This review is based on refilling my canon Mg5420 cartridges.
I have finally run my ink dry in blue and text black. The others were quite low. So out came the refill kit I bought. I did take a video of it but it came out to be over 30 minutes worth and since amazon wont let me upload more than 10 minutes worth, I am in the process of editing the video cutting out the junk and adding voice over narration explanations. To do a video edit to my satisfaction takes about 6 hours so it may be a while before I'm done with it.
In the mean time since the process turned out much easier than expected, I will give a quick text explanation for you die hard fans of the refilling process.
The drill that came with my refill kit sucked. It was so dull it would not drill a single hole. This was the 1st refill kit I ever bought that had an insufficient drill.
So I heated a paper clip with a lighter and melted a hole. That was too easy. Much better than expected. I should of been doing that years ago instead of messing with the drills. While refilling my 1st cartridge through this melted hole, when the cartridge became full, ink began pouring out the bottom of the cartridge.
The bottom of the cartridge has a large sponge opening where the ink soaks into the print head when the cartridge is installed in the printer. Seeing how fast ink could run out of the sponge hole opening made me realize it would also soak in as fast as it could run out, which was very quick.
So on all the rest of the cartridges, instead of melting a injection hole for the needle on the syringe, I just flipped the cartridge upside down and squirted the ink into the (bottom) opening with the sponge exposed. I was very pleased to see the sponge did indeed absorb it as fast as I could squirt ink out of the syringe. Actually, this thrilled me.
The top of the cartridge which is now upside down at this point, has a vent hole beneath the full length sticker on the cartridge. The sticker does not seal this hole so air can go in as ink drains out of the bottom of the cartridge so you don't get a vapor lock vacuum. When the cartridge becomes full from squirting ink onto the sponge, excess ink will quickly drip out the top (which is now upside down) through the vent hole which informs me the cartridge is now full and to quit filling it. At the 1st sign of ink dripping out from the sticker area, quit refilling it. A couple more drops drip out and then it stops its draining process and the cartridge is now totally full.
Now it is safe to turn the cartridge upright to its normal install position and no more ink will drain out from the sponge opening on the bottom. However it will continue to hold all the ink you have added without it dripping out.
I install that cartridge back into the printer and grab the next empty one. I flip it upside down and fill it through the bottom opening that exposes the sponge. When a couple of drops of ink drips from the sticker area (vent), I'm done filling that cartridge and move on to the next.
A syringe will hold more ink than what a cartridge can absorb, so any left over ink I squirt back into the bottle it came out of. I then label that syringe with a sharpy magic marker what color it was used for so next time I have to refill my cartridges many months later, I can use the same syringe for the same color it was used on last time. This is because when I squirt the left over ink back into the bottle, there is always a couple drops left in the syringe and I would not want it to mix with a different color ink later when I reuse that syringe. That would surely degrade the print quality.
I only work above a spread out plastic trash bag so no ink drips get on anything valuable and I can throw it out when I'm done. Don't trust a newspaper. Ink soaks thru it quite quickly. With a green scrubby for pans, I wash and scrub the ink off my fingers with dish soap when I'm done and it all comes off in about 1 minute. Maybe 2. I'm kind of sloppy and don't use rubber gloves. Theres more in life to worry about than do I have to wash ink off my fingers.
The ink kit I bought was in large bottles. There was 5 of them. And it came with 5 separate syringes that worked super well. Don't trust the picture showing ten syringes. Its just not true. The syringes were better than most that come with a refill kit.
Now this next piece may be the most important so pay attention. Each bottle of ink has a letter on the top/cap/lid that denotes its color. Since this model canon uses 2 separate black inks, there is 2 bottles of black ink. One for text and documents, and the other for photo printing.
Heres the challenge. Both bottles of black ink look nearly identical to each other. This stumped me for a few minutes. Which is for photos and which is for text? Here is how I figured it out. The three colored bottles have exactly the same size letter on their cap. Obviously they are for photos and not text. One of the black bottles has the same size letter on its cap that the colored bottles have on their cap. And one black bottle has a slightly smaller letter on its cap than the colored do. Both blacks have the letter "k" on the cap. One -Kis the same size as the letters of the colored bottles and the other -khas a slightly smaller size. Do look carefully!!!
The included instructions do not tell you how to differentiate between the two black bottles.
The smaller -kis for the text and the larger -Kis for photos. All the photo inks have the same exact size letter on their cap and the text black has a slightly smaller letter on its cap. That is the only identifier on the blacks to differentiate which is which. I highly recommend this refill kit because when it was all done, it all worked perfectly and was such a bargain. Value VERSUS Cost? FANTASTIC!
Now that I know to fill the cartridges through their sponge hole in the bottom by flipping it upside down, I can refill all the cartridges in about 5-7 minutes.
This ink is designed for canon printers and I bought 5 bottles of ink that contains 4 oz of ink per bottle for $26Thats about 10-12 refills for each ink cartridge. Thats a super bargain. Do you know what it would cost you to buy all 5 cartridges times 12 times?
After my refilling was done, now was time for the test. I dug out a 8x10 photo I had printed with the original canon ink. The photo I selected was full of high level intricate detail with a good mix of all colors.
I went on my computer and found the digital original and reprinted it with this new refilled ink. It was flawless. I could not tell them apart. They looked exactly alike and thats why I will not buy any other brand of refill ink. This is as good as it gets and this is what I am sticking with in the future.
I don't believe you can buy more ink for less money than what I have found. (I'm wrong. I just found out you can buy it in gallon jugs, 5 gallons for $79) And I'm sure the quality of ink available to buy canNOT get any better than this as it prints exactly like canons original ink does. But you buy what you want.
To me its pretty insignificant but there is one minor downside. After you have refilled the cartridges, the printer NEVER does recognize they are full and the printer will continue giving you the low ink, or out of ink message. However this never stops another perfect print from popping out. So from here on in I just ignore all ink messages and when a print finally pops out with vacant lines through it, then I will know its time to refill them all again. Most ink messages on your computer screen you can hit cancel or ignore and they go away. However when you find that one of a kind message that wont go away no matter what you do on your computer, then its time to go directly to your printer and hit the ok button to acknowledge it and then you can be allowed to print more.
I only got that super stubborn message once. But nothing I did on my computer would make it go away. I fiddled with it for ten minutes before it occurred to me to go walk up to the printer itself and see if it could be acknowledged from there successfully. And it worked and never came back. Different messages pop up that I don't have to acknowledge when I begin a print, but they don't get in my way.
Ok, go refill your own and just spray it in through the bottom sponge and have fun. Forget about refill holes and plugs.
Let me know if this review helps you. And I will work on editing the video for future viewers.
Chris
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