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.

Cleaning Brother MFC head print

In order to maintain a good print quality, the machine will automatically clean the printhead as many times as necessary.

You can complete the cleaning process manually if there is a problem with the print quality, such as horizontal lines on the text, blank pages or discolored prints. You can clean the color Black on its own, three colors (Cyan/Yellow/Magenta) individually or all four colors at once.

Note:
Cleaning the head print consumes ink. Constant cleaning will use ink up unnecessarily.
If your Brother machine has a touch screen, please follow the steps detailed below:

1. Follow one of the steps below: 

- If your Brother machine has a button named INK on its control panel, press it.
- In the opposite case,
a. Press the MENU button.
b. Press the navigation arrow upwards or downwards in order to select INK.
c. Press the OK button.

2. Press the navigation arrow upwards or downwards in order to select CLEANING.

1. Press the OK button.
2. Press the navigation arrow upwards or downwards in order to select BLACK, COLOR or ALL, depending on what you wish to clean.
3. Press the OK button. 

For models with a touch screen: 

1. Press  or  (INK INDICATOR).
2. Press CLEANING.
3. Select BLACK, COLOR or ALL, depending on what you wish to clean.

The machine will clean the head print. Once the cleaning is done, the machine will on “Ready” mode automatically. If you’re experiment print quality problems, we recommend you repeat the head print cleaning process for each color showing the problem, at least four (4) times.

If you’re experiencing print quality problems and you want to see if the cleaning is improving it, print a Print Quality Check Sheet (PQCS) after the first cleanse, and then print another PQCS after repeating each step of the head print cleanse at least three (3) or more times (4 cleanses in total). You can then compare both PQSC’s.

Follow the next steps to print a Print Quality Check Sheet (PQSC)*:
*If your Brother machine has a touch screen, please follow the steps in “For models with a touch screen.”

1. Follow one of the steps below: 

- If your Brother machine has a button named INK on its control panel, press it.
- In the opposite case,
a. Press the MENU button.
b. Press the navigation arrow upwards or downwards in order to select INK.
c. Press the OK button.

2. Press the navigation arrow upwards or downwards in order to select TEST PRINT.
3. Press the OK button.
4. Press the navigation arrow upwards or downwards in order to select PRINT QUALITY.
5. Press the OK button.
6. Press the COLOR START button.

For models with a touch screen: 

1. Press  or  (INK INDICATOR).
2. Press TEST PRINT.
3. Press PRINT QUALITY.
4. Press the COLOR START button.

This information is valid for the following models:

DCP-165C/ DCP-385C / MFC-250C / MFC-290C / MFC-490CW / MFC-585CW / MFC-790CW MFC-5490CW / MFC-5890CW / MFC-6490CW / MFC-990CW/ MFC-J415W, among others.

If you know of any other way of solving this problem, please comment it and help making the solutions available.

How to reset normal // XLS #920 HP ink cartridges

“The following ink cartridge appears to be missing or damaged.”

This is the message that torments us when we refill #920 and #920XL cartridges.

Here is the solution:

So far, we do not know of any method that works 100% of the time on this type of cartridge when it comes to resetting them without changing the chip. As you already know, occasionally the chip alone often costs half as much as a new ink cartridge.

Until now, we have been proving, unofficially, a great way of resetting these cartridges. We’d have to keep looking for solutions, as you also should. If you have another one, please comment on this post in order to help everyone out.

Tutorial:

• We recommend you remove the head print and the ink cartridges from your printer before getting this process started. You will have to clean the cartridges delicately with toilet paper or paper napkins, considering their sensibility.
• First, we restore the printer entirely. When these cartridges cause problems, they stop reacting to any key or button that can be pressed. This product’s evolution is only fair for the sellers.
• In order to restore the printer, we must disconnect it for about twenty (20) seconds. “The printer must be on when we disconnect it.”
• The printer must be disconnected for at least twenty (20) seconds, “but we’d it prefer if you left a few more seconds pass.”
• Before reconnecting the printer,  we must press the keys corresponding to number three (3) and the pound or hashtag key (#).
• Now that we’ve connected the printer, we’ll have to wait while keeping both keys pressed down, until the printer sends the same error message again: “The following ink cartridge appears to be missing or damaged.” The damaged ink cartridges’ names will appear.
• After this entire process is done, we can start discarding the ink cartridges that are effectively damaged. What you must do is open the printer, remove the cartridge the printer is pointing out as damaged and put it back in. If this happens with another cartridge or the rest of them, you must do the same with each and every one of them until they’re all working properly.

This can happen more than once on the same ink cartridge, and that’s fine. You only need to remove the cartridge and repeat the process once more.

“Note: the ink cartridges will not show the amount of remaining ink again, but they will print perfectly and without problems. The printer will no longer recognize the amount of ink. In case you want this amount to be displayed, we recommend you change the chip for a new one.”

My printer pulls more than one paper sheet at a time

This may happen when printers are a bit old and their parts have been worn out due to daily use. This daily use, added to the passing of time, could possibly cause printing problems.

To this day, this problem keeps appearing, and the only radical and definite solution involves changing some of the printer’s parts. We, however, use an alternative that works all the time, and it consists of loading the printer up with many paper sheets.

When we talk about many sheets, we’re not talking about loading it up so it cannot work, but only to fill it up with the adequate amount so it doesn’t compromise or force its functioning.

We recommend you take good care of your printer and pay a lot of attention to paper jams, since they can damage its internal parts. Take even better care of it if it’s an older model, since those are the best ones out there; it has been proven to be so.

If you know of any other solution for this problem, please comment on this post. If you have another question related to this issue, you may use our own group and send us a personalized question. We will do our best to answer it.

I’m putting my refilled cartridges back in the printer and the On/Off button keeps blinking

This post deals with a frequent issue that appears when we refill cartridges, put them back in the printers and the On/Off button blinks.

This is a very common scenario and, regrettably, bad news. This happening means the printer has stopped recognizing the cartridges, and that only happens when the ink cartridge is damaged.

But the truth is that, if the On/Off button blinks, either the print cartridge contacts or the printer connectors are dirty.

ink conector printer hp

Here we have the print cartridge connectors. Remember to clean them with wet toilet paper, preferably.

ink cartridge conector hp

Cleaning the printer or the print cartridge connectors:

1. The solution to this small problem with the dirty connectors is to clean them, whether they’re the printer connectors or the print cartridge ones. We recommend you clean them with wet paper napkins or toilet paper. With this, all you’re doing is allowing the contacts to finish their own work, and the ink cartridges to finish the pending process of transmitting the heat from the printer towards them.

In case this first process doesn’t work:

1. Unfortunately, there is no alternate solution in this case. It seems the ink cartridge has been completely worn out. The only possible fix is replacing the damaged cartridge for another one, whether you use a new one or a used cartridge. This damage occurs when the ink cartridges aren’t able to heat the glycerin in the ink in order to make it expand throughout the sheet of paper. When the printer starts heating the head prints up and the ink cartridges are empty, the heat burns them and the circuits are damaged in the process. This is what causes the On/Off button to blink.

If you have any other solution to this problem, please put it in a comment down below. The fact that this post has already been made doesn’t mean that it’s the best way of performing this operation: our intention lies on sharing. If you know of any other way of doing this, please present it, we agree with sharing and solving. If you have any question similar to this one or a more complex one, please make it in our group.

Page yield, or how many pages you can print out of your ink cartridges

This is a very hot topic, talked about and searched for all over the media. It’s also very important that you can count on a tool similar than the one Hewlett-Packard has created for us, since it will help you identify how many pages you can print with your ink cartridges.

However, it can do much more than this. It can also help you know how much ink to refill your ink cartridges with, which is not an easy task to execute unless you have the original packaging. This little box is the only place where you can obtain this information and avoid clogging your ink heads. Also, adding more than the necessary volume can compromise proper functioning.
For example, color ink cartridges tend to print poorly, especially when the Yellow and Magenta color are mixed together. In this case, we need the exact amount of ink for printing, not less or more, but just the quantity indicated in the packaging. You can also check this out in the Hewlett-Packard website, but it’s too big a site to browse.

There’s one section out of the entire website that can help you find page yield information about your ink cartridge. It’s called HP SureSupply.

hp sure supply for hp

You will find all the information you need about ink cartridge yield right where it’s indicated in the picture. We recommend you type everything from the printer type to the model; you could also add the ink cartridge number, but that search could give out many more results than needed.

For example, we’ve already typed in our printer model. You can now see the results we got using this system: the #27 ink cartridge will show up, along with all the information regarding the amount of ink it works with.

ink cartridge hp

As you can see, the amount of ink needed for the #27 Black ink cartridge has shown up. There is, however, a logical way for us to come to the conclusion that the #28 Tricolor ink cartridge uses the same amount of ink as the #27 one. As we know, the #27 ink cartridge uses 10ml and prints about 280 pages with 5% ave, as indicated in the search result. This same ave percentage lets us know the #28 ink cartridge uses the same amount of ink as the #27 one, even when the total is distributed between its three orifices.

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Please remember the information supplied by this blog is meant to be shared. We appreciate every comment and additional solutions we can receive regarding this issue. If you have a more personalized question, you can post it in our group called “You have a question, we have an answer.” Thank you very much for visiting our blog, and please comment!

How to set your printer drivers up if the regular installation doesn’t work out for you

Installing a printer and receiving a missing file message can be very annoying. The installer is supposed to have all the files you need! While this is actually true, this problem tends to occur solely on discontinued printers that are being installed in Windows7, or when a more modern printer model is being set up in WindowsXP.

However, there’s a solution for everything and we are happy to provide it to you. So far, this one has worked the best and has made the installation process less troublesome. Of course, this will also fix your problem for you.

select windows version operative

In this case, we recommend you download the drivers compatible with WindowsXP, even if you work with Windows7 on your computer. The WindowsXP drivers are more complete and will simplify things for you, while the Windows7 ones will remove certain add-ons you may or may not need. WindowsXP drivers will hold everything in and some other stuff as well.

The next step is, of course, downloading the drivers. This can be done as easily as downloading any document and saving it in our computer or device. Always keep in mind where you saved it, so you can decompress it later.

product installation software

In this moment, we recommend you download the basic drivers, which may be called Basic Feature Software, as shown in the picture; if only one set of drivers appears, then your printers only works with these. We suggest you use this set of drivers to avoid installing unnecessary add-ons attached to the full version, such as page detection.

This specific one can become a problem when printing with refilled ink cartridges, as well as some other additions that come with this set of drivers. This is just my personal opinion.

open 3740 enu win2k

We also suggest you save this file on your Dashboard so you can reach it and start the decompression process easily. You can save the decompressed file in the same Dashboard to be able to find it and update the drivers in the same location.

Decompressing the file:

This a very simple but important process to execute. As you can see in the picture, all you need to do is right-click on the downloaded drivers and decompress or extract the files to another folder with the exact same name. This one must be saved in our computer’s Dashboard.

file drive

After extracting the document, we will have two different folders that will look like this on our Dashboard.

folder with driver

Once we’ve located the extracted folder, we should search our drivers for Computer Properties. Click on this option and then select the link located on the upper.ñeft part of the emerging window, called Device Manager. Do excuse the arrow, I’m just a tech and don’t have much skill in Design.

admin device

Our printer must show up on Imaging Devices, showing an alert sign that indicated it hasn’t been installed yet. Since my printer has already been installed, I’ll go ahead and show you how to update the drivers on the appearing scanner.

We will now update the driver:

software update

Now we will have two different options to search for the drivers. Supposedly, we’ve already search for them online and haven’t been able to find them, so we must search our own device in the same place where we extracted the files.

Look for the drivers in our computers:

find the drive file in hp printer

All we have to do now is look for the folder exactly where we left it on the Dashboard, it’s a very easy thing to do. The picture below will show you how to do it.

find the folder

Just click on Accept and then on Next; a search process should start automatically and be able to find them. The program executer should be able to find it quickly since they’re within reach, and everything will be up and running. In case this process doesn’t solve your particular issue, please post a thread on our troubleshooting group located in the lower-right part of our page, called “You have a problem, we have a solution.” However, you will need a Google account to post a question.

If you have a better solution for this particular issue in your power, please post a comment in the section below. Our blog is meant to help and to be helped at the same time.