Blenheim
House
Reviews

For the last year or so all our printing needs have been fulfilled by a pair of Canon printers, IP5200 & IP5200R. These are great printers offering excellent quality, fast printing a built in duplexer and the ability to print on CD/DVD's. The only criticism has been the cost of the ink, which comes in chipped cartridges. Our previous Canon printers took the none chiped cartridges around £11 each and I purchased the compatible ones from Lidl £3 each and never had any problems. Unfortunately they will not fit the IP5200 & IP5200R due to these printers needing a chip on the cartridge. I experimented with refilling the cartridges but found this to be a messes process, the ink would leak out and the rubber bung would sometimes not make a seal and the ink would drain out. Then purchased some cartridges from EBay but these needed the chip from the original Canon cartridge, not a problem as such, but I ended up cutting my finger and got blood everywhere. The just had to be an easier way, I had all the used cartridges from the printers (PIC 1), and several packs of ink (Pic 2).

The first job was to fit the orange seal to the bottom of each empty cartridge. I used a hot glue gun (Pic 3) and placed a drop of glue each side of the ink opening (Pic 4 & 5).I placed an elastic band around each cartridge until the hot glue had cooled down. The new seal proved OK, with only one out of about 30 cartridges leaking. That one just needed a small drop of hot glue to cover the leak. I tested several orange seals and they all snapped off in the same way as a new cartridge.

Pic 1

Pic 3

Pic 4

Pic 5

The next job was to use a small soldering iron (Pic 6) to melt a small hole in the top of each cartridge (Pic 7 & 8) to allow a syringe 9Pic 9) that came with the ink packs to inject ink into the cartridge.

Pic 6

Pic 8

Once the hole was make ink was injected into each cartridge and left to stand for a few minutes so as to allow the sponge to soak up the ink, more ink was then added to top up each cartridge. Then using the hot glue gun a small drop of glue was added to seal the hole (Pic 10). The end result was a box full of cartridges all ready for the printers for a total cost of around £20 (Pic 11). When removing the orange seal the glue seems to stick to it rather than the cartridge, I plan to only refill each cartridge once due to the glue build up on the orange seals.

Pic 10

Pic 11

Warning.

Fitting anything other than genuine new Canon cartridges to a Canon printer will void its warranty and may damage the printer. The above printers gave a warning to such effect and then stopped monitoring the ink levels once the refilled cartridges were fitted. If a cartridge should run dry then its print head will become damaged. The entire process was carried out just inside our garage with its door wide open so are to give a good supply of fresh air as the melting gave of some smoke that had an unpleasant smell.  I also wore gloves to stop getting my hands burnt.