Having been thoroughly disgusted at the price of replacement inkjet cartridges for my Canon MP280 I looked for a suitable alternative. Re-manufactured cartridges were slightly cheaper and contained more ink than Canon originals but were still inordinately expensive.

I then came across the JR Inkjet Refill pack which offered all the equipment and ink that I would need to refill my own cartridges. The kit contained a small drill together with some small rubber plugs, a syringe with a metal needle, two bottles of black ink, one bottle each of Magenta, Cyan and Yellow ink and a bottle of cleaning fluid. Instructions are available for download from the JR website which give very precise details of how to refill cartridges.

I followed the instructions precisely and found that my cartridges could be refilled quite quickly and with almost no mess or spillage and that the results I obtained with the refilled cartridges were undistinguishable from the originals.

The only problem I had was that I couldn't get sufficient ink into the cartridges at the first attempt. This was because I had not inserted the needle far enough into the cartridge and as a result the ink was pooling on top of the sponge rather than soaking into it as it should.

The refilled cartridges have been working in my printer for several weeks now and sho no signs of running out yet (unlike the originals which expired within a couple of weeks). There is sufficient ink in the kit to allow five or six refills so on a cost basis I am extremely happy with the results. I just have to hope that the print heads will outlast the ink.

The only downside to the whole process is that I cannot reset the chip in the cartridges which is responsible for monitoring the ink levels so the computer insists on telling me that the cartridges are empty, although the refill instructions do give details of how to bypass the situation so that I can still print successfully.