Tips on Refilling an Ink Jet Printer.-

Refilling an injet printer cartrige should in theory be easy enough. Just like pouring a glass of milk from one container to another, then you can save $$$. In practice, there are more ways to make a mess than you can imagine. Here are some lesson learned.

What makes filling an ink cartridge is that ink is much thinner than water. Way thinner, and have low surface tension. This means if a drop of ink falls down on the table, it does not just wet the table. It will split into many tiny drops, and make a mess. This is where the majority of the mess come from.
Do not do on expensive table. Relatively thick magazine under the cartridge and paper tower on top of magazine. Ink soak thru paper really well. Glossy magazine is better since it will not soak thru as well. Newspaper tend to soak ink, so much more is needed.
Do not wear good cloths.
While filling top, ink is escaping from bottom. Put electrical tape over bottom opening. Once top is open using the tool they give you, ink will come out bottom. Be prepared.
While pulling tape from bottom opening, ink will splatter. Pull slowly.
While pushing plug in to seal the cartridge, ink will squirt out the bottom.
Stop when getting near the top. Opening has a tube in it. Once ink get to the level of the tube, ink will not fill the container anymore, and instead be filling the tube. Only a few more drops, and it will fill up the tube. If you are not aware of what is going on, you will over fill and find a big mess on the table.
Fill cartridge low to table, not high because drops bounce very far and split into tiny droplets. Higher potential energy = higher the splatter.
When covering hole on top, be sure plug is fitted well. If loose, use electrical tape to make sure plug does not come off. Don't want the plug to come undone inside the printer.

Canon printer pretty much all use resevoir type cartridge. They are easy to refill, and you can see the level. HP printers use sponge type, and are more difficult to refill. Note that the latest generation of Canon printers can be refilled, but will not allow you to reset the ink volume indicator like before. You will get a false warring after refill, and you can cancel the warning, but then you don't get anymore warnings. If the ink runs dry, you can damage the print head. To get around that, you need to get a resettable blank ink cartridge.

Refill Supplies Links
OctoInkjet.co.uk High quality refill supplies in UK.
Precisioncolors.com High quality refill supplies
printerknowledge.com Forum
oktoinkjet on ebay Sells cartridge resetter.