We have about 15 HP DeskJet printers throughout our organization. I’m spending over $2,500 a year on inkjet cartridges.
I’ve identified two reasons we are overprinting on the DeskJets:
1. Everyone who has a deskjet can also print to a network laserjet. However, why get up and walk over to the network laserjet when you can just print it to the printer on your desktop.
2. The marketing materials (small but frequent, personalized copies) printed on the deskjets will go to a new network color laser printer. The color laser will have permissions set and logs monitored periodically. The color laserjet should allow me to remove at least 8 of the deskjets.
Okay, so those issues aside, I was told to investigate “refilling” the inkjet cartridges; that the cost for this is significantly lower than buying new cartridges. I’m not keen on this and want to put together valid arguments against it. (Kudos if you can convince me it would indeed be worth it.)
How many times can you refill a cartridge?
I understand that cartridges have the print head built into them. That over time the print quality can suffer if you continually refill them because the print head wears out. Exactly how many times can you refill a cartridge?
Someone told me that you can’t just let empty cartridges sit around for weeks at a time because any ink left in them will dry and clog things up. So how often should one refill empty cartridges?
There’s one of these places that refill cartridges about a mile from here but I haven’t checked them out. I dread adding the task of coming and going to this place to my list of things to do. Do you have to wait while they fill them? Or do you leave them and pick them up later? Or do you drop yours off and pick up other refilled cartridges that someone else provided?
So, what’s your experience and recommendation?