Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uhccux!yuan
From: yuan@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Yuan 'Hacker' Chang)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Refilling DeskWriter ink cartridges--a failure.
Message-ID: <9351@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Date: 13 Sep 90 19:26:50 GMT
References: <29481@netnews.upenn.edu>
Reply-To: yuan@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Yuan 'Hacker' Chang)
Organization: Univ. of Barbarians.  Honolulu, Hawaii
Lines: 24

In article <29481@netnews.upenn.edu> jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (George Jefferson ) writes:
-Well, my curiosity finally got the best of me.  I just had to open 
-the top on one of these things. (with a hammer :-)
-
-Sure enough there is a sponge inside, with suprisingly little
-residual ink remaining.
-The ink is water soluable right?  I rinsed the sponge under warm water
-and it is as clean as new.  I think if you tried to flush the cartridge
-without opening it you would never get the sponge to dry properly.

	Notice how hard and tough the sponge is?  Do you suppose a sponge
in this state will really hold a lot of ink?  The think doesn't really hold
much water either.  I tried putting alcohol on the sponge, and the sponge
felt like, well, sponge.  My guess is that there's a little bit of alcohol
in the HP ink.  As the ink starts seeping to the bottom, the lack of
alcohol causes the sponge to harden at the top, and thereby creating a
better barrier against air.  So my refill consists of 95% Parker `Quink'
plus 5% isopropyl (Rubbing alcohol).  I suppose ethanol might work, but I
have no idea what the denaturing agent might do to the printhead.
-- 
Yuan Chang 				      "What can go wrong, did"
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