip" for the Canon BCI3 and BCI6s. It's a little plastic rectangle that has a square of soft plastic in the bottom of it that resembles the plastic used in the seals in the print head. It has little catches in it so you can just snap the cartridge in just like you would when snapping them into a print head.

I remembered that I read somewhere that the BCI6 and CLI8s were pretty much the same cartridge with just some minor differences to keep them from interchanging. Since this was just a storage clip I wondered if the CLI8 cartridges wouldn't fit? I ordered 8 for the color cartridges and two for the larger black cartridges . . . shipping was the same, they were cheap, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to have two complete sets.

They arrived today and the CLI8 cartridges clip right into them! The large black cartridge sits almost level when snapped in, the smaller color cartridges lean towards the front just a smigden but that doesn't bother me.

http://www.inkjetsaver.com/bci6clip.html

Enjoy!

Steve

The website lists storage clips for the Canon BCI-6, BCI-3 Black and the BCI-3 Colors.

What the difference between the BCI-3 Black and BCI-3 Colors?

If I wanted a set for the new Canon PGI-5 (Pigmented Black) and CLI-8 (CMYK) cartridges, which of these BCI clips will work for the new Canon cartridges? Did you receive and have success with the clips on the other new style Canon cartridges?