How To Make an HP 67 Refillable Cartridge With a Sponge

This blog by BCH Technologies will demonstrate how to make a refillable, sponge-based cartridge for HP 67 models. Previously, we discussed how to refill cartridges, and now we will discuss how to do so with a sponge. Today, we will be using this kit from BCH to replace the sponge inside the cartridge. After a while, the sponge in a cartridge wears out, and although you can refill the cartridge, it never performs to max capacity again. This loss of efficiency is why people often choose to replace the sponge.

The BCH kit comes with two clear covers: one for the color cartridge and one for the black. It also comes with four sponges—three for the color and one for the black—and a priming syringe. You may or may not need to use this syringe, but it is included just in case. In addition, your kit comes with superglue that you can use to seal the covers airtight. However, BCH does not recommend gluing the lid tightly in this case, since you may want to remove the sponge and use it with another set of cartridges.

Getting Started

First, grab a sharp knife and find one of the seams on the edge of your cartridge. Use your knife to push on the seam, working all the way around the edges until you’re able to open the cartridge. If you can’t get the cartridge open after fiddling around the seams with your knife, it will not be compatible with this process.

When you get the cartridge open, you’ll see a small sponge surrounded by a wall. HP put this barrier in place to prevent you from refilling it with ink, but that’s precisely what we’re going to do.

Removing the Sponge Wall and Replacing the Sponge in the Black Cartridge

You can purchase this standard dye ink kit from bchtechnologies.com. It contains six 100 ml bottles in four colors, which is more than enough to refill your cartridge. Once you have your ink, use a set of pliers to remove the sponge wall from the cartridge. You will notice that there is a filter underneath. Do not break this, or you will essentially ruin the cartridge. When removing the wall, you don’t need to flatten it completely. Allowing your sponge to maintain good contact with the filter will suffice.

Wash the cartridge with distilled water—do not use tap or mineral water. You can get distilled water from any grocery store. Now comes the fun part. The sponge was intentionally made to be larger than the cartridge, so you may have to squeeze it to get it in there and press down harder if you were unable to totally flatten the bottom. It’s now time to replace the cartridge cover. We will not glue the lid airtight for today’s demonstration, but you’ll still want to check to ensure that you have it on the right way. Wrap it with a piece of tape to hold it in place.

Refilling the Sponge

Your kit may come with sharp needles. If so, you can use them to fill your syringe bottles and inject the black ink into the sponge. However, if you don’t have access to anything really sharp, then read on—we will discuss how to penetrate the sponge with a more blunt object. Poke the sponge at an angle so you can make sure it doesn’t puncture through the filter. Squeeze until you reach your desired amount of ink or see the ink start to pour up around the hole.

Refilling the Color Cartridge

Remove the sponges from your color cartridge, making a mental note of the color sequence so that you can fill the correct slots with the corresponding ink color. In most HP 67 cartridges, the yellow is on the left, the blue is on the right, and the top is magenta. You may notice that the magenta filter is higher than the others, so you’ll need to push down a bit harder when installing the new magenta sponge.

You will need to remove the middle divider for the yellow and cyan. For the magenta, remove the left and right partition. After you’re done, clean the cartridge with distilled water. Out of all three colors, the one you’ll probably struggle the most with is the magenta because your sponge will not be all the way down.

Again, as with the black cartridge, we will secure the top of the color cartridge with tape rather than glue. Using your blunted syringe tip, go in at an angle and be sure not to penetrate the filter.

Priming

If you choose to go the other route and securely seal your cartridge with glue, you’ll need to use a priming syringe to pump air into each of the chambers to prime the ink and encourage it to come forward.

If you don’t seal your cartridge airtight, you will need a priming kit to complete the next step. You can buy one here for $17.99. It comes with two rubber pads, one longer and one shorter. The short one is for the tricolor cartridge. Line up this pad with the cartridge, push it in, and draw some ink from the bottom. For the tricolor, the ink coming out should be black because you combined all three colors.

On the other hand, if your color is greenish, that could indicate problems with your magenta ink. To test this, press down on the cartridge with a wet paper towel. If a red color comes out, you’re good to go. If not, you likely failed to make the bottom flush, and the sponge isn’t making good contact with the base.

Now we’re going to change the pad and do the black cartridge. This fix is straightforward to complete—just align your cartridge with the priming clip, push down, and push forward.

If you don’t have a good vacuum and you don’t feel it’s adequately sucking, just move the cartridge around a little bit until you achieve a better vacuum.

Wrapping Up

Do a few test prints to see how your color turns out. If one of the colors is missing or not showing up clearly, that generally means you need to do a bit more priming. It could also mean that your sponge isn’t quite touching the filter on the bottom.

Wait for about a half-hour and print another page to see if the issue resolved itself. If there is any problem with ink pressure, it should balance out the next day, and so if the print is still bad at that point, you should try adjusting the sponge. You can just use a needle to press down on the sponge so that it’s able to make better contact with the filter. Don’t add any more ink, just push down on the sponge.

If pressing down doesn’t work, take the cover off and grind down the divider a little more to make it slightly lower so the sponge can come down further.

We hope this blog was helpful to you! Feel free to visit us atbchtechnologies.com or locally at our Greensboro, North Carolina location. Cheers!