Step 1: How to fill your foam-filled ‘Virgin Empty’ Cartridge for Epson printers. Instructions for Canon printers are very similar, but the structure of the cartridges does differ somewhat, so please apply some caution when using these instructions! | Our ‘Virgin Empty’ Cartridges are top filling. They have the ‘fill hole’ on top as well as a ‘vent hole’. The cartridges come with the appropriate rubber bung to plug the fill-hole when finished. Be sure to inject the ink into the correct colour chamber. Set the cartridge in the same manner and position as it would be sitting in your Epson. The CMY cartridges have 3 chambers. The chambers go from left to right in the following sequence: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow (The S020036 chambers go YCM), the CcMmY cartridges have 5 chambers (the chambers go from left to right in the following sequence: Cyan, Photo Cyan, Magenta, Photo Magenta, Yellow). Be sure the air vent hole is open and not blocked. Pull off the vacuum seal (typically a Yellow plastic strip) prior to filling with ink. Place the needle through the fill hole. It is best to go in on an angle, forward, toward the front of the cartridge. When you inject the ink into the cartridge, be sure the needle is at the bottom of the chamber (as we are filling from the bottom, up) and inject very slowly so as not to cause the injected ink to ‘foam’ which is how it traps air bubbles. Take your time, be patient and use a slow thumb to inject the ink. This is the #1 cause of trapped air - refilling too fast! You know that you have totally filled the chamber when a little ink comes up the fill hole and the vent hole. | 
This image shows us filling a cartridge with Quadtone inks - you will probably be using colour inks!!! Note how we have already filled and capped the Cyan and Light Cyan positions. | Step2: Installing your newly Filled Ink Cartridge: It is suggested that you wait until the remaining ink in your printer is depleted, and the printer tells you that it is time to put in a new cartridge. (This assures that the ink counter is reset). It is also suggested that you wait 24 hours after you hand fill to allow the ink to settle to the exit ports, and possible air bubbles to rise to the top. You should be careful to ensure that you have flushed and cleaned out the old ink from your printer, prior to installing your new ink. Many inks are compatible with each other, but be sure to follow supplier’s instructions on purging and cleaning old inks out, as mistakes can be costly. To be sure, it may be wise to clean the printer between ink types anyway. This is especially true with respect to different third-party inks - they will normally know if their inks are compatible with Epson OEM inks, not other third-party inks. Once the cartridge is installed, the printer will automatically perform a cleaning cycle. Perform a second cleaning cycle, as described in the printers’ manual. Repeat cleaning cycles until print quality is satisfactory. It is suggested to print a Nozzle Check (available in your printer utilities) to test the ink flow and quality, prior to printing your artwork: - If print quality deteriorates upon use, please repeat a cleaning cycle. If your print is ‘streaky’ or has missing lines, the likely problem is an air pocket, or that the ink is not yet flowing properly to the print head. Running the cleaning cycle a few times usually clears this up
- If any of the nozzles are not shooting out any ink, after one or two cleaning cycles, it is extremely possible that the vent holes are still obstructed with the adhesive from the vacuum seal. Simply put a pin/needle in each Air vent hole to make sure there is an opening. To get the cartridge to move to the right to perform the needle routine, follow the usual procedure for your printer.Do not remove the cartridge from printer once installed, except when replacing cartridge, as this causes air pockets to occur.
Step 3 - Refilling When you need to refill a cartridge, remove it from the printer and seal the outlet ports with tape. This will not hold back ink for long, as the moisture will destroy the seal, so you may like to consider the EZ-Plugs we sell for the CIS units to seal up the cartridges. Remove the black plugs from the filling holes, and squirt more of the same ink into each cell. On colour cartridges, each colour will have been used in different quantities, so you will no longer be able to be sure what volume of ink to insert, without relying on the method you used first time round which is small quantities of ink coming out of the breather hole and the filling hole. If you are using a chipped cartridge, you will now need to reset the chip to read the cartridge as being full. Use one of our ’Universal’ chip-resetters for this purpose (check it supports your printer / cartridge type!). If you are leaving the cartridge out of the printer for a while, you should use Scotch tape or similar to tape over the breather holes (so the ink does not evaporate), and use of the EZ-Plugs is highly recommended in this circumstance. After a cartridge has been used for a little while, a ‘foam’ of ink and air can fill the sponge inside, and this can resist you injecting more ink into the cartridge cell. Therefore, after about the second refill, you may find you need to use the syringe to suck this air / ink foam out of the cartridge before injecting more ink into it. As long as you are careful not to attempt to reuse ink that may have been colour contaminated, you should be able to squirt this foam back into the relevant bottle and re-inject it once it has settled. Our Recommendations For long term refilling operations, as opposed to CIS use (which is what we really recommend where possible!) we would suggest that you buy two full sets of cartridges. Fill them both, then use one set, switch to the other, and then you should have a reasonable period of time to refill the spare set and allow them to settle before they are needed again. With care, a virgin empty cartridge should be refillable 3-5 times, so for most printers we would suggest you buy two sets of cartridges per 125ml set of ink bottles. Please note that MWORDS has closed. We aim to retain these support pages in the hope that they may benefit our past customers, but regret that we can no longer offer further comment or support in relation to the information above.
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