Photo by Denis Gomes Franco for Wikipedia.
These continuous ink systems hold a large quantity of ink, and modifies the way it feeds into your printer, which has a side effect of voiding your warranty. You can gather the parts and modify your printer yourself, but Cool Tools recommends Cobra Ink, a company that does the modification for you for $US50-$US100 over printer’s RRP. The upside to doing it this way is that Cobra Ink supplies their own warranty, since Epson or HP’s is voided by your mod.
If you do a lot of colour printing, this seems like a good moneysaver. If you’re like me and only print black and white, with a little bit of colour occasionally, a laser printer might be better, since that doesn’t have the drying out problem.
Cobra Ink [via Cool Tools]
Stew
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 6:38 AMRihac do great systems in Australia as well:
http://Www.rihac.com.au
I’ve had one on my Canon MP830 for the last 2 years and have just ordered a bulk refill of ink (100ml of each colour) for $58. Gold!
Matt
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 6:55 AMI’ve been using a RHIAC system for years and it’s been awesome.
As someone who has moved house a lot, be mindful that they do not respond well to being moved as they operate on an air tight system that is impacted if the reservoir is lifted higher than the printer.
:)
Matt
JC
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 8:44 AMMy wife is a teacher and prints a lot of stuff, we were going through $100+ of ink per month on our HP c5380, bought a rihac system – just brilliant – getting ready to buy first refill.
olearymo
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 8:56 AMHmm, what a cool and fascinating idea!
Possibly stupid question: how do you make sure it fits in your printer? Aren’t the compartments for ink usually rather small?
Unless I’ve missed something.
olearymo
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 8:57 AMOh bugger I’m sorry, upon closer inspection they modify the actual printer. Sorry to waste reply space. *resolves to actually read things*
Johnd
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 9:30 AMRihac doesnt modify the printer. You use special ink cartridges.
If push came to shove, I think you’d find that the printer manufacturer would have a hard time invalidating the warrantee based on using these. They would have to prove it had damaged the printer, rather than just issue a generic statement.
You do have rights as a consumer.
BTW, the Rihac system is great. Very cost effective, pretty easy to setup, and the inks are good quality. I use my canon printer for photography prints, so I’m pretty critical of the results.
light487
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 12:27 PMI notice it has those “tubes” running out from the printer.. is it easy to install? It seems “too good to be true”..?
Johnd
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 6:54 PMYes, it is easy to install. You order a kit specific to your printer model. Have a look at the Rihac website. You will be able to get a copy of the installation instructions for your printer model.
Liam
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 1:33 PMCould someone please recommend a site that I can buy ink to say just inject into my current cartridges?
Josh
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 4:43 PMI tried one of these a few years back on a Canon… it sort of worked, but to be honest, it ended up been more effort than it was worth, and over time stopped working (hence the “sort of” worked.) Ended up just refilling normal cartridges with the ink left over.
Zee
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 4:49 PM+1 rihac
Scott
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 9:49 PMyep love the rihac for my mp620. it’s cheap and the very infrequent refills make life much easier.
Johno
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 9:02 PM+2 for rihac. Had a crappy system from hong kong which never did work but saw the rihac guys at a shopping centre display and they convinced me to give their system a go and to be honest i love it. good to see they are popular cause they seem to know what their on about.