Three Ways to Refill OEM Brother Cartridges for LC101, LC103, LC105, LC107, and LC109

We're going to show three different methods to refill LC101 and LC103 cartridges. The Brother has a straightforward way of checking cartridges. First, they check if a cartridge chip exists. If the chip passes the test, you also you, did you change the cartridge? If we have a non-working chip, we can say no, then the printer will go on, and you'll receive the previous cartridge's information. Otherwise, the printer will read the chip and determine that ink level. The printer detects the ink level from these windows. The printer shines a light on the window and sees the position of the black plastic; thus, refilling is pretty simple. We already have a working cartridge with a chip, and then the only thing we will do is an add-in.

Let's take a look inside the cartridge. There's a bladder that controls the black piece. When you have ink inside, the bladder will float and block the light from the window. On the bottom is the ink on-light. The on-light has a spring-loaded valve. When we inject ink, we'll use a tube to push the spring inside and release the ink. On the top, there's an air release valve. When you push it, the air can come in and out.

The easiest way to refill is to use a plastic adapter called Quick Ink Transfer tubes available at www. bchtechnologies.com. We fill up the syringe with the ink, push the needle inside the valve and point the needle sideways. The pressure will be high inside the cartridge, so we need to press the air valve a few times to release the air. We use a paper towel wrap around a pen. The paper towel will catch any ink discharge.

Now we move onto the second method. What if we don't have an adapter, but we have a regular needle?

Then we can use this as an adapter and repeat the same routine. We inject ink from the bottom and release the air from the top.

In the third situation, we have neither adapter nor a needle instead. We have a 30-mill bottle that looks like this. We started by taking away the transparent casing. We save this casing for later use to reseal the container. From an angle, we cut off the tip of the black block. Now, this black block can be used as an adapter. Finally, we put the casing back and the complete project.

If you have a BCH standard bottle, you won't need any of those tools. We use a pair of scissors to cut a tiny opening on the top. Then we push the tip inside the valve and refill the cartridge.