 Hey, guys, Ken here. Today, I'm going to show you how to make a sponge refillable cartridges of those models. Later, I may make a video of 260 and 261, which is a little bit taller than those cartridges. However, the refill procedure, everything is the same. So if I understand this one, you can easily refill 260. For this video, we made it for classicalschoolsolutions.com, which they make the traditional school packets and help parents to get their children through their education. Third edema is a parent have to print their kid's homework, which is a lot if you print every day. So they asked me to suggest some couple refill choices. So I'm going to shoot a series of videos. This is the first one. For 243 and 244, those are starter cartridges. They're put with a new printer. Normally, those printers are really expensive, like $30. And they're the same as 245 and 246, and they're exactly the same cartridge. The XL is they have a larger sponge, so they can put more ink in. So if you find a printer that says can use 244, so your node can use 245 and can also use 245 XL, those are the same cartridges. Here's a quick reference for how much is in the cannon cartridge, including those models and more. And I hope it's useful. I also made a link of the printers using those cartridges, and I will go by them in this URL. OK, here's the cartridge. Underneath there are tiny holes called the nozzles. And back here, there's an electric ribbon, which cannon put electricity in it. And the electricity heat up the ink in here and create a little bubble. When the bubble burst, you create a little bit of droplet, drop on the paper. On top of the nozzles, there's a collection box. The collection box needs to be filled with ink for nozzles to work. So if you use up all your ink, then you'll refill it. Most likely, your collection box is still empty because you cannot get into the box. To correct this, you need some kind of suction to suck underneath. And this is also called priming. On top of the collection box, there's a sponge. The size of the sponge decides how much ink can be put in the cartridge. Some people believe cartridge inside cartridge is a swimming pool. They just can just fill the whole cartridge with ink. That's not right. The ink is hold up by a white sponge. And if you put too much ink in there, the sponge cannot hold the ink. The ink is going to flow out of the cartridge. So to this plan, we're going to replace the sponge with a sponge that's as large as possible. And then we'll fill with the ink. We fill a little bit more than what kind it is, but that depends how much the sponge can hold. And then we're going to prime the cartridge. You don't have to prime every time. However, for the first time, you will have empty cartridge. It's a good idea to prime it. There's a chip in the cartridge that remembers how many pages you printed. The printer itself doesn't have an ink gauge or anything to measure the actual ink level in the cartridge. So it's all calculated. And also it's a one-way street. For example, the cartridge, if the page count is 0, that means 100% of ink left. For example, if it is 55 pages printed, then it's 50% ink left. This is a one-way street. You cannot roll the number back. So if you take a cartridge to print 75 pages, you fill it up. You put the ink again. It still shows 50% of ink. However, it can allow you to turn the ink monitor off. So you don't monitor any ink level. And that's actually what we want. However, this function can only be available after you printed the maximum amount of pages. So you just need to keep printing until one day you will be able to turn the monitor off. I often get questions, oh, I actually filled my cartridge, but the ink level is still low. Yeah, that's because this is one-way street. Or people ask me, hey, I did what you said. I cannot turn the ink monitor off. Oh, that's because your ink level didn't reach 0%. You have run it all the way down to 0. Then you can press a button, which is the stop button on the printer, to turn the monitor off. You cannot reset the cartridge. What you can do is turn off the ink tracking. OK, we have group cartridges. Those are empty cartridges that I bought from eBay. When you go to eBay, you can search for 243 empty, or you can see 243 version. Version means it's never been refilled before. Or you may have cartridges left from your starter cartridge. For the cartridge set, you can go to bchtechnologies.com and go to printer modifications, Canon. And CPC-245 is the one we're going to use today. If you have a 260 card, like a PJ-268-261, you can get a CPC-260. So today, we're going to use a CPC-245. OK, the first step, you'll need a really sharp, really steady knife. You can use a really sharp kitchen knife, too. You'll see this edge. OK, I need a cutting here. So first action as is, I need to cut it in. And this only sharp knife can do it. Then I have to pry it open. The best way is to put it on the edge of a table so it can go up and down with your hand. So I found this seam. And I'm going to start putting my hand in. You can see it's already open. So next one, you can just get a pried open. With this knife, very easy. If you have a knife that's not as sturdy as this one, such as a box cutter, you can just use a screwdriver to help you to pry it open. This is for 243. I'm going to cut open 245 and show you they're the same cartridge. 243, 245. And also notice how thick the cover is. It's because it can then make this cover really thick so it can take the space for the sponge. So you have a really thin sponge. OK, let's open up 245 XL. See how thin the cover is compared to other two. So 245 XL. This is the sponge for XL. And this is the sponge for a regular cartridge. OK, same cartridge, just different size of sponges. Remember the collection box I told you about? Here's the filter. And underneath the filter is the collection box. Make sure to not puncture that filter. If you puncture it, the cartridge going to get the clock really easily. OK, time to bring out the modification kit. This is a CPC 245. And you can see it has a glass case and the top cover right there built in. And inside that, there's a sponge already filled with ink. So you don't need to buy ink. You don't need to buy anything. Everything's ready. Tear off the label. And it's ready to go. On the top, there's a refill hole. And you just slide it in. Bam, the black one is done. Oh, by the way, this thing doesn't go all the way in. There will be a gap between the top cover and the base. You can see there's a distance between the cover and the base. Don't worry about it, because let me show you. If you have the original one set aside, the original one also has a space between the top cover and the base. It is a part. So you just sit on top of it, and it's all done. Now we work on the color one. You can see the regular cartridge also have this really thick cover. It's just ridiculous to realize you'll pay $30 for this much of ink. Now it's time to bring out our color mod kit. Oh, forgot to show you the XL version. The cover will be a lot thinner, and the sponge will be a lot larger. See how thin the XL cover is, and how thick the regular one is. And it can actually give you a little bit more ink. So basically, by using a mod kit, you convert any cartridge into an XL cartridge. So for the color, for the magenta, we tilt the top off. For the magenta, make sure that, say, your sponge is on the bottom, and the sponge is on the bottom. So make sure you do it this way, not the other way. And also, you need these three tabs in the front. There's nothing to clue. And if your cartridge is bad, eventually, you can just take it out and transfer it to another set of cartridges. Now it's time to prime those cartridges. There are two ways. One way is, it's pretty simple. You just put it on a paper towel, and hold it like this, and get a household vacuum. Turn the vacuum on, then the vacuum holds on, and just suck a little bit, just tap it, tap it, suck, until you get enough ink coming out from the bottom. That means the little box is filled with ink. Another way you can do is get a priming clip. If you need one, you can go to bchtechnologies.com. Go to accessories, and the priming click on syringe. And you can see those are 243, 44. And if you've got a taller one, here's 240, 241, or 260, 261. You're going to get one of the black clips, and you're going to get two pads. So two pads, the difference is one is shorter, one is longer. The longer one is for the black. Take your cartridge, push it in. You're going to use syringe. Just suck the ink until you see the ink coming out. See, the ink is not coming out yet. So if the ink is not coming out, for example, this one, this one is from Yipei, so we don't know how long it has been set in somebody's garage. You can take a bowl, just fill it with a little bit of water, and microwave it for one minute. Then you're going to see the water totally boiling. So we want really, really hot boiling water. So put it here, and just put it down there for like five, 10 minutes. Let's work on the color one when we wait for that one. So I'm going to dab on the paper towel. You can see there's a complete line of black. That means black is already unclogged. And now it can work on the black. OK, good. And normally you don't need to do this because you have a fresh cartridge. Like me, buying those on Yipei, you have no idea. Actually, this is already unclogged. You can see you've got all three colors when you dab on it. Just in case, oh, I know why I was using the black priming clip on the color. That's why I didn't get any ink. So actually, the color didn't need to be primed. Anyway, it doesn't hurt. You can see there's plenty of ink coming out. That's good. Some people said when I wiped the nozzle, I'm a wiper. So you take choice if you want to do it or not. OK, here's a quick quiz. If we put those two in, they are right now filled with ink. So what's the ink level will be? The answer is it's going to show low ink. The ink level will be steady and unburnt. That means you'll get 10% of ink left. To check the quality of our project, so we go to the printer, go to printer preferences, go to maintenance, go to nozzle check, print check pattern. There is nothing you can do to turn this low ink off. You just have to keep printing because you know physically it has enough ink. And you have to print until you get error message. And this is a check pattern. You can see black has some pretty serious clogging issue here. And the cyan and yellow, they all need to be primed. I put the black back to the hot water again. It's going to make the pores of the nozzle open up a little bit. So again, if I clear it, it will suck. For the color, it probably caused by the air bubbles. So I'm not going to soak it. Because you can see the color can print the whole bar here. So each one can print the whole bar. What's missing is the second bar. So that's not really a clogging problem. That's not a hard clog. So I'm just going to prime the color. I remember a little bit more ink than last time. I don't forgot black and color. They used different pads. Now it's perfect. Now the canvas ink monitor will not show the accurate ink level. So we have to monitor the ink level ourselves. So what we do is we take a whole rainbow paper. And we're going to divide the paper in roughly half. This is about how much the Excel cartridge can print. So if we print to here, we'll take the cartridge out and refill all the colors. And now you can go to your favorite Chinese restaurant and tell them you can print many for them. And you get a free dish. As a side, the ink level will still low. You're going to see the estimate ink level is almost zero. So you get two exclamation marks on top of each cartridge. There's nothing I do about it. You just have to run your printer until you reach the zero ink level. OK, now we've got a black and a hazard light blinking together. If you see it on the computer, it's going to show support code 1688. The following ink has run out black. So this is the time to reset the turn off the ink monitor for the black cartridge. If you see the ink monitor, it has a red cross on the black. Do not close this window. Now go to the printer. What model of printer do you have? You're going to have this star button. So just press and hold this star button. Press and hold until you hear a click. You're going to see it. You're going to hear a click, then printer back to work. And from then on, the black ink will be blinking. That means the ink monitor is off. But now you can see the black monitor is off. So there's no more yellow exclamation mark. The black is grayed out. So you can just keep printing until the color can be turned off. If you put another set of cartridges in, the ink monitor will be reactivated. So if you want to swipe back your cartridge, you have to turn the monitor off one more time. So we're about halfway mark of the printing. We're going to refill the cartridge now. Because right now the ink box is full. So we don't have to prime it if we refill it right now. OK, what ink do you use? You guys heard a story about that. You guys know the difference between pigment ink and dye ink. The black cartridge is supposed to be pigment cartridge. However, it is very safe just converted to a dye cartridge. So I'm just going to use dye ink. I recommend is go to bchtechnology.com and inkporeprinter, refill ink for Epson, and just click all dye ink. So you can pick almost any ink here. If you need black, you can get three fill for those blacks in smaller package. And I recommend this package, which I have lots of ink on page three, and we'll hide it really well. Get these four color. Each bottle is 100 mil. So those little bottles, they are 30 mil each. So this big bottle, one big bottle, is equal to three little bottles. So you get three blacks and one of each colors. So let's say you have 100 mil of one color, let's say. And if you know each time, you only use four mil of cyan. So in this one bottle, you get 25 refills out of one single bottle. I'm going to use this squeezy bottle first. So when I drop on it, and I just pay attention, say you forget to absorb right away. Oh, sorry, squirt too much. Yeah, now you can see it's too much. Yeah, that's the one way of doing it. Because this is filled with ink, I didn't deplete the ink. I'm not going to prime it unless they print the missing lines. I'm going to fill that different ways. So if you bought this kit, you got a syringe and needles. I'm just going to put the ink in the middle. If you check the link that I provide under the comments, so I bought the four mil is the max. You need to be patient. You don't need to push it down. Just do it slowly. You can see the ink is already well out. So that's, so I did how much, 4.5 at one left. So I did a 3.5. The number is not always the same because it really depends on how much ink still left in the chamber. So you can see there are many, many ways to get this sponge wet. As long as you get it wet, and when you're holding it, it's not dripping ink, you're good. Oh, by the way, if you get this, just click Start Printing. You don't need the printer alignment at all. I hope you enjoyed this video. I do enjoy my free lunch. Visit us at www.bchtechnologies.com or locally at Greensboro, North Carolina. Cheers.