Thinking about refilling your empty ink cartridge as an alternative to buying a new one to save money? Great! One drawback: Although you’ll be able to print without incident, your refilled cartridge will possibly still register on your PC and printer as empty.

A printer manufacturer makes more than two-thirds of its income selling printer cartridges. This isn’t at all astounding when you consider that an average of 2 billion ink cartridges are sold worldwide each year, making billions of dollars in revenue.

The effect is that you will not have much problem with used cartridges from reputable refillers if you are printing papers with black ink on standard 10-kilo paper, what most people call copier paper. Most have money-back guarantee assurance. At half the price, even if half of what you acquire fails to print as much as a new cartridge, you are not much worse off. Except, that is, you are printing photographs on pricey photo paper that you want to keep as heirlooms for 75 to 100 years and you might include greeting cards or company brochures in this class. Then you will want to stick with the printer manufacturer’s ink and the suggested photo paper. So it’s really cheaper to refill your empty ink cartridge.

How to Refill Your Own Ink Cartridge

In an ideal world, refilling an ink cartridge should be done before it’s empty to avoid the core from drying out and clogging. Start by finding a refill kit that’s well-matched with your current black or color inkjet cartridge. Be sure to double check the well-suited cartridges listed on the refill kit. Once you’ve found the right kit, it’s easy to start refilling your cartridge.

Make sure your kit includes these very important things: ink bottles, syringes and instructions. You may want to use newspapers or old towels to cover your work area and wear gloves to protect your hands from spills. Turn off your inkjet printer and remove your cartridge.

Detach the cap from each ink bottle (for color cartridges) and insert one syringe per bottle. Fill up each syringe with the correct amount of ink (found in the refill kit’s instructions). Replace caps on ink bottles for proper storage. Follow the refill kit’s manual to find out where the filled syringe should penetrate the inkjet cartridge. Start slowly filling the inkjet cartridge with one syringe at a time (for color ink cartridges).

Since it’s hard to find out how much ink was in the cartridge before you start, it’s imperative to avoid using the full amount in the syringe. Stop a couple of milliliters short of whole volume to help avoid an overflow. Remove the syringe from the cartridge, and then thoroughly clean the syringe with water. Place the filled inkjet cartridge back into your printer. Run your printer’s cartridge cleaning program and print a few test pages to ensure quality printouts.

On average, you can refill your ink cartridges three to five times before replacing them with new cartridges.

For more information on how to refill your cartridge, please visit:  http://www.macroenter.com/.