Printer Ink Refill Hack

Mark Frauenfelder has an item on his Mad Professor blog about using ink refill kits with printer carts (something I’ve always thought about doing, but never gotten around to).

In the piece, he points out a “hack” I was unaware of. As you may know, many modern printer cartridges have ID chips in them. When the cart is read as empty by the printer, you can’t refill that cart and use it again (’cause the printer has a stored record of that cart being kaput). But, the printer (at least Mark’s HP — your printer’s mileage may vary) can only remember two carts at a time. So, if you keep a couple of dead ink cartridges around and insert those, in succession, when you insert your newly refilled cartridge, the printer will think it’s new. Cool. I’ll have to try this on my Epson.