Refill and Reset: 3 DIY Easy Methods to Refill HP Instant Ink Cartridges for 902 905 915 920 934 935 564 and 920

Today we're going to work on HP's twin-chamber cartridges, such as 564, 902, 903, 920, 930, 934, and 935. If a cartridge looked like this, it is a twin-chamber cartridge. Also, some of those cartridges can be used with a program called HP Instant Ink which is about $10 per 200 pages. In the BCH, we're all about saving money, so we're going to show you how to make it even better. We're going to use an Officejet Pro 6968 with 902 cartridges with Instant Ink. We will make three videos.

This is the first video, which will show you some basics. We'll start printing with initial startup cartridges. When the cartridge is empty, we'll refill them with four different methods. Also, we'll show how to light a printer accept refill cartridges. We'll only fill the front chamber in this video. In the second video, we'll take things to the next level; we'll fill both chambers, front and back, and then utilize the whole thing. Also, we'll make our chip holder, which allows the printer to accept third-party cartridges with transparent casing.

In the third video, we'll add a big ink tank and then fill the cartridge with a packet of ink. This is the ultimate holy grail of money-saving. The printer will never run out of ink. Our twin-chamber cartridge is divided into two chambers. The back chamber is designed as an ink reservoir. The front chamber is filled with sponges. The sponge regulates ink flow to the light on the bottom. The two chambers are divided by a wall for non-XL cartridges, such as a regular cartridge or startup cartridge. The wall is sealed on the bottom. Therefore, the ink cannot flow to the front chamber. The back chamber is never used. If you can find a way to make a hole in the bottom of this wall, you will make an XL cartridge.

On the top, there's a T-shaped air intake which leads to a prolonged air channel. The air channel connects to an air hole. When a cartridge is being used, the cartridge sucks the air into it from the air hole. On top of the back chamber, there's a refill hole. For XL cartridges, HP injects ink into this hole and then sews it with a plastic ball. Regular or startup cartridges do not use the refill hole. Although they still have this opening, they still have the plastic ball.

We cut open an XL cartridge. We can see the opening at the bottom of the dividing wall, but the exact opening is placed on a regular cartridge. Therefore, we'll only refill the front chamber for standard and startup cartridges. Let's get to work. We bought a new printer and putting the startup cartridge in. Three hundred forty pages later, the printout started to do horrible. We know the printer ran out of ink is better than the magenta ink. However, the printer still thinks there's about 10% to 20% of ink left.

Today, we're going to use the kit called ID30-KCMY, which is available at www.bchtechnologies.com and under refill ink, and refill ink for HP. After you get to refill ink for HP, click this 120 ml. You can see this kit right here is ID30-KCMY. Also, you can use this kit, which is a complete pigment kit, and the pigment kit will look much better, and whether you pay more.

Also, the pigment kit doesn't include a drill, so there's no drill bit with that kit.

We have four colors and a drill. We're going to use four different methods. Let's use the magenta cartridge for the first method. We flip over the cartridge and drip ink onto it. We add ink until the ink overflows or coming out from the bottom. If you refill it correctly, you can see if you put it on a table, then you put it up, there should be no ink coming out, which means the pressure is balanced. Refill stores, such as Costco, usually do the second method. Let's take a Costco refilled cartridge as an example. Costco drills a small hole near the air hole and then adds ink through this hole. After that, they will put a bandage over it, in this case, a small West sticker. The bandage doesn't need to be airtight, so a piece of scotch tape will do the job.

We're now working on the cyan cartridge. We can see the air hole underneath the letter C. We'll drill the hole between the air hole and the HP symbol. Then we'll fill it up until the ink comes out.

[silence]

Then we put a bandage over it.

For the third method, we use a tool called a refill pedestal. The device can be found on eBay for about $10 a color. However, the black pedestal can feed all cartridges, so you can buy a color pedestal if you are on a budget. This company that made the pedestal uses a small adapter that works with their ink bottles. However, you don't have to buy their ink. You can use a needle to suck up the ink into a syringe and then put an adapter on the top of the syringe.

We don't sell pedestals at BCH because I think our customers can flipping the cartridge over. I have covered here just because in case someone wants to build their own. The inside of a pedestal is straightforward. There's a U-shaped tube, connects the ink injection points to the cartridge. Therefore, we put a yellow cartridge on the pedestal, and then we fill the syringe with ink. After that, we put an adapter on top of the syringe, and we add ink until the ink coming out.

Our final method is a cheaper version of the pedestal refill. BCH sells storage clips for those twin-chamber cartridges. You can find them under the accessories and the protective clip. Each clip has a silicone pad on the bottom to prevent the ink from leaking, so it will be helpful to store cartridges or hold the cartridge doing refills. We enlarge the bottom hole with a utility knife then cut off a silicon pad hole. Cutting a hole is not easy, and some people suggest using a cigarette lighter to heat a paperclip and burn a hole. After a hole is made, we'll mark the syringe and make sure the syringe doesn't go too deep into the hole so it will poke the cartridge. Finally, we fill the syringe with ink and inject ink into the cartridge. Now we figure out that HP doesn't know how much ink is actually in a cartridge. HP estimates ink level by counting printed pages. For example, we printed the 340 pages, and HP thinks the cartridge should print 380, so it estimates about 10% of ink left. However, you saw it, it didn't know the cartridge was empty, and HP's Instant Ink program will automatically order a new cartridge for you every 250 pages. When you install the new cartridge, the print counter goes back to zero and restart counting. That's how instant ink works.

How about if we disable the counting? Can we then refill and use the cartridge forever? No more HP guy knocking on the door and delivering cartridges? That would be interesting. The older model is called counting chip info because the information is saved on a computer chip underneath the cartridge. In this demonstration, we're going to print-- We already printed with the chip info. We'll show you what happens if we turn the chip info off. The first page looks decent. However, I do not trust the first page after refill. There may be old ink left in the printhead, and then there may be air bubbles sandwiched between the old and new ink. The first page was printed with old ink. Our suspicion was proved.

After the first page, the black printhead is clogged by a massive air bubble. The black color is missing from the printout. We use HP's building function to clean the printhead three times. HP has a three-level printhead cleaning routine. Each time you click clean again, it will clean harder. If we reach all three levels of cleaning, we should have the printer resting for at least two hours. The cleaning generates waste ink. If we do not allow the printer to recover, the printhead will waste ink and worsen. After three cleanings and two hours of resting, the plug is recovered from clogging.

We kept printing with the chip info on, and finally, we reached HP's page limit on the black. We just hit okay, and the printer back to work. You can see the black become unknown and the yellow, magenta, and the cyan still 10%. Now we're going to turn off the chip info. We're going to set up then preferences, and we scroll down to the store and then the usage information and turn it off. Remember, the printer has 10% yellow, cyan, and magenta, at least I think it has. Let's see what happens if we print with the chip info turned off. We're on page 351, 10% of colors, no black, chip info off, everything is ready, and let's go.

In the middle of printing, magenta is clogged. With the two first cleanings and we got the printer back to work. We printed about 200 pages. Now we're at page 557. The printer still thinks the ink level is the same as before. It's 10% of yellow, cyan, and magenta. Therefore, we can fill and print forever. Keep an eye on the printout and add ink as needed.

Next time, we'll add ink to the back chamber for the axle cartridge and double the capacity. The 902 axle black is super wide and holds much more ink. Also, we're going to make some chip holders from the startup cartridges and let them use the chipless transparent cartridge body. Therefore, we can peek inside that printer and determine precisely how much ink is left in the cartridge.

The third time, we will connect the cartridge to this massive ink tank and supply the ink directly. No more refills and no more changing cartridges. It's tough for us to describe how great it is.