Today, I'll review how to make refillable PG-245 and CL-246 cartridges for your printer. Specifically, we’ll be working with a Canon PIXMA MG printer. Making the cartridges you have into refillable cartridges may seem like a lot of work, but you’d be amazed at how much money it can save you in the long run.

Your printer’s default Canon ink cartridges barely hold any ink. Canon intentionally designs them this way, so they run out quickly, and you’ll have to replace them often, making Canon more money. If you don’t want to make your own refillable cartridges, you can always order a premade one from my website, BCHTechnologies.com.

I’ve posted many videos in the past on my YouTube channel about how to make refillable Canon cartridges. This isn’t going to be another one of those. Instead, this will be a summary of a demonstration vlog I made a while ago, available to watch here.

Used cartridges – yes or no?

For the demonstration, we had quite a few used cartridges we ordered from various sellers off of eBay. If you’re following along with the video demonstration, you’ll see that they come in slightly different shapes. Two main differences between cartridges can cause them to have these different shapes.

The first of these two main differences is that some are colored ink cartridges, and some are black. The goal is to make these cartridges refillable and run them successfully on an MG 2522 printer. We chose this particular model number because we had a room full of them at the time of filming.

Necessary supplies

To start with, we’re going to need some supplies. We’ll need a set of refillable colors (AS-RPC-CR2), which you can order from my website. We’ll also need some sandpaper, a utility knife, some super glue, a container for holding liquid, some BCH brand cleaning solution, and (obviously) the inks. You could also try using some warm water instead of the cleaning solution, but it will be less effective and may take longer. As for the container to hold our liquids, I chose to use the packaging that the cartridges came with. I like using these because the shape (especially the front chamber) is ideal for unclogging the printhead.

I poured the cleaning solution into the larger chamber of the container. You only want it to be about ¼ of an inch deep. I accidentally poured more than that into the first container, so I fixed it by transferring the excess into the other container to even it out. I placed the color ink cartridge into the container so that the front of it (the printhead) was submerged in the cleaning solution. If you use warm water instead and need to heat it up, don’t do so in the cartridges’ package. They will probably melt.

While I set that aside to let the printhead soak for a while, I decided to crack open the refillable color ink kit to show precisely what you’d be getting into if you ordered one. You can find these kits under the refill tools section of the accessories tab at BCHTechnologies.com. Alternatively, you could search for it by typing “AS-RFC-CB2” into the search bar. You’ll notice that this particular kit says spongeless. We have a version for doing this process with a sponge, but that’s not the one I chose to use for the demonstration this time.

Get some help with refillable cartridges

This section is also where you’ll find the option to have us make it for you. You can even select which cartridge you want us to do. There’s also the option for you to send us a cartridge you already have if you want us to refill that one. Remember to sign the package before sending it if you opt for this choice. Otherwise, the post office will send it back to you, and we’ll never get it.

I previously mentioned how one of the two main reasons that some cartridges have different shapes than others is that some are for color, and some are for black ink. The other main reason may only be as evident once you open the cartridges. The standar, default canon cartridges can barely hold any ink.

To appease the people that are frustrated by this, Canon also sells XL cartridges. As opposed to the tiny sponge and thick lid on the default cartridges that leave virtually no room for ink, the XL cartridges have thinner lids and much larger sponges. This allows them to hold a bit more.

Inside the refillable color kit, you’ll see that the contents include a syringe, one black cartridge cover, and one color cartridge cover. These will make it so that all future refills are significantly easier. To demonstrate how to install these cartridge covers, I decided to start by cutting open the black one. I find this easiest to do on the edge of the table or whatever hard, flat surface you choose to work on.

Finish unclogging the cartridges

When it was finally time to take the cartridges out of the cleaning solution, I found that not much had come out of it. Maybe a little bit had come out of the yellow chamber, but not much else. The black cartridge didn’t have anything come out at all. This meant that I still had some work to do regarding unclogging them.

Looking at the cartridge, you’ll see a seam between the lid and the rest of the cartridge. Starting at the corner, I wedged my utility knife into that seam. After wiggling it back and forth, I could easily use the knife to pop the lid off. Once I got the lid off, I had to get the sponge out, so I used the knife to do that as well.

When we cut open the color ink cartridge, it’s much easier to see what differentiates it from the black ink cartridge. The black ink cartridge only dispenses one kind of ink and only needs one chamber. On the other hand, the color ink cartridge has three different colors of ink to dispense. This means that it will need three separate chambers- one for each color. If it didn’t have these, the colors would all mix, and there would be no point in having color ink cartridges.

Remove the sponges

When I took the sponges out of the chambers, it became visually apparent that the amount of ink Canon puts in the cartridges is insultingly low. That’s why the BCH technologies team and I are here to show you how to get around that.

I recommend writing down which colors go in which chamber, in case you forget and need that information later. Next, I took a piece of sandpaper and sanded down the top of the cartridge to make sure that it was level. It’s essential to make sure that the surface you have the sandpaper on is flat and level when doing this, or else you might make it worse. Avoid letting plastic shavings get inside the cartridge, as that will almost certainly cause it to clog later.

Next, I used an air hose with a fine nozzle to blow any potential debris off the printhead ( as well as the surface I was working on). I also used a paper towel to dab off any excess. Never use a rubbing motion with a paper towel when working on the printhead. This can cause paper fibers to get caught and possibly clog it.

Install the new cover

After thoroughly unclogging the printhead, it was time to fit on the new cartridge cover. Notice how I didn’t mention putting the sponge back in? That’s because our method will make it so that you no longer need the sponge.

The sponges usually found inside a cartridge are designed to hold the ink and prevent it from flowing freely out of the printhead. Due to the design of the new covers I installed, the ink would stay in place without a sponge to store it. The trick is to create an air-tight seal.

Since I needed to create an air-tight seal for this to work, I had to line it up right and use some pretty strong super glue to hold it in place. I usually do at least ten test placements to ensure I’ll get it right when it’s time to glue it down.

The lid is designed in a way that it should snap into place when you get it right, so make sure that you hear that snap. If not, then you’ve done something wrong. Practice a bit until you’re confident you’ll be able to fit it on properly without making any adjustments after the glue is on.

Seal the lid

Once I’d fiddled with it enough to be confident in my lid-placing abilities, it was time for the real deal. You can select any super glue, but I prefer transparent gorilla glue. I put down an even layer of said superglue all around the top of the cartridge walls. Try to make sure that there aren’t any gaps or air bubbles. If there are, the seal won’t be air-tight, and the result won’t work.

When I was doing my demonstration, I made that exact mistake. There was an air bubble in my line of superglue that I didn’t notice until I’d already put the cover on. Fortunately, it was near the outer edge, and I was able to fix it by simply adding some more super glue to the outside without taking the lid off and starting over.

Don’t touch the printhead at all during this process. I used some tape to hold the lid in place, and you could do that too. Don’t let the tape come in contact with the printhead either, as the adhesive would cause the printhead to get sticky and cling to dirt and debris particles. This would cause it to clog pretty quickly.

Glue on the lid

Gluing the lid on the color cartridge is almost the same as gluing it onto the black ink cartridge. The only difference is that you’ll have to put glue on the tops of each chamber wall rather than just around the outside like you would with the black.

The super glue I had used was relatively fast-acting, so I only had to hold the lid manually for about two minutes before I was comfortable securing it with a rubber band.

When the glue had dried enough, I did one more test to check if there were any air bubbles in the super glue seal I had made. After that, I left the cartridges to dry for about half an hour. Sometimes when I’m going through this process off camera, I’ll let it sit for longer (2-3 hours), but this time I figured 30 minutes would be enough.

Thirty minutes later, I unpeeled the tape from the black ink cartridge when the glue was completely dry. Using one of the squeeze bottles of ink available at BCHTechnologies.com, I filled the cartridge with ink. One of the perks of these new refillable lids is that they’re see-through, so you can see exactly how much ink you need to put in.

This version of the refillable cartridge lids is actually the second one. The first ones were similar, but it wasn’t see-through; for some reason, the magentas tended to clog.

Put the cartridges back in the printer

I put the newly refilled cartridges back into the printer and went to look at my computer to troubleshoot. Since the scanner is manual, it took a little extra work. I clicked the “cleaning” option, but when I told it to execute, it didn’t go through the entire cycle that it was supposed to go through.

I found that when this happens, there’s a way to fix it under the “devices and printers” tab. From there, I went to “printer properties.” [there’s a weird skip here in the video, and then he moves on without finishing this train of thought].

No black or yellow came out on the test page I printed, and very little cyan did. On the bright side, the magenta hadn’t clogged. I assumed that some air bubbles had caused the problem. I needed to fix both cartridges but chose to start with the black one first.

Fixing the air bubbles

To attempt to fix it, I got about 1 mL of air in a syringe. This could potentially work with ½ of an mL as well. I then used the needle to push air into the cartridge. In theory, this should work to force out any air bubbles. There are two holes in the cartridge’s lid. Don’t blow air into the refill hole. That’s not what I did. Instead, cover the refill hole with your thumb and blow air into the other hole.

After blowing that 1 mL of air into the cartridge, there was still no ink coming out, so I blew in another 1 mL of air. That was able to get some of the ink out, in which the air bubbles were visible. I then repeated the process on the colored ink cartridge.

Since the magenta didn’t have a problem printing, I barely had to blow any air into that chamber to get anything out. The yellow and cyan inks only took about 1 mL of air each to get the ink to come out.

Putting the cartridges back into the printer

I reinserted the cartridges into the printer again and went back to my computer to try and run a cleaning for the second time. I also noticed that the printer thought the ink levels were low in both cartridges. When this happens, we continue printing until the ink says it’s depleted. We cannot reset the chip until we get to that point.

The next cleaning could have gone better. The page printed with way too much black ink on it -- it basically coated the sheet of paper. I had more work to do to fix the problem. I took the cartridge out of the printer again and added more ink. As I did so, I noticed it was coming from the cartridge everywhere. I dried the printhead, reinserted it, and ran another test print.

The black looked alright this time, but the magenta needed some work (even though it had worked fine every other time). I made sure it had enough ink, blew some air into it, and tried again. Finally, we got a clean print. However, I also got a pop-up window saying the ink in the black cartridge had run out.

If this happens to you, don’t close out the window. Don’t do anything with your computer just yet. Go to your printer and find the button with the triangle on it. Hold that down for 10-15 seconds until the window disappears. You should be good to go.

URLs:

1:16 - Tools

5:43 - Prepping

9:50 - Placing the Lid

15:17 - Filling

16:59 - Troubleshooting

20:43 - Resetting Ink Levels