I went back to school yesterday for workshops and to get the room cleaned
up. I reassembled the computer (i don't let summer school use it). The
only think I need is black ink cartridge for the printer (lexmark Z25) The
school bought 100 at a time and put them in classrooms. It works fine for
printing out grades and take home papers.
Is it easy to refill? Any help on refill instructions and places to buy ink
would be appreciated. I called Staples (school list). They want 29.95 for
the 16 (black ink). Thanks, money is getting tighter and I don't mind
buying ink if it is feasible.
Post or send to (e-mail address removed)
That's about how much they want (in cdn$) for the refill K-Rec-Type
refill kit. Since you can refill about 6 times (according to
instructions) with the kit, I can see why you're interested.
Once you get a feel for it, it's not too difficult. There's only a
few things you need to worry about with the squeeze bottle kits like
the K-Rec Types kits that Staples sells. The inside of the Lexmark
cartridge contains a big wad of fibrous material (probably not cotton
or felt but that's what it looks like).
1. Don't leave the cartridge too long after emptying. If you let the
residual ink congeal and dry in the sponge, it won't retain any ink at
all, and the cartridge is useless.
2. Don't put squeeze in too much ink at a time. You have to allow
time for the ink to soak into the ink sponge. It's a slow process
with some cartridges, and you're basically guessing because the
squeeze bottle kits require you to do this through a tiny hole you've
drilled in the top of the cart, so you can't see anything. 1cc at a
time, waiting about 5 seconds between applications works for me. Of
course, as these kits don't allow any measurement, you have to guess.
3. Don't put try to put too much ink into the cartridge. The kit
instructions say 1/3 of the bottle for each refill, but I that's far
too much for mine. Your own experience might be different, putting
that much into an empty cart usually just saturates the sponge and
causes the ink to dribble out the bottom. You'll need to experiment a
bit to figure out how much yours will hole, just as I did.
Once you get a feel for how fast you can add ink and how much to add,
it should be pretty easy, but until then, the first few times can be a
bit messy. Just prepare for that if you've got stainables around.
The only gotcha is that some of Lexmark's cartridges are chipped so
that they'll only allow a certain number of cartridge firings before
it will just shut down (empty or not) and report that it's empty.
It's supposed to prevent you from refilling them. I don't have that
particular printer, and my Lexmark is an older 3200, which doesn't
seem to check. I don't know if your printer is one of the chip
protected ones or not. It's something to look into before buying the
kits, as the commonly available kits don't include measures to defeat
this. If you have such a printer, you usually have to buy a specialty
kit that modifies the printer or cartridges to get around it.
