3 Easy Ways to Refill HP Instant Ink Cartridge 902 934 935 564 920 Freedom to Refill Reset Video 1

Today, we will be working on some of HP’s twin-chamber cartridges (i.e., the 902, 934, 935, 564, and 920 models). Some of these cartridges are compatible with the HP Instant Ink program, which costs the user about $10 for every 200-250 pages. BCHTechnologies is here to help you save money, so we’ll go over a better alternative to HP Instant Ink. The printer we worked on in this video demonstration was an Officejet Pro 6968 with a 902 cartridge set. This is the first in a three-part video series we did about the HP Instant Ink program. In this video, to which this article is an accompaniment, we discuss some of what you’ll need to know before moving forward.

We start by using the initial startup cartridges to print a few hundred pages. When we empty the cartridges, we’ll go over four different methods to refill them. In addition, we’ll go over how to make your HP printer accept refilled cartridges. However, we’ll only review how to refill the front chamber.

In part two of this series, we’ll go over how to refill both chambers of an HP twin-chamber cartridge, how to utilize it in its entirety, and how to make your printer accept third-party cartridges. In the third part of this series, we’ll demonstrate how to add bigger ink tanks and feed more ink into them. If you follow all the steps in this series, you’ll save boatloads of money, and your printer will never run out of ink.

An HP twin-chamber cartridge is called that because the cartridge is divided into two chambers. The chamber towards the rear is designed to function as an ink reservoir, whereas the front chamber is filled with sponges. These sponges regulate the cartridge’s ink flow and prevent ink from leaking from the bottom. These two chambers are divided by a plastic wall. The wall is sealed on the bottom for non-XL cartridges (such as the default HP cartridges), so the ink cannot flow from the rear chamber to the front chamber. If you can make an opening at the bottom of that wall, you can convert any cartridge into an XL cartridge.

If you look at the top of the cartridge, you should notice a T-shaped air intake leading to a very long, winding air channel. The air channel then connects to the air hole, which allows air to get sucked into the cartridge as it is being used. On top of the back chamber is a refill hole. HP uses these on XL cartridges to inject ink into the back chamber, and then they fill it with a plastic ball. The refill hole is never used on the regular or startup cartridges, but they still have one. It’s almost like HP wants you to refill them.

In the video, we cut open one regular cartridge and one XL cartridge so that you could see the differences inside them. You can see that both cartridges have a refill hole, but only the XL cartridges have a hole in the dividing wall (unless you can make one in the wall of your standard cartridge). Because of this, we only tend to refill the front chamber in a startup or regular cartridge. Putting ink in a standard cartridge’s back chamber wouldn’t do anything.

We started by putting some startup cartridges into a new printer. We could print around 340 pages before seeing a significant decline in print quality. The printer was beginning to run out of ink, but it still seemed to think it had between 10% and 20% left.

For the first refill method, we’ll use a magenta cartridge to demonstrate. We’ll use a kit from my website, BCHTechnologies.com, called ID30-KCMY. You can find it under the HP section of the refill ink tab. We should only need the 120 mL bottles for now. Alternatively, you could use the pigment kit (IP30-4567-AH). It doesn’t include the thumb drill, but the colors tend to be more vivid.

Inside the ID30-KCMY kit, you’ll receive one bottle of each color of ink, one bottle of black ink, and a thumb drill. I’ll be demonstrating four different refill methods. For the first method, start by turning the cartridge upside-down. Drip magenta ink onto it until it starts to overflow. If you refill it correctly, no ink should spill out when you turn it back over.

The second method is the one typically used by refill stores like Costco. Therefore, we’ll use a refilled Costco cartridge as an example. Costco drills a hole near the air intake, adds ink, and covers it up. The patch doesn’t need to be airtight, so a simple piece of scotch tape will do. We’ll work on the Cyan cartridge for this one. If you’re watching along with the video, then you can see the air hole under the letter C. We want to drill a hole between that and the HP logo. Then we’ll fill it with ink until it starts to overflow and cover the gap.

The third method requires us to use a tool called a refill pedestal. You can order one off of eBay for around $10. The color pedestal is capable of feeding ink into any of the cartridges. The company that makes these tools requires you to use an adapter piece designed to fit their ink bottles. However, buying their ink isn’t necessary. If you have a needle and a syringe, you can use those. Suck the ink into the syringe, remove the needle, and replace it with the adapter.

The inside of the pedestal tool is a straightforward design. A U-shaped tube connects the injector points to the cartridge. For this method, we’ll use the yellow cartridge. We then use a needle to fill our syringe with ink, remove it, and connect the adapter. From there, we squeeze the ink into the pedestal tool, which then transfers said ink into the cartridge. Keep injecting ink until it starts to spill out of the top.

The fourth and final method is a cheaper version of the third one. There’s something called a storage clip that you can order from my website for these twin-chamber cartridges. You can find them under the protective clips section of the accessories tab. Each clip has a silicone pad on the bottom to prevent ink from leaking out, which makes it helpful in storing cartridges or holding them during refills.

We’ll go ahead and enlarge that bottom hole with a utility knife. Then we will cut a hole in the silicone pad. This is harder than it sounds, so some people recommend heating a paperclip and using that to melt a hole through it instead. After the hole is made, mark the syringe and make sure it can’t go too far into the hole. Otherwise, it might poke the cartridge. Fill the syringe with ink and inject it into the cartridge.

When you put the newly refilled cartridges back into your printer, it will quickly become apparent that it doesn’t have any clue how much ink is in the cartridge. HP estimates a cartridge’s ink levels by tracking how many pages are printed. If you remember, we printed 340 pages with these cartridges. HP printers think they should last for 380 pages, so the cartridges should have 10% of their ink left. HP’s Instant Ink program automatically orders a new cartridge for every 250 pages you print. When you install a new cartridge, the print counter returns to zero, and the page counter resets. What if we stop the printer from counting altogether? Could we theoretically use our cartridges forever?

Older models use the term “counting chip info” since the page count that allows the printer to estimate the ink levels is stored on a computer chip at the bottom of the cartridge. We’ve already printed with the chip info turned on until the printer thought the ink was low. We will review what happens when we turn off the counting chip info.

The first test page we printed was decent, but the first page after a refill can often be deceptive. Some old ink could be left in the printhead, separated from the new ink by air bubbles. This point was emphasized when the black ink cartridge got clogged by a massive ink bubble on our next test page. The print was missing any black color, so I ran HP’s built-in printhead cleaning function three times to attempt fixing it.

HP has a three-level cleaning routine. When you tell it to clean again, it will clean even more thoroughly than last. If you go through all three cleaning levels with your printer, you should let it rest for at least two hours. The built-in cleaning function generates waste ink. Without allowing the printer have this time to recover, waste ink will soak the printhead, making things worse. We kept printing with the chip info on, and eventually, we got to the point where HP thought that the black ink should be empty.

We just hit okay and had the printer keep printing. It still said that the yellow, magenta, and cyan ink levels were at 10%. To turn off the chip info, go to Setup>Preferences>Stop Anonymous Usage Information. Switch it to off.

The magenta cartridge got clogged in the middle of printing, but it fixed itself after two cleaning cycles. At around 557 pages, the printer still thought the ink levels were the same as when we started. This means that we should be able to keep printing and refilling forever.

1:50- Anatomy of a Cartridge

5:21- Method 1

6:23- Method 2

7:17- Method 3

8:58- Final Method

10:37- Chip Reset

12:08- Troubleshooting