Syringes for refilling. What do you use / do?

[Nifty]

Syringes come in lots of sizes and shapes. I thought I'd start a discussion about this important refilling tool.

For my Lexmark I used a few syringes that were good for Lexmark because they had a sharpened point that made it easy for the needle to poke through the sponge for refilling.

Some syringes have covers for the needle point of the syringe. This are good for keeping as many foreign particles away from the syringe as possible.

Some people use a different syringe for each color, and use a different syringe for pigment and dye inks.

Some clean their syringes after every use.

What do you do / use?

 

[fotofreek]

As a retired orthodontist I have access to all sorts of syringes from my buddies who are still in dental practice. Standard plastic disposable leur-lock syringes work fine. I have an assortment of sizes including 6cc and 10cc sizes. I also have some that came with refill kits from Hobbicolor and MIS. The kit syringes have the tips flattened and the ones I scrounged up (unused, of course) from my buddies WERE disposable sharpened ones. I emphasized the word, were, becuse even someone like me who is used to handling syringes on a routine basis ended up with a minor needle stick while refilling one day. Mine are all flattened now. Although the inks would probably do little or no harm from a minor stick I would strongly suggest using flat tipped needles. I have a syringe for each color so I can refill all the carts at once without stopping to clean the syringe. I have labeled them with an indelible marking pen, just in case they may have residual ink from a previous refill, but I also wash them thoroughly after refilling, push the plunger several times with no water to expell as much water as possible, and leave them disassembled for a few days to dry out.

 

[Mark]

Hello friends:

I have personally had the best luck with syringes I purchased from: http://www.padiscountink.com/. Prior to using the ones acquired from them, the failure that I always encountered was leakage around the plunger. Because these have been so durable, I haven't bought them for quite some time; so, I hope they maintain the same supplier. These are 12 ml, w/long sharp needles with good covers. Echoing Foto: it's important to rinse the syringe, plunge the remaining mist out & let me add store somewhere clean once dry.

 

[Grandad35]

I have (10) 30 CC plastic syringes with 1.5" long sharpened needles (with good covers) that I initially purchased to fill HP sponge filled carts. I have only used two of them - 1 for my HP and 1 for my Canon. I only refill 1 ink at a time to minimize the potential for an ink spill, and I clean the syringe between inks in the same way as described by Mark and Fotofreek. It is very easy to see when it is clean, and I haven't had any problems with ink contamination (at least that I know of). I figure that it takes about the same time and effort to clean one syringe 6 times as to clean 6 syringes 1 time.

My plungers don't come out to dry, so I "pump" them hard for 10-15 times to get the residual water out. They get quite warm while doing this, and the heat helps to vaporize the water.

I have never had a leaking problem, but after numerous uses the plunger sometimes starts to stick. I put some vegetable oil on a Q-Tip and coat the inside of the barrel to provide a very light lubrication to fix this problem.

 

[Nifty]

I use separate syringes for all my colors including different ones for pigment and dye inks. Admittedly I do not clean out my syringes, but after reading you posts I believe I may now be inspired to do so.

When I have needed to clean out a syringe I've flushed it with water, first with the needle on, and then without the needle. After doing something similar to grandad (a few quick thrusts of the plunger) I leave the syringe with the plunger pulled out to increase air access to the inside of the tip and bottom of the plunger.

A side note (not worthy of an entire thread) do you ever feel you need to agitate the pigment ink bottles prior to accessing with the syringe in order to mix up the particles, or are the pigments thoroughly homogenized and "suspended" into the liquid?

 

[axelance]

Spray refill kit : www.hipfill.com

 

[Nifty]

Axelance, we don't usually allow links to ecommerce sites when someone hasn't been around here for a while, but I saw that link and thought I'd let it stay for now. I'd like to see some comments from the group regarding this type of refill.

Personally it seems a bit gimmiky to me. I don't think that many people would justify the extra cost for a can of pressurised ink.

Oh, and while I'm kinda' on the topic: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=225

 

[panos]

Ditto. Spraying instead of injecting. Whats the point??? I just see no advantages!

 

[Nifty]

Yup, if you can't pull ink into a syringe and inject ink into a cartridge without making a HUGE mess OR if you are scared of a tiny bit of ink on your hands then BACK AWAY FROM THE REFILL KIT!

 

[kenban]

I actually do see the point to this IF the website claims are true. First I would like to point out the company only makes refills for HP cartridges. The whole idea as I see it is to refill under pressure and force ink through the print head. It might be able to prevent air issues that occur when people run the cartridges empty and do not refill early. Normally this would kill an HP cartridge but this website does claim to fix that problem. I tried to do a google search and got nothing looks like its too new.

In the past I have used a little bit of tape (to help seal the fill hole) and a can of air to force ink out of an HP print head after filling to get the cartridge to start printing again. So it is possible this will work.