To Seal or Not - Air Vents On Refilled CLI-8 Cartridges In Storage

[ruffin]

Im confused (as always). Some advocate sealing air vent to prevent evaporation of ink in stored cartridges. Others have said one must keep vents unsealed to allow equalization of pressure inside with outside pressure. Which is it? If left unsealed, will the ink truly evaporate. Should the answer be to seal the air vent, then what best to seal with? What brand name tape etc? Now Im talking about the vent on top of cartridge, not to be confused with fill holes on top or side as in the German refill method. Plan to refill a number of cartridges and store 6 months to a year. Yes, of course I would store the cartridges with the ORANGE clip over the output opening. Thanks guys. Long Live Nifty!

 

[pharmacist]

It doesn't matter whether or not you seal the the air vent if you put them into a tiny air tight sealing plastic box (e.g. Tupperware or similar), but if put them outside a box then you will definitely need to seal the air vent. Scotch tape will do: just press firmly and rub it down until you will see the relief of the serpentine air vent shines through the tape.

 

[ruffin]

Thank you Pharmacist. You are the best. You can fill my RX prescriptions anytime. Read all your stuff with fervor. Many thanks again. Regards

 

[ghwellsjr]

You have more than just the problem of evaporation which is what you asked about and what pharmacist answered. The other problem is that you don't want ink to leak out of the outlet port. You need a solution that will address both issues at the same time.

The problem is that the ambient air pressure constantly goes up and down on a daily basis and even more as the weather changes. There is no way that you can seal both the outlet port and the air vent unless you do what Canon does which is to weld the orange clip on the bottom of the cartridge so that ink cannot leak out of that port and put on a very good tape on the air vent port and then seal the cartridge in a vacuum sealed bag so that there is no air inside the bag. If you can do that, then yes, seal both ports.

The next best thing you can do is put your cartridges in a rigid pressure container that will not allow the ambient pressure changes to get in. In other words, it must have a hermetic seal on it. I doubt that you can do that unless you have professional equipment designed specifically for this job.

Putting your cartridges in any kind of a flexible (that means any kind of plastic or thin metal) container will simply pass the ambient air pressure to the inside the container. This may help prevent the cartridge from drying out, but it will not prevent the air pressure from forcing ink out of the outlet port if you have a better seal on the air vent than you do on the outlet port.

The solution is to simply leave the air vent open. It is designed to allow the ambient air pressure to daily flow in and out of the cartridge while minimizing evaporation but it doesn't create a tug-o-war with the outlet port which would force ink out of it.

So seal your outlet ports, leave your air vents unsealed, and put your cartridges in a zip lock bag. A bag is better than a box because the bag will simply deform as the ambient air pressure fluctuates without exchanging air between the inside and the outside of the bag. The more rigid a box, the more important the seal is because a rigid box will build up a pressure difference between the inside and the outside which will have a tendency to leak air. Have you ever "burped" a Tupperware container, only to find later that you need to "burp" it again? You thought those seals were air tight. Air is made up of very tiny molecules and they have all day to leak through the tiniest cracks in those seals.

 

[ruffin]

Many thanks GHWELLS for the detailed explanation. Appreciate everyones input. You guys are the greatest! Best Regards to all. Happy New year!

 

[ghwellsjr]

You're welcome.

Hey, did you hear there's not going to be a Rose Bowl game this year?

 

[Smile]

Canon seems to have very low (bag is still full of air) vacuum in their cartridge storage sealed bags, same goes for new print heads. So I think the ghwellsjr is correct.

I would like to know if putting a silica gel (like 1g) inside a bag is good thing? The cart would have sealed outlet with clip, air vent with aluminum tape. The whole cart would be vacuum sealed in a bag with low vacuum. Just trying to replicate the canon packaging method since I plan to buy adjustable vacuum sealer.

And why keep ink in the bottles if I can put it into purged carts anyway, since air in the bottle does not make the ink last longer I thought I should package them.

 

[PeterBJ]

As the plastic bag Canon OEM cartridges are stored in is flexible, there is the same pressure outside and inside the bag, meaning no vacuum.

I guess you are trying to create a seal as good as Canon's by using a storage clip and aluminium tape. I think the storage clip is a good seal, but can the aluminium tape compete with Canon's seal? I think the tape sealing the vent is no ordinary tape, it has a very strong adhesive. If you have refilled the cartridges using the top fill or the German method, you have an extra seal to worry about.

I see no use for the silica gel, as you do not want to dry your refilled cartridges, and how many milligrams of water can one gram of fully activated silica gel absorb? I guess one gram of silica gel will have very little effect.

A correctly filled cartridge is not 100% filled with ink, it contains air at atmospheric pressure in the upper sponge and maybe also in the ink chamber. What will happen to this air when evacuating a plastic bag? Maybe the result will be messy?

I can confirm that ghwellsjr is right when saying that varying atmospheric pressure causes a "tug of war" between seals. I refill the transparent Canon cartridges using the German method, and often store the refilled cartridges in a storage clip. I seal the German refill hole with a piece of aluminium tape, but leave the vent unsealed. When I began refilling I thought the advise not to seal the vent was a bit exaggerated, but I found out that sealing both the vent and the German refill hole often caused leakage through the sealed German refill hole, the vent seal was often the strongest maybe because of a larger area for the adhesive.

So I recommend following ghwellsjr's procedure from post #4 for storing the cartridges.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

I use tape (any tape), and a rubber band holding the clip on. Then I put it into a ziplock bag with a towel moistened with pharmacist's cleaning solution. I've never had any problem. Don't worry about pressure or vacuum. Nothing you do will be tight anyway. You just need to retard evaporation. You can't prevent it completely.

P.S. I just use Scotch tape. So far I haven't found that it leaves an obnoxious residue.

I always advise sealing the German fill hole. Although this isn't based on personal experience with the method, the cartridge is not designed to work that way, and certainly not to be stored that way. Although cartridges do work with that hole, the evaporation and altered air flow can't be a good thing. You probably need good tape for that, as some people find that the tape causes ink to wick out if the seal doesn't hold.

 

[Smile]

So I will have to seal the air vent using hot glue, and then use a silicon band to hold the clip, or buy one that does not need a rubber band.

Rubber bands are crap in that rubber deteriorate and this is even faster if there is ammonia present (like pharmacist's cleaning recipe) so I would avoid using rubber bands (they have very poor rubber, some even disintegrated into glue the last time I sealed them in airtight container).

So by making sure the cart is sealed as much as canon original, I would add a gram of silica gel to avoid problems and seal the outer bag. The seal must be a weld seal, not a zip lock, and there seems to be a need for aluminum (silver color) bags, as these do not let air in, the usual PE bags do let air in as stupid as it can sound.