How to refill HP 22 tricolor ink cartridges

This HP 22 Tricolor ink cartridge is one of the best products ever made by HP, due to its high yield and the material they’re made of. These cartridges have a higher resistance than most current ones; modern ink cartridges tend to be measured with the same criteria. You can read more about this on our post Why to avoid disposing of or replacing my old printer.

One of the most important factors to consider when naming a product one of the best ones of an entire brand, as we’re doing right now, is compatibility. This particular ink cartridge is compatible with countless printer models; the entire compatibility listing will appear further along this post.

You can also learn to refill the HP 21 Black ink cartridge, the one that accompanies this one. This one’s also a very high yield ink cartridge.

We also recommend you keep any printer that uses this ink cartridge until the very end. You can replace it once it’s incapable of printing again.

This ink cartridge yields up to 165 pages, an amount that can go down to 120 pages after it’s been refilled. This will stay this way as long as you follow this tutorial strictly.

Instructions to refill an HP 22 Tricolor ink cartridge:

Before starting the refill process, we recommend you clean the contacts on this ink cartridge. While this is necessary, it’s not really mandatory since these ink cartridges are known to have very high page yield. However, if you haven’t used them in a while, there may be some dried ink lying on the print heads. In this case, we recommend you read our post How to clean my print heads.

After this cleaning process has been done, again, a necessary but voluntary procedure, we’ll proceed to refilling our ink cartridges. Please remember to clean your cartridge’s print heads after they’ve been refilled three (3) times.

Step #1:
Place the cartridge on a surface that can take an ink spill or two. We recommend you stay away from white materials, since the ink will probably stay on them. This is why we suggest you use any black material, or even a flat surface where you can remove ink stains easily.

Step #2:
You can now remove the label located on the top of the ink cartridge; it will hold the ink cartridge’s number. We always recommend you remove the entire label before refilling your ink cartridge, since this label lets the necessary amount of ink enter the ink cartridge. This airflow aids your print quality and page yield, helping your printer reach the highest standards. Remove this label very slowly and keep it from harm.

Step #3:
Fill a syringe with 5ml of colored ink. Do not exceed this amount to avoid damaging your cartridge by surpassing the amount of ink it was made to hold. Adding more ink than necessary to an ink cartridge can jeopardize it.
Tak a look at color application in the following picture.

the color for 22 hp ink

Step #4:
Very carefully, place the labels back on the ink cartridges. Try and put these back as well as possible to allow a certain amount of air to enter the cartridge; this air will flow thorugh the canals inside the cartridge and make the ink drop.

Step #5:
Place the cartridge back in the printer and have the printer clean them. This will put them in the right stop. Take into account you’ll only reach ultimate print quality once you’ve printed about eight (8) pages using these ink cartridges. You could also print a color test sheet if you want to.

Even if you repeat this entire procedure just as we did it, things may not go according to plan. In that case, we have plenty of time to help you, and you must only post a comment in the section below this post to contact us. We’ll be glad to answer each one of your messages.