Have you thought about refilling your own cartridge?  We've been refilling our own cartridge since Al Gore is still the vice president.  There are many articles floating on the internet.  We will try to give you the most honest and useful information.  We will be covering HP integrated cartridges.  

Refill 101

What is an integrated cartridge

If your cartridge looks like these below, you have an integrated cartridge.  HP makes integrated cartridges, which means the printhead is built together with the cartridge.  There are two major kinds of them: for a desktop or a plotter.  

Desktop: Squared cartridge like HP 21, 56, 97, 61, 62,...

Desktop: Long Rectangle Cartridge like HP 96

Plotter: HP 40, 45

All integrated cartridges have an electronic ribbon on the back to communicate with the printer and a printhead on the bottom to print.

The black is one cartridge, and three colors, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow are built into a Color cartridge.  

Inside the cartridge, there are sponges to hold the ink.  Our goal is to get the sponge wet so the printhead can have enough supply to print.  The sponges will hold a limited amount of ink.  If we overfill it, the ink will run out.  Some new users believe ink can somehow "hang on" the cartridge wall, and complain that the ink is too "thin" when they see ink flows out.  There is no such thing as "thick" ink.  If we see ink flowing out, we must be overfilling the cartridge.  

What about Ink Levels?

Furthermore, the cartridge also has a counter of how many pages printed, which is stored on an electronic chip.  The process is one-way-only, and we cannot reset the number.  Therefore, the printer will not read new ink levels after a refill.  The printer will consider the cartridge depleted soon.  However, HP allows us to keep printing by clicking "OK" after the ink depletion.  Therefore, we will see low ink warnings after a refill, and then ink depleted.  After clicking "OK", the printer will no longer track ink levels and we can print as many pages as we desire.  We will keep an eye on the printout and add ink as needed.

What is Clogging?

The printhead print with tiny nozzles.  Sometimes those nozzles are clogged due to these reasons:

1. Air bubbles introduced by refilling

2. Dried ink on printhead surface or inside the cartridge

3. Debris attached to the printhead

4. Physical damages such as scratches (permanent)

When changing an integrated cartridge, you also change to a new printhead.  Therefore, the manufacturer did not put a lot of money into the printhead.  It doesn't have sophisticated anti-clogging mechanisms like permanent printheads.  Therefore, we need to learn some unclogging techniques before refilling the cartridge.  We have many ways of refilling a cartridge and we will discuss available unclogging methods along with the refilling methods.

Pigment ink vs Dye ink?

Instead of further dive into the details, let us have a quick summary.  Pigment ink is water-proof UV proof and looks "sharper" than dye ink.  However, the pigment is not very great in printing color photos, and it is prone to clog and harder to unclog than dye ink.  Therefore, HP usually keeps the black cartridge as a pigment and uses dye ink for colors.  We suggest using dye ink for black cartridge too because it is compatible with both dye and pigment ink.

Therefore, we suggest using dye ink, which 1) clogs less 2) is easier to unclog.  If you want to use a small amount of ink and try out the concept, this will work: https://www.bchtechnologies.com/refill-ink/refill-ink-for-hp/dye-30-ml-x-4-refill-ink-for-hp-printers-id30-kcmy-ah.html. If you want to save money and go bulk, this one works:  https://www.bchtechnologies.com/refill-ink/refill-ink-for-hp/standard-600-ml-4-color-refill-ink-for-hp-kd600x-ch.html

Priming Clip

A priming clip attaches to an integrated printhead and sucks ink from the bottom.  Any softened ink will be sucked out with ink.  

All of HP's desktop integrated cartridges share the same size clip (long rectangle or squared, see picture above).  If this is the first time, you may want to get a priming clip in case of clogging: https://www.bchtechnologies.com/accessories/priming-clip-tools/priming-clip-for-hp-ink-cartridge-60-61-62-63-21-27-54-56-74-94-98-901-110-22-28-57-75-93-95-59-100-102-as-pmclip-hp2.html

This clip is also included in the EZ30T first-timer refill kit.

You don't have a priming clip.  You can retro-fit a household vacuum to do the same job: https://www.bchtechnologies.com/blog/solved-black-and-color-print-head-clogged-not-printing-part-i-integrated-printhead

How can I get started?

Similar to a psychology theory, the five stages of healing from trauma, we believe our user will recover their trauma from HP's high price in five stages:

Level 1:  Starter

You are outraged by HP's expensive cartridges but have no experience of refilling.  In this video, we show you how to refill your starter cartridge.  We will refill them and show how to disable ink gauge and let the printer work forever.

Products Used:

• EZ30T: Black+Color + Priming Clip
• or ID30-KKK 3X Black, Ink Only
• or ID30-KCMY Black + Color, Ink Only
• Optional Cleaning Solutions

Level 2: Semi-Pro

Now we can buy used empty cartridge on eBay and refill them.  We will focus on unclogging techniques and how to make the cartridge as good as new.

Level 3:  Make a Refillable Cartridge: Upgraded Sponge

You refilled many many times. However, you still curious if there is any way the cartridge can hold twice more ink, last ten times longer, and more time between refills. In this video, we took out Canon's little tiny sponge and replaced it with our HUGE, TREMENDOUS BEAUTIFUL sponge.  Make Cartridge Great Again!

Video:

Products used:

• KD600X-CH (600 ml total, that's 30 refills for black, 20 refills for color!)
• AS-SPG-HPSQ:   Sponged Mod kit for Square HP Cartridges
• AS-SPG-HPRA:   Sponged Mod kit for Rectangle HP Cartridges

Level 4: SpongeLESS

Good is not enough, you badass. You want to get rid of sponge and put a swimming pool inside the cartridge. You want the cartridge lasts 40X longer than regular cartridges. In this video, we show you how to install a pressure regulator and make a sponge-less cartridge.

Video:

Products Used:

• KD600X-CH: Ink
• AS-RFC-HPSQ: Mod Kit

Stage 5: ULTIMATE

You want to refill once a year. You want to turn your $30 into a workhorse. In this video, we pull off some black-hat stuff and install a "bucket of ink" next to the printer. The printer will get supply from the bucket and let you call yourself "Doctor of Refill."

Video: TBA

Product used: