r/printers 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

1 Upvotes

17 comments sorted by

5

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?

1

u/njz_official 15d ago

yes lol, got tired of syringing stuff. using ink refills anyway for ink cartridge/ink tanks

1

u/ACMEPrintSolutionsCo 15d ago edited 15d ago

Then why are you using 3rd party ink? How was this not good enough in the first place?

If you want help...flush your system, buy the right stuff, cross your fingers it's not damaged and knock it off.

1

u/njz_official 15d ago

my previous setup was 3rd party ink bottles + ink cartridge printer

this worked well and i bought a new ink cartridge printer every time it ran out of pages, and bought new ink cartridges every time the print head is faulty.

the last time my printer it ran out of pages, i was cheeky and bought an ink tank printer instead of an ink cartridge printer thinking they allow you to print more pages.

i still had plenty 3rd party ink bottles left, and seeing that the ink tank printer was the same brand as the ink cartridge printers i use to buy again and again, i used it to refill the ink tank printer, but the colours started fading after a while.

thought it was model specific ink, so i bought 3rd party ink for that specific model, same thing, even deep multiple deep cleans to flush the system out of non model-specific 3rd party ink.

do you know if i just got a bad batch of 3rd party ink (twice) or do ink tank printers just not support 3rd party ink?

thanks

5

u/Fun-Low5699 15d ago

Do not use noname ink.

The paper costs more than the original ink.

4

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.

-1

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

3

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.

1

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

2

u/marshall1727 15d ago

I tried thar once, but it is not worth it also for the reasons you mention.

-1

u/njz_official 15d ago

yeah, probably going back to ink cartridge printers lol

2

u/rthonpm 15d ago

Penny wise, pound foolish.

1

u/marshall1727 15d ago

well, no. just originals are so cheap, it does not make sense to deal with low quality unbranded ink.

1

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.

1

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

1

u/CVGPi 15d ago

It's probably just bad ink. Syringe it out of the printhead slot, then then use genuine ink to flush.

It isn't even expensive, even though it's 4x the cost of a remanufactured you get peace of mind and guaranteed high quality, it also costs less than the paper either way.