There are keywords on the warning in the last frame. About no more ink than a certain amount. What about the extra capacity cartridges and the larger volume ones like the R2000 and R2880?
What was interesting to me was the cracking of the diaphragm. I had not known about that but I knew of the other issues that I mentioned when I looked into it, That round part you see on the last photo appears to be an insert and not moulded in actually. It appears to be a precision fit.
The construction of the cartridges for the R340 etc are easily beaten. Epson learned from that and made the second design tougher to refill properly. One reason you are able to fill that generation properly is that Epson had incorporated a shut off valve that seals the exit/air entry labyrinth. As soon as the cartridge is removed from the printer, it closes off and stops any flow from getting get back into the labyrinth and filters. In this generation they played with a dual chamber just as in the newer ones. This dual chamber seems to offer more constant pressure/vacuum making the cartridge appear larger than it really was.
Another way of refilling this generation is here. Just a couple of holes a needle and syringe and glue gun.
http://www.mediafire.com/view/07pipecthqtpm4y/Epson_InstructionsNew_Method_June_2007.pdf
Epson has the most thoroughly engineered cartridges I have ever seen. Their engineers from a design standpoint do an excellent job. ( not from the refiller's viewpoint though). Even on the newest iteration on the XP600, they are able to extract the ink caught in the bellows of the diaphragm. Kudos to their imagination. Really.
With the 20ml of air in the cracking process, I am sure that some of the remaining ink inside the printer will be blown to the filter area. As long as it does not soak the filter it will work. What this process relies on is that it uses some of the volume in the red area to compensate for what does not go in properly into the orange and yellow area. That is the reason for the slow injection. One way of solving the soaked filter if it occurs is to put a slice with a blade across it and allow unfiltered air to enter the cartridge and bypass the filter, no big deal. In a way you will see this design strategy on the compatibles for the 3800. When you look at the compatibles, you'll see some chambers that never get filled with ink. One purpose of the chambers is to trap the ink that might reverse flow into the printer. Something similar is there in the read area shown. The jig takes advantage of this volume to make the weight but as the instructions indicate do not go beyond a certain amount of ink as it will flow onto the filter.
When I get some time, I will crack some and see what happens in the process.
Honestly I don't think the manufacturers target the refillers, they know of people like us but in reality we are a small part of the bigger scene. The big scene they don't want are the big prefilled compatible cartridge companies that sell their compatibles in a packaged box for 50% of what an OEM cart costs... or the customers who will buy a jig and then refill and resell by the hundreds and thousands.
