Your own vacuum-refill-tool for less than 20 dollars

Nochwas

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Hi freaks,
before I start to tell you about my vacuum-refiller: please excuse my poor English as
I am from Germany....
Now I´d like to introduce to you my self-made vacuum-refiller-tool. I have been refilling my Canon cartidges 521 and 520 (for my Pixma MP 630) for 2 years with this tool by now and never run into any trouble.
For the overall use of a vacuum-refill tool see the "Fill Bill 2" test reviews on youtube (if you do not know already sufficient about that topic).
What you need to produce your own refill-tool:
for every cartridge of different type you need a clamp. It was difficult for me to find the right-sized product so I give you the following link: http://www.ebay.de/itm/380527894570?_trksid=p2060778.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
Next thing you need is at least one 60ml-standard syringe(personally I use 4 syringes; one for each color) so that I will not have to clean the syringe every time I fill cartridges of yet another color.
Of course you will need refill ink (e.g. for a Canon Pixma MP 630 available at www.druckerzubehoer.de). I use the black and color refill-sets for manual refill made by "Digital Revolutions". These refill-sets contain syringe-needles of the right size that go together with standard 60 ml-syringes.
Next you will need an original Canon orange plastic cap (the original cartridges come sealed with that orange cap which you got to remove before using the cartridge). This orange plastic cap has a layer of rubber insight to seal the cartridge air-tight. We will use that fact to our advantage. You supposedly can buy empty cartridges with these orange caps at ebay.
Next you need a tiny metal "plate" together with a soft piece of rubber (both have to be of the same size because you got to glue them together with special rubber-super-glue (available on ebay for a few dollars). I made my tiny rubber-sheet from a rubber sealing for our WC but there will be other alternatives (sure!). Make sure the rubber is of a soft consistency - it will seal the cartridges air-channels air-tight once it will be pressed with the clamp onto the top of the cartridge.
Another tool you will need is a "pistol"-shaped tool that produces hot glue (I do not know the exact english word).
And a very tiny metal-driller for drilling a hole in the clamp that has the same diameter as the syringe-needle.
Additionally you may buy two black 90degree book-holders for the book-shelf made out of metal. In addition with a strong magnet they will later on help us when we have to refill the cartridges.
Instructions:
take a clamp and turn its screw clockwise until the round plate (at the end of the screw) reaches the other end of the clamp and sits there firm. Now we drill a tiny hole in the clamp (size: the diamater of the syringe-needle). This hole got to be in the middle of the area where the tiny round plate sits on the other side of the clamp (see photos). After drilling you polish the arae around the hole to get an even, smooth surface again.
Next you drill a hole of the same diameter into the middle of the orange plastic cap (again for the needle). Saw off the rest of the orange plastic cap as it is of no use (see photos).
Now put the needle all the way through the hole in the clamp and from beneath put the orange plastic-cap in position so that the needle runs through its hole in its centre. Hold everything together and mark the point where the needle comes out of the rubber-layer (the layer inside the orange cap) with a pen. Now take the needle and cut it with an abrasive tool at the marked point. Make sure that afterwards water is still be able to pass through the needle. Perhaps you need the remove some metal burr. Now fix the the needle and the orange platic cap with a drop of glue on the clamp. The end of the needle should be where the inner layer of rubber is in the orange plastic cap (see photos).
After that you fix these parts air-tight together with tons of hot glue that you put on the parts layer-wise until everything looks strong enough to withstand a heavy vacuum (do exactly as shown in the photos). I have already filled over 150 cartridges with the clamps presented in the photographs and it still works fine. So make sure everything is very stable.
After the hot glue has totally hardened you could perform a test:
fix an empty cartridge inside the clamp with the cartridge "nose" sitting in the orange cap and the tiny rubbered metal plate sealing the air -channels on the above of the cartridge air-tight. Now fill some ink into your 60ml-syringe and do as presented in the "fill-bill 2"-videos on youtube. there you can see the exact technique for refilling by a vacuum induced by a syringe.
Canon Cartridge 521 and 520 have different sized "noses" so I had to built two clamps using the different orange caps.
I fix the two clamps to the two book-holders magnetically (the big magnet sits between the two book-holders). So I can mount and unmount them every time I have to clean them (e.g. every time I change color for the different 521-cartridges I have to clean the clamp first completely ; else I would mix some wrong color into the next cartridge). Another point is that the magnet allows me to turn the clamps in every desired position which comes in handy.
Hope you are lucky when building your own refiller....
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martin0reg

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CakeHole

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A creative solution there, a video of it in action would be nice to watch. Well done on your DIY solution. I can already think of a couple of people it may inspire :)
 

CakeHole

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Nice vid, at the 1min to 1.40min mark are you just explaining that you use a piece of rubber to seal the vent hole? And if so could you maybe tell us more about the rubber you used, where you got it, what it came from etc
 

ThrillaMozilla

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Yes, I'm sure a nice piece of silicone rubber is a great convenience for sealing the vent.

You need to learn to tip the cartridge to remove air from the ink chamber, and then tip it the other direction to allow ink to flow into the ink chamber. The way you are doing it, I think there is some danger of flooding the vent without even filling the ink chamber. I believe GHWellsJr has a video that explains this, in the message that martin0reg linked.
 

Nochwas

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Nochwas

Getting Fingers Dirty
Joined
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Printer Model
Canon Pixma MP 630
@ThrillaMozilla:
do not worry: I use my refill tool for about 2 years and refilled more than 200 cartridges and I never had any trouble concerning "flooding the vent". The air is sucked from the inner Chambers of the cartridge into the upper part of the syringe. So a vacuum is created inside the cartrige. The moment you stop pulling the lever of the Syringe then the cartridge sucks in the ink that is in the syringe because the air that left the cartridge cannot get back in the cartridge with the ink being below the air in the syringe. See this video to better understand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcSrKO8dq4 (watch at 2:25)
Hope you are convinced now.... all the best
 
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