Dell 720 printer ?ReFill your cartridge for 40p/sh

scattycat_3

The £9.99 Dell 720 printers come with starter cartridges that weigh around 25g when new. So probably contain around 10ml of ink.

Black starter is similar to Lexmark 17 ( which costs approx £14 ), that as far as i know holds 10ml of ink and will print on average around 200 pages.

The larger Black cartridge is sim to Lexmark 16 (£20ish) and holds 20ml.

Colour are = Lexmark 27, (£15ish) and guess is holds up to 5ml of each colour, and prints on their reckoning 140 pages.
Larger colour = Lex 26. (£23ish)

It is rumoured that Dell has had the mounting system altered, so that "only their cartridges" fit! Will see later what can be done to get Lexmark or compatibles to  work, so be careful.

Now if you fill your own cartridges as alared and I do, then thanks to Morrisons and Tesco, its half price at mo.

Morrisons has bogofs, so 2 Black kits for £7.49, giving 6 x 30ml bottles, total 180ml ink, ie 18 refills. So fill yer Dell black cartridge for less than 42p, i suspect that 10ml is on high side as some ink will still remain in cartridge from previous filling.

Tesco Value kits are half price, at £3.99 so despite being fractionally dearer, the outlay is less.

All kits come with ink ,instructions, filling syringe and loads of little bits that your cartridge requires, whatever the make. Its easy, though care is needed to avoid spills/drips.

Re Colour Cartridges, they contain three colours in separate compartments so make sure you know which hole is which, or you might get some strange prints.

Here Tesco is the cheapest at mo. Their Kits are currently £4.99, and contain 30ml of each colour. So you shoul be able to fill the colour cartridge supplied with printer around six times, though some colours are used faster than others. So I estimate a colour refill using Tesco kit costs around 80p!

Morrisons give you two kits for £11.49 ( usually JR or Jettec ) So costs 95p,ish per fill.

Note Morrisons repeat this ink BOGOF about every six months, as well as Kodak photo paper bogofs.

Have fun practising, HTH Scat

dc

Thanks SCat,

You have saved me a fortune.

Inky fingers only lasted a day. I will use petrol filling station diesel pump plastic gloves next time :-[

purplemoon

Where else can I buy one of these kits- and are they strictly neccesary? (No Tesco around here)

scattycat_3

The kits are available at most computer outlets, but expect to pay around £8 mono and £12 col., there is a starter kit for around £13 that has both black and colour inks in smaller quantities.

I only buy ink when it is half price. ( by getting it  on bogof at Morrisons/safeway as the offer comes round every 6 months or so)

Basically you take ink from a bottle with a syringe and inject it into your empty cartridge, all the items needed and instructions are in the kit, You can fill any make of cartridge


JR is the uk firm that started it, about 15 years ago [link=http://www.jrinkjet.co.uk/]Visit site[/link]

[link=http://www.jettec]Jettec (us) is another easily obtainable kit[/link]

Sus it out , and get someone to help you if you need to. its the easiest/ cheapest way, especially if the shops are shut when your ink runs out.

Dont let the manufacturers put you off.

HTH's Scat

PS where is Here?

murphydavid

I have been refilling my Lexmark Z13 (£30.00) From Argos for years now. I found that the only time it gave trouble was if I over-fill so now I only fill the colour that has run out and then never more than 1.5cc. Any more than that and it plays up for weeks and i end up with inky hands. Since I have been following this rule I have had no mess at all.

Rochdale_Guy

See my latest post here :

http://forum.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=Urgents;action=display;num=1096312056;start=81#97

scattycat_3

Just in case you missed my reply

Yes Roch. you can re-fill them,

All cartridges have a tank with a sponge filled with ink. There are two types, those that come with 10 ml ( the ones supplied by Dell)and others with twice as much ink, but the cartridges are the same size physically and should take 20ml when refilled.

The black one can be refilled without removing the top. You just enlarge the very tiny breather hole in the middle of the hump, so that you can insert the filling syringe supplied with kit. Drill bit is supplied too.

To refill the colour cartridge is a little more difficult as you have to remove the top to find the filling points for each colour.

Two links for howto,

http://www.jettec.com/instructions_jetset.asp?1=646

http://www.jrinkjet.co.uk/lexmark4.htm

The 720 is similar to lexmark Z23, which is an earlier 605

HTHs Scat

PS if you look at the jettec instructions you can see the difference, The Dell ones have a corner off hump whilst Lexmark has a central notch.

I think the starter Dell = Lexmark 17 and is supposed to print 1000 "average " pages

Kellm9

Thanks for all the info. I got two of the Dell 720's at £9.99 each. Since there arrival my young daughter has been printing out Barbie pictures. Colour cartridge takes a battering. So I have been limiting her use of the printer, scared of the new cartridge prices.

Anyway I will now just pop down to Morrisons and search for the BOGOF's on the refil kits. Great links to how to do etc, should save me a bob or two.

scattycat_3

Unfortunately Morrisons BOGOF has ended, our Tesco still has the black kits for £3.95.

I have succesfully used refilled Lexmark 16/17s in the Dell 720, by bending the angled peg on the cartrige clip.
Both the 16 and 17 cartriges only take 15ml of ink before overflowing. This seems to suggest that 5ml is always left in the sponge though surface tension. I assume the Dell cartridges will be the same, so you should get six full size cartidge refills out of the diy Black kits. Approx 65p a go as opposed to Dells prices

bilbo_2

has anyone filled dells trial cartridges ?

Andy_Spoo_2

I've tried to refill mine.

The colour cart prints yellow and cyan fine, but I can't get anything out of the magenta. The magenta worked for about 4 lines of printing then stopped.

The black cart has a couple of lines missing since refilling.

Neither cart will clean any better. All colours were printing fine before I refilled, so no part of the heads were dry.

Anybody got any ideas, or know where I can get replacement carts from, very cheap!!

Andy