A while back I purchased a refill kit for my Ink jet printer because I had planned on printing a lot of photos and such because I loved the quality of my new HP printer compared to my old Lexmark. Yesterday, I decided to refill the ink cartridges because I was getting a little low and I needed to print 4 8×10 photos with my printer. The refilling went fine, although a little messy, but I got it refilled and the photos printed. The only bad thing is when i put the cartridges back in, the HP printer remembered the cartridge and its ink level. So it kept reporting that I was low, when I was not. I think the printer would continue to print even if I did not reset it, but I wanted to use it to estimate how much ink I had left until I need to refill again.
So I did a little research and found out that the ink cartridges for my printer (The C8727A #27 for Black and the C8728A #28 for 3 Color Cartridge) have a handy dandy serial number encoded on the chips that the printer reads and remembers the last 3 used and the ink level. I would kinda assume so if you stick a photo ink cartridge in there, that when you put the old one in, it will know its ink level, along with the photo cartridge when you put it back in there later on in life. Either way, this was getting in my way.
Resetting the cartridges wasn’t hard, just annoying. It requires taping off some contact points on the cartridge and reinserting the thing 3 times. Below are the instructions I used in order to make my printer think it is a new cartridge. You will have to use the image below the instructions to know exactly which pin I am talking about on the different cartridges. They are not actually colored in real life, but you should have known that.
Turn printer on and take the cartridge out of the printer. I took the paper out also, otherwise it will print an alignment sheet every time you put the cartridges back in. Letting it not print one did not seem to bother the printer or cause the instructions to not work.
Cover the pin marked in Red (see below) with tape on the cartridge you refilled. You can do both the Color and Black cartridges at the same time if you like.
Put cartridge back in printer and shut access door and let the printer do its thing. Eventually it will stop making noises and indicate an error. Ignore it.
Cover the pin marked in Red (see below) with tape on the cartridge you refilled. You can do both the Color and Black cartridges at the same time if you like.
Put cartridge back in printer and shut access door and let the printer do its thing. Eventually it will stop making noises and indicate an error. Ignore it.
Open cartridge access door and remove cartridge again. Add another piece of tape covering the pin marked Blue (see below). Both the Red and Blue marked pins need to be covered with tape. Be careful to not cover any other pins. Also, please note that the pin marked Blue is different for the Black and Color cartridges (I screwed this up the first time).
Put cartridge back in and shut access door. Let printer do its thing until it stops making noises.
Open access door again and remove cartridges for a final time. Remove all tape covering the pins and return the cartridge back into the printer.
This time add some paper and print an alignment sheet in order to let the printer align the print heads properly.
If you check your ink level, they should be marked as full. If not, sorry, I don’t know what happened. Try again.
Open access door again and remove cartridges for a final time. Remove all tape covering the pins and return the cartridge back into the printer.
This time add some paper and print an alignment sheet in order to let the printer align the print heads properly.
If you check your ink level, they should be marked as full. If not, sorry, I don’t know what happened. Try again.
The pins for the Black cartridge will work on the following cartridges: C6656A (#56) or C8727A (#27)
The pins for the Color cartridge will work on the following cartridges: C6657A (#57), C6658A (#58 Photo), or C8728A (#28)
Good luck resetting your ink levels.
Good luck resetting your ink levels.
