Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!bionet!arisia!ebert From: ebert@arisia.Xerox.COM (Robert Ebert) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware Subject: Refilling DeskWriter ink cartridges--a failure. Message-ID: <12343@arisia.Xerox.COM> Date: 11 Sep 90 20:44:53 GMT References: Reply-To: ebert@arisia.UUCP (Robert Ebert) Organization: Xerox Sunnyvale System Software Unit Lines: 60 This is the story of how I failed to re-fill a DeskWriter ink cartridge. I'm telling it in hopes of providing a how-not-to example for others, and perhaps getting some tips in where I went wrong for those who have successfully re-filling the cartridges. I think my first mistake was in trying to refill with a different color ink. In particular, I wanted red. The ink I bought was Schaffer Script ink, which is a nice bright red. (Also comes in green and blue.) The reason red was a bad choice is that the inside of the cartridges appears to be filled with a foam of some sort. This is probably good in that it lets the ink wick into the sprayers and filters out junk, but in my case it was bad because it meant that there was a lot of black residue in the pad. Because of this, the bright red ink came out a sort of dull red color. It wasn't very pretty, but it defintely wasn't black. The procedure I used to refill the cartridge was to drill a small hole in the curved part of the green top, and put the ink in that way. I didn't have an eyedropper handy, so I used a small straw and the finger-over-the-top method to put the ink in. It was slow, but it still didn't take more than 10 minutes to fill the cartridge. While I was filling it, ink was leaking out through the jet holes at a pretty good rate. I was doing my work on top of some paper towels, which (I thought) were helping the ink wick out. To stop this, I held the cartridge above the towels for a little while. This didn't stop the flow of ink out the holes. I figure the real cartridge must be sealed with only a very small hole at the top to help keep the ink from leaking out so fast... so I put a piece of tape over the top to close the hole, and this did, eventually, stop the flow of ink out the jet holes. That done, I tried the cartridge. I did get reddish printing for a couple of pages, and it did seem like the ink was about as water-soluable as the original cartridge. After a couple of pages, thought, the ink started coming out too fast, or otherwise making drops and leaking, and I ended up with little puddles of ink at the start of each pass of the print head, with no actual printing. Taking the cartridge out and wiping the printing end stopped the flow of ink, but a few lines of print later the same thing started happening again. (Perhaps the ink isn't "thick" enough?) After a couple more unsuccessful attempts to seal the top tighter or otherwise stop the too-rapid flow of ink, I gave up and dumped the whole mess in the trash, inserting a new (black) cartridge, which worked fine. Even this failed attempt didn't seem cause any harm to the printer. All the ink ended up on the paper, and none in any visible printer parts. I know this has successfully been done. (In black and green, at least. Did anyone get red to work?) What was causing the ink to flow too fast? When the next cartridge runs out, I'm definitely going to try it again, with a darker ink. For the next attempt, can anyone recommend ink brands or improved re-fill methods? Actually, if HP's waterproof ink is out soon, maybe I won't try the refill. Does anyone (even HP) make cartridges in colors other than black? The fact that the label on the cartridge has a little black dot seems to indicate that there are other options available. (I assume HP has the right ink, since they make the paint jet series.) --Bob