Refilling Brother LC31 cartridges & reseting the printer - HowTo?

[Gary]

I purchased LC31 ink, refilled one of the carts and the printer
refuses to believe it is a new cart. I tried reseating the cart,
cycling the printer power but nothing works. It is a simple plastic
cartridge, how does the printer know it is not a new cart?

Printer is a Brother 3220C MFC.

BTW, the printer does not work with Win Server 2003. (WinXP Pro is ok
though). Also, printer does lots of cleaning cycles which is why it
ran out in the 1st place.

Thanks,
Gary

[My initial attempt to post this seems to have failed - sorry in
advance if this turns out to be a duplicate]

 

[FRED]

Did you refill the second chamber as well as the main tank?
if you leave the little front tank empty it seems to think the whole
cartridge is empty, I've got a 3420C so it should be very similar to yours
Cheers

 

[Gary Davis]

Did you refill the second chamber as well as the main tank?
if you leave the little front tank empty it seems to think the whole
cartridge is empty, I've got a 3420C so it should be very similar to yours
Cheers

Actually, when the printer started complaining about CYAN being low,
there still was ink in the front tank - maybe more than half. After
filling the sponge side and placing it back in the printer, it now
says the cart is empty.

I don't see any sensors that would be able to tell that the cart is
empty anyhow. Just to try something, I tried covering the top and
sides with black tape but that didn't help either.

I may try removing the print head for a closer look - it seems to be
held in by a clip.

 

[Bill Martin]

Actually, when the printer started complaining about CYAN being low,

there still was ink in the front tank - maybe more than half. After
filling the sponge side and placing it back in the printer, it now
says the cart is empty.

I was looking at a Brother in the store which wouldn't print since it said
the Cyan was empty. The clerk came over and installed new ink in all 4 slots
but the printer still insisted that the cyan was empty. He never could get
it to work properly.

If you figure it out, please let us know...


Bill -- (Remove KILLSPAM from my address to use it)

 

[Gary Davis]

I was looking at a Brother in the store which wouldn't print since it said

the Cyan was empty. The clerk came over and installed new ink in all 4 slots
but the printer still insisted that the cyan was empty. He never could get
it to work properly.

If you figure it out, please let us know...

Wow, that should prompt a call to Brother's support line and see what
they have you do. If they give you some long sequence of reset
instructions, please copy them down. When I called, I said the problem
was due to a ink fill so they refused to help and I have not tried a
legit cart yet. Sounds like that may not help.

Gary

 

[drlj]

Wow, that should prompt a call to Brother's support line and see what
they have you do. If they give you some long sequence of reset
instructions, please copy them down. When I called, I said the problem
was due to a ink fill so they refused to help and I have not tried a
legit cart yet. Sounds like that may not help.

Gary

I tried some different things to see if I could get refilling to work.
I am using the refill kit from Costco which has small needles for
refilling.

After prying off the tops of the ink cartrages, I removed the silver
tape from the section with the angled part and filled it up. I put it
back in the printer, said it was a new cartridge, and after only a few
prints, the printer complained that there was low ink.

Then I removed the other silver tape from the other section. This
section contained two holes for filling. I tried to fill up both
sections, but it doesn't go in easy. I think one hole is for the
sponge section and the other is possibly the section where the printer
has optical sensors for detecting the amount of ink. The difficulty
in filling this up is that ink squirts out of the bottom (there seem
to be two holes on the bottom, one where it seems goes to the
printhead. I don't know why the other exists...possibly for air
pressure relief...for lack of a better term, I'll call this the air
pressure relief valve) Anyway, I tried covering up both of the bottom
holes, but ink wouldn't fill up into the cartridge easily - it just
bubbles out the top. So I keep the bottom holes uncovered while
filling. It gets really messy and there is lots of wasted ink, but I
figure that it's still cheaper than buying a brand new cartridge.

After I'm satisfied that enough ink went into the cartridge, I would
tape up the top holes with scotch tape and put the topcap back on.

Now I have noticed a problem with the printer. I don't know if this
is because I am using refilled cartriges or because of a design
problem, but when open the top and look into the printer, the "floor"
of the printer is covered in ink. When I clean this with alcohol, it
seems to be all colors. Maybe I damaged this "air pressure relief
valve" and ink is leaking out.

In any case, the printer seems somewhat happy about the ink volume
now. At least it doesn't immediatly say it's empty. But it sure is
messy!

-d

 

[FRED]

Have a look at this site http://www.jrinkjet.co.uk/p20.htm it's for the
LC-02 cartridge but the construction is basicaly the same and you'll be able
to see which areas should not be filled
cheers