Did you know that Epson ink cartridges are intentionally designed not to be refilled. They contain a chip which measures the quantity of ink remaining. When the ink cartridge is empty, the chip is ready to empty. Simply putting more ink in the cartridge will not work. The chip also has to be reprogrammed to a full state.
Newer chips are purposefully designed not to allow reprogramming, thus this process frequently fails. I have seen many grumbles on the net of folks that bought refilled ink cartridges only to have the printer report that they were empty directly on insertion.
Can You Refill Epson Ink Cartridges
How does the chip know when the ink cartridge is empty? It counts the pages made public and guesses ink use. Ultimately it reports the ink cartridge to be empty, regularly when there is still 10-20% left. Once the chip is set to empty, it will not be reset. The chip still must be reprogrammed. Some chips cannot be reprogrammed at all, so when they report empty they will stay that way once and for all. This includes Epson T069, T078, T079, T098, T125, T126 and T127 ink cartridges.
But there are greater dangers than merely having a cartridge report empty. Inkjet printers squirt ink thru miniscule holes. If these holes get clogged, it may cause Problems from poor print quality to finish printer failure. All ink has a tendency to coagulate when exposed to oxygen. Otherwise it might never dry.
Now think about an empty ink cartridge which sat around for a bit before somebody injected more ink. The first remaining 10% of the ink in that cartridge has coagulated. Now it has been refilled. You are losing 10% because of the coagulated ink which was there at the time of refill. But the difficulty is even more serious.
If that old ink clot can get free, it can clog and seriously hurt your printer. Even though you refill the cartridge straight away, if you are using an ink bottle, there will be clots along the opening of the bottle. If one single clot makes it to your printer head, you may lose you whole printer in a futile effort to save a few bucks.
Some printers use a vacuum process to suck ink to the heads. If air enters the small tubes, the vacuum is damaged. When re-filling cartridges using hypodermic-type needles, it is not unusual for air to enter the tanks.
Then there are other pitfalls. You have to keep 4 or 6 ink bottles around with 4 or 6 different hypodermic needles. It is very unlikely to refill without dripping ink. And it is almost inevitable that at some particular point an ink bottle will be spilled or break. Imagine the mess.
So why refill? It is a untidy process. If you do it yourself, you can’t avoid getting ink all over the place. If somebody else does it for you, refilled ink cartridges still tend to leak, clot or bleed air into the printer. You don't economize. Places which refill typically charge about $10 a cartridge. You can purchase a brand new compatible for $3. And you are taking a chance on your printer. Refilling is dumb on so many levels.
Note that refilling a single-use ink cartridge is not the same as doing so with an ink cartridge expressly designed for refilling and using special ink dispensers engineered to eliminate air, leaks and spills.
Ruel Run is a researcher and author on different kinds of subject matters including Epson inks. In case you are interested getting alot more info click right here: Inkjet Cartridge Epson and Refillable Epson Cartridges.