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HP ink jet printer cartridge cleaning and refilling

I recently was given an HP J3640 Officejet printer. This printer had apparently sat around for a few years and both the color and black cartridges had dried up. Without knowing if the printer had any other problems I wasn't going to spend money on new cartridges. So after multiple soakings in very warm water I finally got the color one to print but only in red and yellow. There was no cyan, and the black still would not print.

I discovered that HP cartridges have small fill holes under their labels which makes it a snap to access the sponges inside with a hypo. I obtained some generic cyan and black ink from my son, and used a syringe to fill both cartridges. Then I "boiled" them both some more. Eventually they both came alive and although the contrast on color isn't perfect it's certainly pretty good. The black looks fine now too. After running the clean cycle a few times and aligning the cartridges I'm quite pleased with how things turned out. Now I'm thinking of getting some yellow and red from him and topping off those colors as well.

The only issue now is that on power up I get a message that both cartridges are low on ink. If I acknowledge the message by pressing "OK" it goes away and everything is good and the printer works fine. Now I can accept the fact that the yellow and red may be low as I didn't touch them but I know that I definitely filled the black right up so it can't be low.

I've been told that there is a "chip" in these cartridges that tells the printer when the cartridge is low and that this chip somehow needs to be reset. Or can I just acknowledge the message each time, make it go away, and resume normal operation? Does this "chip" count pages or does it actually measure the ink levels?

I certainly don't mind doing the reset each time on power up or whenever, so I guess what I'm asking is is this message just simply a reminder, generated by a chip that "thinks" its cartridge is low? And would it be OK to just simply acknowledge it each time, thereby making it go away, or if left to its own devices will it eventually cause other problems or cause the printer to shut down completely? Thanks, Lenny

Reply to
klem kedidelhopper
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Which HP cartridges? I haven't seen any that were 'chipped', and have refilled a lot of different types. One thing to keep in mind is that the printhead is in the HP cartridge, and running them dry can destroy them. I think there is a serail number, but the printer only tracks a couple sets before they are removed from memory. Epson was really big on storing the information on an EEROM inside the cartridge and cheap 'Cartridge Chip Reseter' were for sale all over the place a couple years ago and are still on Ebay.

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Apparently your computer lacks the "google" button. With mine, I was able to find

formatting link
which states that you can blithely ignore such messages. But it cautions against trying to resuscitate a cartridge that has dried out from years of non use.

Reply to
spamtrap1888

This printer uses 21 and 22 ink carts. To reset the carts, see instructions at:

and many more. Refilling carts that have been empty for a long time usually doesn't work well. I have various tricks for cleaning the heads, but my batting average is about 50%. In the future, try to refill before the cart runs completely dry.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Thanks for the great tips guys. I'm going to top off the red and yellow and do the reset. BTW I did try to get to that site Spamtrrap suggested and I got a 404 error message. Don't know if there is another door. Lenny

Reply to
klem kedidelhopper

My browser, or access, does the same thing.

Somehow google like to add its own name if the http: is missing

either check the EXACT wording of the URL, or clean it up ahead of time before pasting it in.

this is what it should look like in your browser:

Reply to
Robert Macy

e

I have been reffilling cartridges for 7+ years, most cartridges can be refilled at least a dozen times before the bubble-jet print heads start to get tired. Save a lot of $$$ that way. If I do get ink on my hands, a little full-strength Clorix or similar bleach washes it right away. Eventually, the print heads do get sloppy, maybe the jet opening gets bigger or something else goes wrong, but as others have said, the sooner you refill the better.

Reply to
hrhofmann

Thanks for this post. My late dad used to refill my cartridges perfectly, but for me it usually leaks every other time because I forgot a step.

I had not used my printer for two years and recently felt I had to throw out the old cartridges. (ok, one of them the stopped no longer fit snuggly).

A friend bought discount cartridges for his daughter online and made me feel lousy for suggesting it because the box-fresh cartridges said "low ink".

- = - Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist

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---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}--- [Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards] [Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]

Reply to
vjp2.at

My Photosmart C5180 uses 363 cartridges, and they are chipped. As far as I know, they do not measure ink directly. It's a case of them estimating when they should be empty, based on what the printer knows it has done since the cartridge was replaced. This is why the low ink message always says "estimated ink levels", and why you can usually carry on printing for at least a year (well, a bit longer, anyway ...) before the cartridge *really* runs out.

As it happens, I recently got fed up of shelling out about six quid or so ($9) for each of the five colour cartridges, and twice that for a high capacity black. They are not even an HP type that has the print head built in. I've always been a bit wary of 'generic' inks, but based on the fact that the price to re-ink it with 'genuines' was getting silly, I cast around the 'net to see what I could find. I came up with a company here in the UK that was selling not one but two complete sets of six high capacity cartridges, for the grand total of 8 quid ($12) post free !!

I ordered a couple of sets, and they arrived in less than 24 hours. Yes, they are Chinese, but they are all individually sealed in their own bags, and the printer accepts them without squawking that they are not 'real', and correctly reads them as high capacity types. So far, I have not had the slightest problem with them, and nor have a number of friends that I have recommended them to. One is a pro photographer. He is currently trying a set in a spare printer that he has. He showed me a print that had been done with them, and the same print done with genuine HP Vivera photo inks. You could not tell the difference in terms of colour rendition. He is now leaving some prints out in daylight, to see how stable these Chinese inks are, as he reckons that a few years back, he bought some refilled cartridges from one of these high street shops that you see selling them, and that the pictures just faded away over a period of about 3 months.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

snipped-for-privacy@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote in news:jhs12m$15i$ snipped-for-privacy@reader1.panix.com:

Walgreens refills printer cartridges for a low price. they have a nice little machine for it. No charge if the cartridge is bad,or too clogged,if it is not a successful print test. they actually run a print test on the cartridge.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com
Reply to
Jim Yanik

I wasn't saying that they didn't exist, just that I han't run into them so far.

I have used old stock & refilled cartridges for years. I have about

100 old, sealed carts on hand, and look through the old printers to see if they fit anything. I've only bought one new cartridge in 12 years. :) 
--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

"Arfa Daily" wrote in news:b7w0r.79097$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe14.ams:

I bought a refill kit at CompUSA once,a long time ago,and the black ink faded to brown even when the document was stored away in a file box,out of the light.eventually,the doc became unreadable.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com
Reply to
Jim Yanik

On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:18:47 -0500, Jim Yanik wrote (in article ):

!!! You learn something new every day. One just opened down the street. I'll have to try it.

--
Nelson
Reply to
Nelson

HP Vivera inks are water based pigment inks. The color is in the pigment which remains on the paper. Some refillers use dye type inks, which are cheaper, easier to refill, flow better, but will fade. However, about the only inks that will work on glossy and non-absorbent paper is dye type inks. Pigment inks are UV resistant while dye type inks will fade.

The only way I've been able to recognize the difference is to heat a sample on a microscope slide. The dye type inks will almost totally evaporate. The pigment types will leave some residue.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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