Changing Canon IP4200 Inks? Can we use cheaper ink?

[overloaded_ide]

I just bought a Canon Pixma IP4200 tonight and will not be able to test the idea myself till I run out of ink, that will be awhile.

I am wanting to know if anyone else has changed the ink in the tanks from the expensive OEM stuff to the cheaper generic ink. I have searched about 2 days and cannot find cheap cartriges for this model printer yet. I think the tanks are the CLI-8 for colors, only can find OEM in that type so far.
BCI-3 or BCI-6 are everywhere cheap.
Looking at the pictures of cartriges, the color tanks look the same as the I850 but has an extra one for the black, also a larger tank for the pigment Black. I can really tell with the pictures though if they are the same sizes and inter changable. When my printer gets here I will check that also.

I refill my Canon I850 tanks now with bulk ink from www.Ink-refills-ink.com
I've been gone for awhile, but some of you may remember me and way back when I bought the I850 from the old posts. I just burnt out a print head a couple months ago.
After several years and hundreds of refills I am still using the same tanks that came with the I850 when new. Best printer I ever had, and I have burned out many brands over the years. Finnally the print head on the most used I850 seems to have burned out, get an error when turned on. Took the print head out of the other I850 and installed it, works perfect. Tech support said need new print head.
That printer is still like new other than needing the new $45 head finnally. Still using it now with the head from the newer seldom used spare I850.

I rambled about the I850, I have use the same ink in it for years and printed many many thoughsands of pages. Proves 3 things, 1 print heads do not need changed often, 2 the printer is great, 3 the ink I used was good! Never had clogged heads or other problems. 1 printer was used alot nearly every day and spare printer used once in awhile.

The IP4200 is supposed to do 2 sided printing and I also plan to do the mod for DVD printing. This is why I bought the 4200, Love the I850 but it does not do 2 sided nor DVD.
I think both have the 2pic nozzles. Color matching with the other ink I think might work, not sure.
Gelling and clogging heads mixing the 2 types inks I am worried about. Course I would flush the cartriges well with cleaner and also the print head, but getting all the old OEM ink out may be trickey.

Any one tried?? For what I want to use the printer for (besides disks) I will need large volumes of ink. $12 for OEM ink carts is not an option.

Still planning to buy an IP4000 later if I find one, it still uses the older type ink and cartriges I think.
Another reason I think changing ink in the 4200 may work.

[overloaded_ide]

Hey ya'll
I asked about using low cost inks in the IP4200, no answers yet.

So I will answer myself

I been e-mailing http://ink-refills-ink.com/ about this and other stuff including my Epson R200.
I buy my refill ink for the I850 from them and been very happy with thier ink as I said in first post.

The Canon IP4200 does use the same inks as the I850. However, the Canon
CLI-8BK uses a dye based black ink. The PGI-5BK cartridge uses the pigmented black ink.
The black cartridge in your I850 uses the pigmented black ink.
The cartridges for the IP4000 and IP4200 are not the same. There is a
chip on the new CLI series cartridges. The chip on the cartridges for the IP4200 monitors the ink level of the cartridge. There is not a chip resetter or a resetting method for this printer yet, but once the cartridges read empty you can continue to print. It will give you an empty message, but you can click "OK" or "Continue" and you will be able to print.

Ink prices vary by how big of bottles you buy, but very cheap! Click the link to bookmark the site and you save 5-10% and of course since I place larger orders I always do that
Free shipping over $45
NO, I am not affilaited with them in any way, I just get great service, great inks, and very happy with them.

Now looks like we need a hack to ignore the out of ink warning for this printer so it won't pop-up, or a hack/mod to reset the chips to read full after we refill them.

[overloaded_ide]

Well I see the post is getting views just no coments.

I got the printers, 2 IP4200 Pixmas, only set one up for now.

I did the mod as posted at http://pixma.webpal.info/IP4200/index.htm

The plastic cover hiding the tray slot pops off easy.
Reseting the printier to allough disk printing was easy.
Making the tray was not hard using a cereal box and cardstock.
Getting the tray to work had me baffled to begin with, but easy fix.

My IP4200 kept rejecting the tray, I made a second tray and same problem. I finally figured out the sensor was seeing the white paper and that was the problem. I colored the top half black with a marker and when I dried it I tried again and it worked fine. I did the first tray the same way with the marker and it also worked fine.

Prefferably use something DARK for the top layer of the tray. If you don't have something dark, then print a sheet of cardstock black for a top layer.

It does not say anything on the site linked about tray needing to be dark, but one picture I hadn't looked at to begin with I later found does have the top part of the tray and halfway or more down the sides painted black with a marker. If you just look at the thumb of the disk tray being put in the printer you won't see the blackend area probably, I did not. But viewing the large picture you see it clearly.

The sensor is on the left side of the printhead for those wantng to know. I put tin foil taped under the 3 small holes you cut in the template for the tray. I have a solid bottom sheet, a layer with only the hole for the disk cutout, then the top layer with the sensor holes and disk hole cut out.
Getting a real tray would be nice so when I make fully printed disks everything lines up the same everytime. Making a better quality tray myself would be easy also though, since I did those in a hurry just to see if it would work and it does.
The 2 trays I made would be fine probably for most disks, and certainly very good for just a couple pictures and title type printing that is not full coverage.

I have not tried to adjust anything as I been printing books with the duplex printing which I love!

I just tested a disk and NO it's NOT water proof! I got my thumb damp and rubbed across the edge of the disk and smeared the ink, I think I printed that disk Thursday night. I don't know how the after market inks will be, and I win't be able to test that for along time it looks like. I did about 50-60 pages of printing, lots of color pictures and black text, ink tanks are still showing almost full. Some pages were fast mode and some were best.

The disk looks very good, nice quality there. It was tacky feeling after being printed to begin with, but not now. But I haven't tried much for settings yet.

The disk I printed was a Ritek printable. I bought alot of those over a year ago when Ritek was the recomended disk second to TY Yuden.
This Ritek disk was burned months ago at least, and used several times and someone left it laying out loose even. (I just never got around to printing it) Printing on the disk was great anyway. I expected it to be a bad print from finger prints, dust, etc.. on the surface. All I did was wipe it off against my shirt and print on it and it still turned out great.

I think the duplex printing is great. The printer prints one side, holds the sheet a second to dry then feeds it back in to print the second side automatically. I printed a 30 page manual on 15 sheets of paper, only had to select Duplex in the setup, click print and forget it.
This should be great for printing booklets for the DVDs also when they may be included in the case.

All I had handy was cheap crap copy type paper and of course I could see through that so it was no surprise that I could see the printing for the other side through it. It worked kinda ok, but decent paper should be fine. Wife bought the wrong stuff is only reason I have that junk paper here at all.

When I find my photo paper I will print some of those too. I have tons, but for awhile now I haven't been doing much with DVDs or photos etc... been busy with other stuff.

[preditation]

Stinkyink now offer ink cartridges for the Canon Pixma IP4200 ink. Oh and it's free delivery!

[pepegot1]

YES! I have been using cartridges from Inksell.com for years and saved enough money to buy many new printers with the difference.

[jman98]

preditation joined and dug up a 4 year old post simply to shill for some UK company. It's his only post as I write this. I leave it to the readers to decide for themselves if they wish to risk buying from this company since this is obviously commercial spam disguised as a helpful post.

[MJA]

you are right.smells like a spammer

Stinkyink <---