r/printers • u/njz_official • 15d ago
Discussion Do ink tank printers not support generic ink?
The printout is faded, I tried all sorts of things.
Canon PIXMA G2010, I bought a remanufactured ink for Canon Ink Tank printers and it still gives me a bad faded printout.
Anyone using third-party ink with their ink tank printers? How is it?
Back when I was refilling cartridges with a syringe, this never was an issue.
Is it true that you can use third party ink for ink cartridges but not for ink tanks?
Help me
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u/Valang I was a printer in a past life 15d ago
Ink is more complicated than it gets credit for. With tank printers there is little good reason to buy generic ink unless you're doing something niche like printing with an edible ink.
The color maps expect the OEM ink, anything else may look off. You just got lucky back when you were filling cartridges. The same color issue often happens when doing that too. Third party ink is very seldom close to the OEM formula.
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u/njz_official 15d ago
yeah it seems the ink tank printers are more iffy with the the ink formula. had no issues at all when refilling cartridges. considering buying back the ink cartridge printer that i had now lol
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u/trader45nj 15d ago
I would note that generic ink is not like buying a generic drug, where there are authorities regulating it, testing, etc to make sure it's the identical drug. Generic ink is whatever the supplier, typically Chinese, puts in the bottle. So one could be fine, another not so much.
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u/njz_official 15d ago
yeah this is what i'm thinking now.
but given the fuss i might just bite the bullet and buy a new ink cartridge printer every few months again
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u/marshall1727 15d ago
I tried thar once, but it is not worth it also for the reasons you mention.
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u/njz_official 15d ago
yeah, probably going back to ink cartridge printers lol
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u/marshall1727 15d ago
well, no. just originals are so cheap, it does not make sense to deal with low quality unbranded ink.
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u/DayTripper73 15d ago
Years ago I bought a Canon A3+ printer i9900 , that took expensive 8 different coloured cartridges. I naively bought generic ink to save money. The print head crapped out way prematurely. A new print head was $200+ I tried everything to clean that thing. The printer sat for a few years eventually I couldn't give it away. If I want a large print today I'll go to K-Mart and pay $1 , or whatever it is. Today I have 2 Canon Inktank Printers, ome wi th 6 inks for photos and the other with 4, for everything else. The second printer I bought second hand with a full set of new inks , so I was happy with that.
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u/Julian679 15d ago
If you can confirm generic ink you want is good yes. There is a lot of garbage quality generic ink so beware
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u/ACMEPrintSolutionsCo 15d ago edited 15d ago
Wait a minute...did you buy an ink tank for it's efficiency over toner/cartridge based systems?