Although in this day and age, many activities can be performed online, it is often desirable to be able to print a hard copy of some information as well. If you love to print out your own photos, you know how much ink you can go through producing a top-notch quality picture.
Purchasing a printer to hook up to your computer isn’t very difficult and not that expensive any more. The ink is a completely different story. Would you save money refilling your own ink cartridges? How can you refill an ink cartridge? A brief guide on that very subject follows.
1. If you want to refill ink cartridges, first purchase an ink refill kit. They can be found in a wide variety of stores and online.
2. Gather needed supplies. You will need some paper towels, scotch tape, disposable gloves, and a sharp pencil. This isn’t surgery but it is close to it. You need to be prepared.
3. Take your ink refill kit and your supplies to a large, flat working surface.
4. The empty ink cartridge in your printer needs to be removed.
5. Now is the time to enlist the aid of your disposable plastic gloves. Use the paper towel to place the empty ink cartridges on. You can fold the paper towel, or use double sheets if you are notorious for making messes.
6. Read (and this is the step that many impatient people overlook) the instruction manual that came with your refill kit. Specific ink cartridges might have different requirements for refilling ink.
7. Feel the top of the ink cartridges with your fingers until you find the depression areas, or holes, where the new ink will need to be put through. Reading the instruction manual will help you locate where the holds are exactly.
8. Take your pencil and poke through the refill holes on the top of the ink cartridge.
9. Make sure you refill the correct ink color into the corresponding holes (magenta, cyan and yellow). Follow the instruction in the instruction manual to locate the proper color holes.
10. Insert the needle from the kit into the hole of the correct ink color.
11. Watch very closely as you think you may be near getting the hole filled. Once you see a tiny bit of ink seeming to ooze from the hole, stop, but don’t let go of the bottle just yet. Allow for the excess air in the needle to be released, and be mindful not to spill ink. Withdraw the needle carefully.
12. Dab the top of the cartridge with a paper towel until you get all of the ink around the hole wiped off. To cover up the hold, use scotch tape or an equivalent. There should be “seal dots” included with your ink refill kit to utilize for this same purpose, but some people have found scotch tape works better as a sealant.
This same process should be repeated for each color. Make sure the ink cartridges are not leaking at all before you place it in your printer. The last thing you want is to leak ink all over the internal components of your printer. Try printing a test page and if it comes out nice and clean, congratulations – you’ve done an amazing job, along with saving some money!

