Anyone refill their own inkjet printer cartridges?

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scottydl

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I bought a new Canon Pixma inkjet printer last week.  It's working great, and was priced all of $30 brand new at Walmart... of which I only paid $17+ because of an online gift card redeemed from Savings Catcher refunds.  I'm certainly happy with the purchase price!  But of course the included "sample" ink cartridges will probably be depleted pretty quickly.

Anyone ever bought one of the ink refill kits (eBay sells them by the thousands) and refilled inkjet cartridges yourself?  For the price of new replacement black/color cartridges for this Canon, I could essentially buy another new printer!  $25-30 for a factory cartridge set, or $8 for ink refill kit (including refill syringe and instructions supposedly).  But is refilling really as easy as they make it sound?
 
We buy ink cartridges for our Canon on Amazon.  This was our last order, and I'm sure they have cartridges for your model as well.  This was our second order and we have never had any problems with them.
 
I've bought used/refilled cartridges myself for years, so I'm familiar with that option.  The aftermarket refilled sets I used to buy for my old HP for $5-6 each, so it never seemed to make sense to refill myself.  It's essentially paying someone else to collect empty cartridges and refill them for you... they have more experience, of course.  But I'm curious about the difficulty of that refill process, now that my replacements are at least 3x what I used to pay.

Here is the Amazon link for my model's ink options, the Pixma MG2820.  The color cartridge is a tri-color now, instead of the individual color wells.  For some reason my cartridges are considerably more expensive, probably just because it's a newer design.  Otherwise I'd think it is likely cheaper (less materials and less labor) for them to manufacture the tri-color cartridges.
 
I thought I was very happy with my Canon Pixma, till I realized the ink evaporates. 
I didn't do a lot of printing but thought I was using more ink than I should.
So I started buying cartridges on Amazon, sold by Blake Printing Supply.  I'm very
happy with the performance of the Blake cartridges and at their price I'm not
concerned about evaporation.  My printer is the  Pixma IP4200.
 
We've been buying our cartridges from 77Ink.com which is very reasonable.  We've been happy with them.

ArdraF
 
I tried to do self refill a couple times.
Just not worth the frustration.
DW used to buy form a local Cartridge World.
And I have ordered form amazon quite a lot
Even with the "store-bought" refilled, I have occasionally run into problems with the printers thinking that a new cartridge was empty.

I researched these bulk tank conversions, which seems like a great idea, but had little luck finding a good solution.
and more recently we have realized that we print so little color taht laser printers make so much more sense.  I do have an ink jet for color printing but it's used so infrequently that the ink is dried up if we need it.... so I'll go sa far as to oder a set of cartridges fresh if ever needed for say a school project for the kids....
If it's one or two pictures, just send it to walgreeens.com or similar.
 
I have refilled my own a few times.  Several cautions are in order.  1) wear old clothes.  2) wear rubber gloves. 3) work in a remote area. 4) don't overfill or it will blow back out causing the need for the first three cautions.
 
I used to refill my cartridges all the time, however the manufacturers, Epson among others, then came out with cartridges that have a page counter built into them. The counter means that if you refill them and do not reset the counter, you still won't be able to print. Reset tools were available though. My previous Epson cartridges were not refillable as they tended to leak after a home refill so I started to buy aftermarket cartridges locally at a much better price than the Epson brand. For my most recent printers, a Brother and an HP, that are used very sparingly and for only 6 months of the year each, I have purchased the 'proper' brand of cartridges at Costco. Evaporation of the ink is the major problem with both though as they sit for 1/2 year with no use although the frequent auto cleaning does a number on the supply as well. I seldom need to print in colour and had everything set to black only but the coloured in cartridge empties very quickly on it's own. I have recently taken to printing with colour anyway (when useful) as the ink only disappears and the cartridge has to be replace anyway!!! Many printers will not print at all if there is any one of the cartridges empty. Very annoying!!!

Printers today seem to be a throw away item as they breakdown after a couple of years of service. It is cheaper to buy a new one than repair them.
 
Many years ago I refilled a couple cartridges.
I still have a stain on my desk where I spilled some ink.
The refilled cartridges didn't seem to last as long as an original.
Refilling kits may have improved since then,but I haven't tried.

I get my cartridges either on Amazon or at Costco
 
I've used Cartridge World to refill cartridges and had so many disappointing results that I gave up. Last year I tried one of the self refill kits, but ended up with a mess. I'm back to buying Canon OEM cartridges from Amazon; They work every time and don't leak.
 
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