How to refill HP 63 Printer Cartridges
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- On Jul 07, 2021
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Today, we're going to do a standard drill and refill for HP 63 cartridges. The HP 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, and 65 cartridges, and older like 21, those regular cartridges look like little squares. Those are integrated cartridges, which means the cartridge and the printhead are one unit. So once we replace the cartridge, we also replace the printhead. So, thus, the printer itself only serves as a mechanical paper provider.
Low ink warning & counterfeit messages after refill
We'll have a new printhead each time we change the cartridge. If you are new to refill, please watch the other video. I will post a link here about an integrated cartridge. You'll have a better understanding of how refill works and how to deal with the different situations. There are a few necessary things to know before we are starting the refill process. One is the warning message. The printer will complain about a used or counterfeited cartridge detected. We'll need to click "okay" to dismiss the warning.
Where to get blank cartridges
Today we're going to use some cartridges that we bought from eBay. If you go to eBay and search, for example, we search for 623 empty, and then you can see that people sell the empty cartridges for $1 or $1.25. So we'll get a pair of those used cartridges.
Prepare cartridges for refill
The first thing we do is put it in the printer and make sure it's working. We'll put the cartridge into the printer and make sure the cartridge doesn't have any electronic problems. If the yellow hazard light blinks, we'll take the cartridge out and use a paper towel to clean the electronic ribbon on the back. After a few tries, if the hazard light is still blinking, then we'll discard this cartridge and get another replacement. Our cartridge is working. It doesn't have any ink in it.
For dried cartridges, we'll use a smartphone to zoom in and check this printhead. If we do not see any scratches or permanent physical damages, we'll put the cartridge in warm water and soak it for one or two hours. For rigid dried inks, we'll use BCH Cleaning Solutions to soften the clog. The water and the cleaning solution will soften the clog, but it will not remove it, and you need some action, such as sucking or pushing to remove the clog. The cleaning solution can be found at BCH Technologies and their accessories and then go to "anti-clogging agent." In this case, we're using Triple Action Cleaning Solutions. We'll show you how to unclog it after we refill it. There's no set of time how long you're going to soak it. I usually do 20 minutes to an hour, and you can do more like two hours, three hours, and you want to repeat it. We will use the kit First-Timer Ink Refill Kit for HP Inkjet Printer Cartridges.
Find refill holes
For the black, five holes are hiding behind the label. If we take the tag off, you're going to see that. We're going to use a toothpick or a needle right across the top of the cartridge and determine where those holes are. I'm going to take the label off for demonstration. We're going to see there's a hole here, and then there are air channels. What happened is HP does not want to seal the cartridge airtight, so a needle-like cartridge breath where is working. It has those air channels connected to the hole. We're going to poke a hole through it and put another sticky label on the top. You can use any label. You can use packing tapes. You can use clear tapes, whatever you want.
The color cartridge also has five holes. The top hole is a color. Then the two holes on the left-hand side are color. Then two holes on the right-hand is a color. We don't post the color sequence here because HP is making two versions of cartridges now. Where the magenta and the yellow, they're are swapped. Check the color sequence before refilling.
Let's take a look inside a cartridge. XL cartridges have a larger sponge that occupies the whole cartridge. Yet, for a non-XL cartridge or start-up cartridges, HP builds this little wall, and they use a smaller cartridge. Thus, the sponge size will limit the amount of ink used.
Inject ink
We're going to push a needle through the hole on the penetrated sponge, then pull off a little bit to release a small amount of the ink. We'll do it and then not penetrating the filter underneath the sponge. Our plan at its is greatest only use half of the needle. Our goal is to make the sponge moist rather than fill out the whole sponge with ink. If the sponge cannot hold the ink, the excessive ink will flow out from the printhead and then make a mess.
Let me put into refill it. We're going to squeeze seven times. After that, you can see we put enough ink in it, but the sponge is now soaked. You can see the regular version of a color cartridge. Those sponges are tiny. We're going to only do three squeezes on this. You can see it's not super precise, and you may still have some ink left, so you make a judgment whether you want to squeeze three times or four times. Okay, let's work on the real thing. We'll try to find the middle hole.
I cannot find it, so I'm put force and peel the label off to see where it is. I'm going to use half the needle, so I'll put my finger there as a guard, and I push it in and pull out a little bit and start squeezing. If we overfill, that's okay. We need to leave the cartridge in the printer for a while, and you can see the ink starts coming out. Let's add a little bit more.
The black is done. We'll do the same thing for the color.
The top is one color, and the two on the left are one color. The top one is magenta, and the one on the left is yellow, so the one on the right must be cyan. So we write color sequence on a piece of paper. Now, remember do not penetrate too deep and only do three squeezes, three to four. Okay, that's three, and they're already all flowing. We push in, then we pull out a little bit on three, so it can release the ink. Let us put a piece of clear tape over the hose. See, we only cover half of the top hole, and then we leave the bottom to open so you'll have enough air for it to breathe. If we cover up the whole thing and want a poke another hole, make sure it's not airtight.
Test & troubleshooting the refill
Vacuum
Now we can install the cartridge, and I'll run a cleaning cycle. I'll run one or two cleaning cycles until the cartridge begins to print. If the cartridge is still not cleaned, the review process may introduce air bubbles on the bottom of the cartridge. We can let the cartridge sit overnight, and the bubble should be gone. If the clock persists, we can use tools to suck the air bubble or dried the ink out.
Remember, if we have dried ink, we need to soak it in the water or cleaning solutions to soften it. We can use a white paper towel, wrap it around the cartridge, and then use a vacuum cleaner to suck it underneath. We should repeat it until we see colors coming out of the printhead.
Priming Clip
Another tool we're going to use it's called a priming clip. We can get it from bchtechnologies.com and the "accessories" and the "priming clips and syringes." You'll get the black clip and two silicon parts. The shorter one is for the color, and the longer one is for the black. The clip is tight, so some people complain that the clip is too small. It's not too small. You have to set it right and push it hard. Here we go. You don't to have this clip. You can use the vacuum method, but a clip is more convenient.
Now you should withdraw the ink from the bottom, and you should feel pretty easy. It's like this one. If you think it's hard, you need to soften the cloth again and soak it in water. When you put it in the printhead, the printer may complain about a used cartridge, or counterfeit cartridge detected or low ink or ink depleted. You can hit "okay" or "yes" to dismiss those warnings and keep printing. The printer will not track the ink levels after refill, so keep an eye on the print quality. If a color is missing or the color is fading, review it as needed.
A cartridge cannot be found
But, if the error message is, "Cartridge can not be found," or you see the cartridge indicator light is blinking, that may be something else. That may be you have ink splash in the back of the electronic ribbon, and you want to take it out, clean it, and put it back a couple of times. If it's still not working a few times, the cartridge went wrong, and you need a new one. go to eBay and search for a new cartridge plus the word "empty."
To test how many pages a refilled cartridge can print, we tried our refill cartridge. But, unfortunately, once the cartridge is inserted, the printer still thinks there's no ink in the color cartridge and only a tiny amount of ink left for the black cartridge. So, we discussed earlier low ink warnings and kept using the color cartridge.
Here's a bonus tip: if our printer doesn't print our alignment page correctly, we can still use the printer by processing the scan button and allowing the printer to scan a blank page. [background noise]
Once the printer is ready, we start the printing with our refill cartridge. Here's bonus tip number two. You can see we overfilled the magenta, so the magenta looks horrible. Here's what happened, you fill too much magenta, the pressure will overpower the other two colors. If you print, the magenta will overrun different colors. You'll be publishing in magenta. If you let it sit in the printer, it's going to drip magenta.
There're two things you can do. One thing is to take the cartridge out and use the over vacuum method to suck some ink out. By default, you'll suck out more magenta, and you're going to end up like this. You suck out some cyan and yellow, but you suck more magenta out. Or, if it's just a tiny amount, you can keep printing. When you print, you consume magenta then eventually, your ink will be balanced.
In this case, we'll keep printing. Let me show you after a couple of pages what it'll look like. Even magenta is dripping, and then the magenta is overpowering the cyan and yellow. Now, you're still getting strips of magenta coming out, and then after a couple of pages, you're going to see the printout is acceptable. Finally, after about ten pages, we get a perfect printout.
These are the modified refillable cartridges in which we adjust the sponge size or remove the sponge. We're going to test how many pages they can print. Right now, we only try the one that we refilled. That's a regular HP 63 cartridge. We'll put a green divider for every 50 pages printed.
Finally, we get the black color missing, so it's time to add the black ink. Let's see how many pages we printed. We got a 100. actually not 100. We're two pages from 100, so we'll publish 98 pages.
Don't forget our other videos teaching you through some modification. You'll either replace it with a larger sponge, or you remove the sponge and fill the whole thing with ink, but you need a pressure regulator to do it, and we'll see how to do it in the other videos.