Extreme DIY Methods: The Last Resort to Save Your Printer Cartridges

We've made many videos and posts showing how to unclog a cartridge with a printhead. For example, we can soak the printhead in warm water or cleaning solutions to soften the dried ink. We can suck ink with a vacuum cleaner, or we can suck ink with a priming clip. We can steam the cartridge to open up the nozzles. Furthermore, if we made a spongeless refillable cartridge, we can blow air from the top to push the clog out.

I was bragging to my friend, and I told them that I could unclog 99% cartridges. Of course, we talk about this at the party all the time, my party, but once in a while, you're going to have some cartridges that are entirely clogged, that no matter what you do, it's not going to unclog. My hobby is to buy a whole bunch of cartridges, use dry cartridges from eBay, and unclog them. After trying everything before throwing the printhead or printer out, this video is for a Hail Mary method. Do not try this if the printer or cartridge still has some value to you. Only try it if you have nothing to lose.

The integrated cartridge is an excellent choice to try this method. Because I use printhead, it only costs $5 or $6, and it will not damage the printer anyway. We made these 245 246 refillable cartridges. No matter what we do, the magenta is clogged. If you don't know how to make a refillable cartridge, we have a link here that you can learn how to make them. We're going to throw this cartridge away if we cannot unclog it. Our plan is actually to get a pot of boiling water and boil it. The first thing we do is take all the ink out and empty the cartridge. We don't want to make a big mess.

I was worried about the metal particle going to rub against the printhead, so I put it in a plastic basket. I know you like to watch this, so I'll be back a little bit later. What happened to my basket? That's not good. We start adding ink back to the cartridge, and then we put it on a clip and prime it. We took the old cartridge out and put our boiled cartridge in. We use the printer's building function to do a printhead cleaning. The printer still recognized the cartridge. That's a good sign. Print a check pattern. The magenta is much better than before. Before it boiled, there was almost no magenta.

However, we still can see some clogs there. This time, we're going to fill it with a cleaning solution. We're going to fill the cartridge with a cleaning solution and boil it a little bit longer. We use this from bchtechnologies.com under Accessories and Anti-Clogging Agent, and we use this triple-action cleaning solution. No basket this time. We're going to let it go for a little bit longer. 3:46, I think that's long enough. Why not? We draw the cleanest portion out, and then we replace it with ink. Now, let's try to see if this works better. Oh, thanks. Thanks for the comments.

I hope you enjoyed this video. Visit us at www.bchtechnologies.com or locally at Greensboro, North Carolina. Thank you. Happy printing. Cheers.