Are ink jet refills by Walgreens okay?

I just saw an ad by Walgreens that they will refill my black ink jet cartridge for $10 and color for $15. What do you think? Thanks.

 

Some "Refillers' do a great job, others are a disaster, and none can fix a gimped cartridge well. You can buy the refill kits yourself, but there is a serious learning curve. My cartridges last about a year, and I print about a "Ream" of paper a month. They can usually be refilled about three times then they are toast. Hope that helps

 

My wife and I both use Walgren's to refill cartridges. Lately they have been saying some of her cartridges don't pass their electrical test (She has a Dell printer and I think it's a Dell safe guard) I never had any probs with mine, but I have an HP printer. Once filled they work great. It's a good value if you do a lot of printing.

 

the other thing to remember is that in a lot of ink jet printers the print heads are built directly into the cartridge... hence part of the cost of new ones... so by continually refilling them you will start to degrade your print quality.

 

Thanks for the replies. I think I'll try it next time a cartridge runs dry.

 

Don't let the cartridge run "Dry" or refilling will not help, you have to refill before it runs "Dry' or the print head will be clogged with Dry Ink

 

Wow, what a helpful post. I really was using "run dry" as a figure of speech, but I didn't know what would happen if I really did let it run dry. I usually use the cartridge through several "time to change" notices and when the print job is rather lousy, I change. Thanks a lot for the tip.

 

This subject has come up before, almost anyone who does any serious printing refills their cartridge, and I've never seen any degredation from refills. It doesn't always work, but it is generally a go nogo process. Depending on the cartridge brand there are different tricks, I use HP (which is odd, considering I've known for decades that HPs ink is water soluable, and other aren't). You can occasionally bring back an HP cartridge with dried ink by soaking the print head with a 10% diluted solution of amonia. Where you get your ink also matters, as formulations differ. Buying a generic ink rated for everyones printers is generally not a good idea.

If you do it at home vinal (or latex) gloves are a good idea, and lots of newspapers. I inject the ink with hypodermics, have bought small disposable measuring cups like doctors and hospitals use for pills, and have been playing with drilling small holes with a dremel tool. You also need to be aware it can, if it goes badly, damage your printer, because injecting ink under pressure it takes a little while to equalize pressures in the various chambers, which can cause leaks out the print head. I always print around 5-10 sheets of papers, and have made several printer test word documents to check whether the colors or B&W are flowing correctly.

Fact is, the ink is a lot more expensive than the printer over time (a lot more expensive), so it is worth the effort, but like it has been said, there is a learning curve.

 

So true Bill, I use 70% Isopropyl Alcohol to try and free up clogged Print heads, found that ammonia sometimes corrodes the electrical connections were the Alcohol doesn't. You can soak them overnite in a small glass that hold the cartridge upright(Printhead down in solution) Also I think that most InkJet inks are Waterbased Lexmark/HP/Cannon ones I've used were at any rate. They claim that the ink in the darn cartridge per oz, is more than the most expensive perfume, think the darn printer is just a give away to sell cartridgesmad