Refill Your Ink Cartridge Yourself, Save Money!

Hi everyone, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

A few months ago, my sister got a new HP printer as a freebie, so I took our old one for my own personal use. The new one is still in the family computer area. Since the old printer is now in my room and I set it up so that it is easy to print from, I’ve been printing all that needs printing. Doing so, I’ve already had to refill my ink cartridges twice (black). But this time, it’s my colored cartridge that needs the Magenta refilled. But the cartridge still has Yellow and Cyan ink. If I take it to get refilled at a refilling station, that’s around P200-300 to refill only Magenta. Lugi!

While walking around Megamall, I chanced upon a refilling station and saw that they also sold ink in bottles that you can use to refill your ink cartridges yourself. The ink bottles were P180 each. I asked all the questions I needed to learn how to do the refill myself. I bought a big syringe from Mercury for P11.50.

There are many videos online that teach you how to refill an ink cartridge.

To avoid complications, refill your ink cartridge as soon as you notice that the ink is about to run out. Don’t let the ink dry out. If you do this, you won’t need a draining clip and suction tool since there won’t be any clogs.

Some other tips:

1. Make sure you are working on a surface where it is okay to spill ink on, just in case (old newspapers, etc…).
2. Open or remove the portion of the sticker that is covering the ‘hole’ where you are supposed to inject the ink.
3. Make sure you are injecting the correct color into the correct hole. To be sure, using a clean syringe, draw a little ink out from the hole to check the color of the ink.
4. Using a clean syringe, draw the appropriate amount of ink from the ink bottle. For an HP 22 cartridge, the technician told me to put only 3ml of ink, or 4ml if it’s really empty.
5. The needle must be a bit deep into the cartridge. Inject the ink slowly.
6. Rinse the syringe and needle when done. This way, you make sure that no ink remains in the syringe to clog it up for next use. And you can also reuse this syringe for any color ink.

I refilled the Magenta in my color cartridge in less than 10 minutes. The 3ml Magenta ink I took from the bottle was hardly even noticeable. Imagine how long that bottle will last! The four bottles – black, magenta, cyan, yellow, in total cost P720. That’s the equivalent cost of maybe 3 cartridge refills. But with refilling my own cartridges, that P720 will now provide me with maybe hundreds of refills!

Of course, over time, your original HP cartridge gets worn out. At this point, you’ll have to buy a new one and then continue with your refilling when the new cartridge’s ink is used up. But it’s still a heck of  a lot cheaper than buying new original ink catridges every time! I know that original ink cartridges provide a better printout, but I primarily just print out emails, websites, Word documents, stuff like that. Nothing really fancy. So this is fine.

Edit: I had some problems with the Magenta ink not coming out consistently. Did some googling and found that it happens when there are air bubbles in your cartridge. To avoid this, refill the ink as soon as you notice streaks. Don’t wait too long before refilling. Also, refill S-L-O-W-L-Y to avoid trapping air. And let your cartridge stand at least 24 hours to let gravity do its work and let the ink flow down. If you already have air bubble trouble, try tapping the cartridge to dislodge the air bubbles. There are also several videos and websites that show you how to dislodge air bubbles. After trying most of them, from trying to suck out the air with a syringe to wrapping tissue around the cartridge and vigorously swinging it down, I got my cartridge to work correctly! It was a bit of a bother to try to fix it, but now I know what to do next time. It’s valuable knowledge 🙂