Injet refill kits

Steve Mehs · 05-01-02, 08:15 PM

Has anyone ever had good luck with them, quality wise? Ya they work but the quality sucks compared to a new print cartrage. I do a lot of work in The Print Shop, and always print in 1200x1200 and I can always tell whether its a new cartrage or a refilled one. Id rather shell out the $50 at a BJs or Sams Club to get new Lexmark black and color cartrages then buy a refill kit for $20. But for normal word proseccing the refill kits work fine.

MarkA · 05-01-02, 11:23 PM

Not only does the quality of the inks affect print quality, it also affects print life - so avoid refills and 3rd party ink cartridges!

gcutler · 05-02-02, 06:40 AM

I've had to support systems that had 3rd party Ink Refills and was never satisfied with them. The quality was usually never as good, or even close. But I admit that I didn't deal with all the solutions out there, so there may be good ones???

This was 1994, but I worked at MCI and the manager wanted to cut costs so he went with reconditioned Laserjet cartridges. They were 1/2 the price of new new cartridges. But they would usually mess up and need to be replaced around 3-4 times as much so in reality instead of saving 50%, he was spending 200% on original printing costs.

RichW · 05-02-02, 11:28 AM

Yep, the quality is terrible. We have one person in the lab who uses a refiller and I can always tell the pages that were made on that printer.

Bt the way, olor laser printers are dropping in price, i just puchased a few for under 2K each (including network card). While this is still a bit spending for home use, the colors don't run if the printout gets moisture on it.

Bogy · 05-03-02, 11:57 AM

I always told my wife that doing the refill on inkjet cartridges was a bad idea. Then about a month ago I found myself in the store to get a new cartidge for her inkjet. I am a cheapskate at heart, so I decided to try one of the refill kits to see what would happen. What happened was that about two weeks later I went and bought the proper epson cartridge because not only was the quality lousy from the start, after a couple of weeks the cartridge didn't print period. It reaffirmed to my wife that I had been right all along.

OTOH, I have Canon Laser printer that is our default printer at home. Lately it has been getting a real workout. My wife is working on her masters, and in the past few weeks finished up several major papers. She never set foot in a library. Everything she needed was available online. However, she printed out literally reams of material. When I purchased the thing, a large part of my choice was the cost of consumables. The printer is now about seven years old, and is still working great, however, the cartridges have gone from costing me about $50 to over $90. A few weeks ago I picked up a new cartridge at the local Office Depot, and they now offer the choice of a remanufactured cartridge for my printer, for about $60. So far it is working fine. Hasn't been in long enough yet to know about longevity, but the quality is unchanged from what I can see. IMO, there is a big difference between a "remanufactured" cartridge, and a kit where you squirt ink into an old cartridge.

gcutler · 05-03-02, 02:13 PM

Definately what you say is true. But that can often depend on the quality of the ink inside the remanufactured cartridge. If you find a good brand, that you are willing to put your reputation on the line for

Please post it here.

DarrellP · 05-03-02, 06:30 PM

I work in an IS department and we go around and around with people using recycled laser and ink jet cartridges, it drives us crazy. I would say 90% of the print quality calls we get are related to this crap.

This stuff is designed to be used once. The drums in a laser cartridge are not designed to be used for many more pages than the amount of toner packaged inside. When they are refilled, the drums are not replaced or recoated so they don't last very long.

Bogy · 05-03-02, 11:08 PM

I checked out the drum on the remanufactured cartridge I purchased, and it did not look like a drum that had already gone 3,000 pages. It was replaced or recoated. As I said, so far the quality looks great, but it has only been a few weeks at this point. I will be glad to post how long the thing lasts.

Bogy · 06-05-02, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bogy
I checked out the drum on the remanufactured cartridge I purchased, and it did not look like a drum that had already gone 3,000 pages. It was replaced or recoated. As I said, so far the quality looks great, but it has only been a few weeks at this point. I will be glad to post how long the thing lasts.

It has been another month since I last posted about this, and the cartridge is still working fine. I am not sure how many reams we have gone through. Most of the thousands of pages of material my wife downloaded for research came off the old cartridge, and when I bought this one she was primarily printing out drafts and then the final copies of various papers. However, I am sure we have gone through at least 1000 pages, possibly closer to 1500, during the last six weeks. The print quality is still fine, with none of the problems that would occur with a worn drum. So far I would not hesitate to recomend the Office Depot remanufactured cartridges for laser printers. If anything changes I'll let you know.

Bogy · 12-16-02, 05:31 PM

I had said that I would let you know my experience with Office Depot remanufactured laser cartridges. I purchased the cartridge on May 3. Today I finally replaced it. It went seven months, and that is with some fairly heavy usage. Print quality until the very end was great. Drum still looks good. I bought another one today. The new price was $89. The remanufactured price was $55.95, plus I had a $15 certificate, so the replacement cost me $43 and change.