R200 Printer Help Please

[golfnut]

Anyone found a good way to refill these cartridges or is there an aftermarket cartridge for the R200 that is refillable? Man do these go empty FAST, buying Epson cartridges will require a second mortgage on the house. Any suggestions on this subject will be greatly appreciated, I NEED THE HELP otherwise I will probbably just sell the printer because I can't afford $80 bucks a pop for new cartridges at Best Buy. Thanks a million for your input. By the way anyone know of a continuous ink flow system that really works for this Printer?

[Captain315]

I purchased aftermarket cartridges for the R200 from Meritline for less than $6 per cartridge (half price of Epson). I also bought bulk ink from the Printer Filling Station.

I know there are those on here that are dead-set against refilling cartridges but I've not had any problems YET. It's always possible that I'll run into problems one day but so far it has been great. You will hear from these people and rightfully so. I'm just offering my personal experience with refilling cartridges for the Canon S900 and the Epson R200.

[golfnut]

Captain315 thank you for the reply. I too have tried refilling the orig. Epson cartridges for the R200 but can not get a good seal on the fill hole and it leaks. What are you using to seal the fill hole? Are you filling from the top or bottom of the cartridge, I am filling from the bottom as per the NEW and UPDATED instructions from the printerfillingstation. Would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks again.

[axolotls]

I don't think you really can refill the OEM carts. Aftermarkets shouldn't be a problem with a chip resetter (I think SSC does this... not sure.. anyone?)

I save all my used aftermarket carts, since I might decide to refill them at one point.

[overloaded_ide]

Don't freak when you see the price, just check it out, this is for a kit, but alot of other stuff you could get. Or just buy individual inks, what ever.

http://www.ink-refills-ink.com/printer-Epson-Stylus_Photo_R200.htm

I bought from this place before, fast friendly phone person and knowledgeable it seemed. Fast free shipping, my order was around $75, free shipping over $30 though. If you are going to order, make sure you let it add itself to your favorites bookmarks, you get a coupon for like 10% off or was it 15%? It poped up a box about the discount, I think it was on the home page, or maybe any page if you haven't been there before. I saved ALOT, low prices, and at least $7.50 with the discount!
Not been spamed or annoyed in anyway either! And no I am not an affliate or connected to the store, just a happy customer
What I was buying then was for a different printer, I still have to buy for my R200 yet. But I have plenty of ink left acording to the printer stats.

It says on the site the oem cartriges are NOT refillable, but they have carts that are refillable for $10.95 colors and black is $12.95.
They are alittle cheaper if you buy as a set instead of individually, save about $1 per color tank, not black though.
They have compatable cartriges for $7.95 each if you'd rather not buy everything and do it yourself.
If you buy the whole kit you can refill yourself many times, then just replace the ink when you need to. The whole kit was $119 and includes refilleable tanks, chip resetter, and inks. Take off about $12 for the discount coupon and it should be around $107 with free shipping. Also might be things included you don't need so taking those off the kit the price would be even less. Like I myself already have the tools, take off $5 cause I don't need them. The chip resetters supposed to work on all espon chipped cartriges so if you already have one take off $25 etc...

Once you do have everything you need the first time for refilling, then it should be cheap from then on. More ink you buy at a time cheaper it is!
I buy black 500ml $30 supposed to refill 39 times! Less than $1 a refill!
Color ink anywhere from $1.50 down to less than $1 a refill depending how much you buy at one time.
If you look at the link I put at the top, the colors should be multiplied by 5 for amount of ink and the number of refills, you have 5 colors! The price listed though is already for all the colors and does not need multieplied!

Was a little confusing at a fast glance, 2 refills at $15 =$7.50 each, but that is WRONG!! 2 refills per color (X5 colors)= 10 refills at $15.00, $1.50 each!!

Hope this helps alot of people save some money!

The ink I bought from this place before was an SP Pigmented ink that I am using in a canon I850 printer. I was happy with my other ink I was refilling with but I ran out of black and yellow. I am very happy with the inks I bought here, my prints are even better now!

As for the R200 going through ink so fast, what are you printing?? Personally I only do DVDs or CDs with mine. I have done alot of them and a few 8x10 color glossies for testing. I still have 3/4 or more in my tanks according to the picture stats the printer shows while printing.
I should have counted my disks, but I been burning and printing disks for other people too, actors and members in a theater group and I lost count. I thought I was doing pretty good on the inks myself. Most disks are full coverage too. If your using it for everything I geuss it might use alot of ink, but I save mine for just disks and use my I850 for eveything else including DVD jackets and 8x10 posters/flyers ect....

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[overloaded_ide]

By the way anyone know of a continuous ink flow system that really works for this Printer?

Check mediastreet.com I think that's the one The Village Idiot recommends for inks and quality papers. I checked out the site pretty well myself, found lots of stuff to buy soon, but so far have not orderd there yet. They have several types of ink in bulk, and for some Epsons they have a continous ink flow bulk system. Don't know if the R200 can be set up that way, but if it can they probably know.

but can not get a good seal on the fill hole and it leaks. What are you using to seal the fill hole? Are you filling from the top or bottom of the cartridge, I am filling from the bottom as per the NEW and UPDATED instructions from the printerfillingstation.

I have not yet tried refilling my R200 as I said in last post. For all the cartriges I do refill though like my I850 and Xerox M750 I have drilled a small hole in the top and use a syringe to inject the ink. To seal the hole I use a hot glue gun. Just a little bubble of hot glue over the hole and very lightly press it down while it's still hot. Nice air tight seal this way. Most the time when I need to refill again I can just peel the glue off with my finger nail. There is a small little plug formed this way in the hole, about half the time the pug comes out with the glue on top, sometimes it pulls off and is stuck in the hole and I punch it through with the syringe. Having the little hot glue plugs in the I850 cartriges floating around has not hurt anything. I probably have about 4 - 10 plugs in various cartriges now. I do tons of printing and refill ALOT!! Most likley if I put a larger hole the plugs would pop out as I peeled the top glue off, I just made small holes alittle larger than the syringe so theres not alot of surface for the little round plug to hold to as the top peels off.

I save all my used aftermarket carts, since I might decide to refill them at one point.

Good idea. I save all mine too. So many printers use the same cartriges too and you never know if you buy a new printer it might take the same cartriges. You know though that an empty cartrig the foam inside can dry up and make it useless. Sometimes it does not seem to be a problem and others it happens pretty fast, depends on the cartriges and how they're made. I now try to keep 2 sets, one to use and one refilled ready to change. I don't buy any more unless something happens like I mess one up somehow. So far so good, I have ran over a year on one set of I850 cartriges, just bought the second set about a month ago when I ran out of bulk black and yellow inks. Needed to print and found the generic no-name kit I bought at Sam's club was lousy quality black or the wrong type!
It worked, but my prints were yucky low quality. So I bought new canon cartriges while I waited for my new ink to be deliverd.

Anytime I plan to store extra cartriges I refill them first if I can. The ink is cheap enough and a full cartrige does not dry out really.

[The village idiot]

Mediastreet is my recommended ink supplier. Just get the bulk plug n play inks, using pigment inks on disks is just a waste of money!

Now for bottle ink systems, I think you will have to make your own. Comon sense goes a long way to making this a success. Look at the pictures for some of the other systems to get an idea of how they are attached. Then use google (or your favorite search engine) and look for "allways full ink chip" or "Epson allways full ink chip" or some other combination of those words, and select a supplier that offers chips for the R300/R200. If there aren't any, then you will have to find the service software, available free on the net to freeze the ink counter. Now go to http://www.usplastic.com and select the rest of the pieces. You need some Tygon tubing (part number 57104 I think), 1/8 inch inside diameter, thin wall 1/32 inch walls, some angled threaded 1/8 inch connectors (p/n 64296) for the ink carts, and some 4 ounce Nalgene bottles. Then just grab some empty carts and some tools and go. You might want some kind of epoxy to help seal the connectors onto the carts.

The tricky part is getting the ink level correct. Too high and the ink runs out of the head, too low and you suck air into the heads causing a clog. Both of those situations needs to be avoided. Do NOT fill the ink bottles more than half full (2 ounces!)!!!! It will cause too much pressure and the ink will leak out of the heads! And as always, you do this at your own risk, atleast you can always clean your printer up, and put regular carts back in if you fail.

That's about as far as I will go with this. There are a lot more tricks for this, but you are on your own to find them. I'm not going to fuel every charlatan and $hit-heel's sales, they can figure it out for themselves.

If you want to petition the mods to make this a sticky, feel free. If making a sticky, you might want to change the subject line of this thread.

[triphop]

Very interesting post Village Idiot. I have been considering buying or building a continuous inking system for some time now - you post is more grist for this mill.

[golfnut]

Many, many thanks to all for the very informative education on the R200 refill question. I sincerely appreciate your taking the time to go into such detail to help with my situation. As a result of your time and post I now have several options to consider and try. Thank you again and hope you have a great day. This forum really has some great, knowledgeable, and friendly people.

[jetfan]

I use inks from a company called megatoners.com, at last check they were only $3.79 each and if you spend $50 you get free shipping. I just recently
purchased this printer so I couldn't tell you how well they work. But I do have another Epson printer and I 've been using these cartridges for years now with zero problems. I highly reccomend this site.

[pomandson]

Very interesting post Village Idiot. I have been considering buying or building a continuous inking system for some time now - you post is more grist for this m




You may want to have a look at a cis system for your r200, the kit from www.ozmods.com comes with 6 x 50ml of compatible ink, and I cant tell the difference between that and epsons, exept that this is one quarter the price A$ 60 for 6 inks of 50ml.ill.