which refill ink to buy for IP5200

[thef1re]

Hey There,
Currently using a IP5200 and considering going to "refilling" path. This is my first time and ive got a few questions which i hope can be answered. I am from Australia and it costs ~A$120 for a full replcament, only $20 less then a new printer!!! INSANE I KNOW!

1) Which Brands do you guys reccomend? And which are "crappy" and should be avoided? (links are appreciated)

2) What are the risks involved besides voiding the warranty? Whats all this printhead stuff up i hear about, relating to using non-geniune inks? Ive read all these lockup issues but am very confused and now worried if i should go down the refill path.


3) After ive sucessfully refilled my tanks for the first time, would the logical thing to do is keep the levels up (maybe not below half way)?

4) Will refilling ink into my OEM carts work "forever". Is there a limit on how many times a cart can be filled (if yes, why?) If i keep my ink levels up, does that mean i can print and printer without any problems?

cheers!

 

[websnail]

Already answered your queries on stevesforums so I won't repeat here...

 

[hpnetserver]

I am not sure I can answer all your 4 questions. But I will try the question 3 and 4.

Based on my experience refilling BCI-6 cartridges on my ip8500 and my new MP780 the answer is no. You don't have to keep the cartridges full all the time. You can wait until it is empty or pretty low ink. But if you see one being very low and decide to fill it up you should fill up all others that are less than half full. This obviously makes good sense as you will probably not required to deal with another empty one too soon. You should not have any problems to allow any ink tank to go really low unless your printer tends to be unused from time to time for a lehgthy period of time such as over two weeks or even one week. If you use the printer daily then you really don't need to be concerned about an ink tank being too low of ink.

However, you may have a reason to not allow any tank to go empty for your ip5200 that I am not aware of. I am speaking of my experience in ip8500 and mp780. I use Hobbicolors refill kits and I now use my mp780 just about daily from a few text pages to a few photos a day. I always let the tank goes empty, seeing an empty warning then I refill it, which takes about 2 - 3 minutes or so. I may fill up a few more that are very low if I have time or just fill up the one that is empty. Everything worked great so far for more than a year already.

I don't think anything including Canon OEM cartridges will work forever. But you can expect them to work for a very long time. I have not thrown any of my HC cartridges yet. But I lost one Canon OEM magenta cartridge when I tried to clean it. I don't remember exactly what happened but it blocked up for some reason. It never happened to any other OEM cartridges so I think it was really an individual case.

 

[websnail]

However, you may have a reason to not allow any tank to go empty for your ip5200 that I am not aware of.

At present the potential problem is a "lock up" of the printer but since 2 people reported problems with their iP5200 doing this there's been no new reports and there's a question mark as to whether user error/action was the cause.

A suggested course of action to avoid this happening was to refill as follows:
- Lift the printer lid to get the carriage to move to the replace carriage position
- Pull the power cord on the printer (without turning the printer off using the on/off button)
- Remove and refill the cartridges as required
- Replace the cartridges and check seated properly
- Close the printer lid
- Plug the printer back in


This approach should negate any sensors noting the cartridges being removed and replaced and a hypothesised logic trap that might trigger the lock if the prism shows low ink when previously it had shown empty.

It sounds daft but the 2 reports that were posted on Stevesforums seemed to indicate there was something odd going on.