Dell 964 Printer refills

[cduncan]

I'm new to the forum, so be gentle.

I found an ink refill kit (never been a fan, but thought I'd give 'em another go after the last purchase of about 10 years ago) at Costco for $20. In that I hate spending $34 for the Dell cartridges, figured to give it a try.

All works beautifully except that, upon refilling the cartridges, the printer doesn't relay to my Dell PC that it's got a full cartridge. I'm guessing the "reset" function is somewhere in the system settings, but can't find it.

Does anyone know how to reset the "new ink cartridge" on this thing? I love the computers (I've got 4 Dell PC's and 2 of their Inspiron laptops), but their proprietary B/S is a complete scam.

 

[raybay]

You will always have trouble unless you use the official Dell ink cartridges sold by Dell. They use some tricks, including possible chemical differences to make it impossible to comfortably use these refills you have made.
Of course it is a scam. When a heavy user has a Dell printer, he can easily spend $2000 in ink before the printer fails.
The Dell printer is merely a LexMark printer with a special ink cartridge that requires you to buy from Dell.
Give away the printer, and buy a Canon, HP, Samsung, Fujitsu, or Brother if you want fairness... but do not get an all in one.

 

[cduncan]

Have been considering that...I've had H/P's, Canon, Lexmark and a few others that I can't even remember, and the H/P always seemed to treat me right. The other pisser about the Dell B/S is that you can't run out and pick une up..they don't distribute through any retail outlets, so if you run out on a Saturday, you're screwed. I always order half-a-dozen at a clip, but I HATE paying the bill.

 

[cduncan]

Possible solution

I've thought about this a bit more today and, after diggin around through my Registry, believe I've found the key to making the refills work.

The kit I bought is from IMS, LLC....www.ims-ink.com. I bought it at Costco for $19.95 and it comes with 8 ink bottles (3 black and 1 each for Cyan, Magenta and Yellow along with the three color inks in Photo type). The kit also comes with various adapters, plugs, cleaning solution and other things for just about every cartridge out there, so it's not just for Dell.

The package claimed to be able to provide up to 95 cartridge refills, so, again, I figured at roughly $35 a click per Dell cart, 95 of those would have run me over $3300. It was worth a $20 bill to try it out.

Refilling the carts is a snap. Just peel the plastic label from the top of both carts, insert the appropriate ink color into the appropriate hole and slowly fill it up. The carts are filled with a sponge-type material so you can physically see them turning color as you get close to topping out. Either use the same label to cover the top or, in my case, I use a piece of 1" wide blue painter's tape.

Where I was hitting snag was having my printer/computer realize that there was a full ink cartridge so I would stop betting the "LOW INK...ORDER FROM DELL TODAY" warning. While I'm sure there's a function in the Registry under REGEDIT/LOCAL MACHINE/IjPRTSettings/OFN11111, it was easier to "fool" the printer/PC.

I could see in the registry that it does indeed read a hidden cartridge serial number. I believe it's stored as LASTBLACKCARTUID and LASTCOLORCARTUID, but I haven't seen that value change since installing a new cart.

However, after installing the new cart, the printer ran it's autoalign. Once that was done, I reinserted the old (refilled) cart, shut the lid and NO MORE LOW INK WARNING. Thus, I believe the key will be rotating two cartridges like I've just done.

I'll post an update to this forum once I switch cartridges out again and let you know if that's the ticket. The ink can, apparently, be ordered directly from the mfr through their URL.

Hope this helps anyone else out there wanting a cheaper, but high-quality alternative to Dell's carts.

 

[raybay]

If your experience is like other users, you mayl have an early failure of the printer. I believe the print heads are installed in the printer on that model, not the ink cartridge. The set of ink heads is about $70 to replace. They are reportedly clogged by these non-standard inks. If you look at the warranty on the ink, it is may be only 30 days... at least it was last time I looked.