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The principle of remanufacture is easy: get ink into the cartridge and charge the customer for it. You can get ink into the
cartridge in two ways:
- Using a needle. Widely used
for colour cartridges and black and colour ink tanks, a needle on a syringe is the standard technique for most small scale remanufacturers. The main problem is finding out the best place to put the ink in!
- Through the print head. Used
for black cartridges with an electronic foil. Can be done simply with a snap and fill or with refilling machinery. We've now put the instructions for using both the 45/15 and the 26/29 snap and fills
on the website. Click this link for more details.
When refilling cartridges, you need to know:
- How much ink to put in. Too
much and it will overflow: too little and the customer will complain. This is not as easy as it may sound, as the amount of ink in an empty cartridge varies. With black cartridges, there are
standard weights of cartridge and fill volumes. For single colour cartridges (just magenta, cyan or yellow) the same principle applies. The problem you will encounter is with tri- colour
cartridges. It is unlikely that an empty cartridge will have equal quantities of each ink used. More likely, one colour will have completely run out and the others will have some left. To refill
such a cartridge you actually need to empty it first. Even for single colour cartridges, the most reliable technique to use is to empty the cartridge first, not try to "top it up".
- Does the cartridge need pressure to operate? Some cartridges (not ink tanks) need to be pressurised before use, otherwise they will "bleed" (leak ink out onto the page and smear
everywhere). Make sure you know which ones need to be pressurised and how to achieve this.
- How to seal it up again. If
you have made a hole in the cartridge, even a tiny needle hole, to fill it, you must seal that hole up again. Beware selling cartridges without plugs and stoppers! They will not operate correctly and
can leak.
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