Remanufactured Ink Cartridges - Thoughts?

[Munsell]

We use 2 older HP Designjet 5500s for proofing layouts (on regular paper) and die positions (on vinyl) in or prepress department. Nothing coming off of the printers are especially high res or color critical.

We don't fly through ink, but at nearly $250 for the OEM cartridges (HP 81 dye) it adds up. I've started looking into remanufactured cartridges, which run more in the $80 per cartridge range.

Does anyone have any experience using these types of cartridges? Negative or positive? If so, do you have a preferred or trusted vendor? These are older printers, so I wouldn't expect any type of warranty void from using non OEM cartridges. Thoughts?

 

[Steve_S]

As long as nothing is color critical (or even needs to be color "close") it would appear to be a no-brainer at 3 cartridges to 1. We use only Epson ink in our Stylus because we do artist reproductions along with our proofing and such, so don't have any experience there.

I have used refills on an HP large desktop model that is only for mock-ups. The color varies pretty drastically on those, so that would be the only red flag. Sounds like a personal taste vs. wallet question. If you can handle odd color shifts, save the money!

 

[ffashe]

It's like between the proverbial devil and the deep blue sea. I had a HP5500 laserjet running at over $300 per cartridge, a real killer to business and the cartridges run out fast. Switched to remanufactured cartridges which saved me a whole lot of money but in the long run destroyed the printer which is just as well cos it's really no good for any good quality print anyways. Now I run a Xerox at less than half the cost of consumables.
Summary, remanufactured cartridges save you a lot of money but please prepare for the big repair bill down the road.

 

[Munsell]

My worry was that the non OEM cartridges would destroy the printer. Good to know. I don't plan to keep the printers in service for TOO much longer, but they do work perfectly fine for what we use them for. I wish we could go laser on these, but we're printing full form layouts for 40" presses on them.

 

[acacia print]

We just tried remanufactured cartridges in our Brother colour printer and I got a shock when black screens (grays). Luckily I dont ned to use it for colour proofing... But it will now be a while until I can use them up to put back in proper colour cartridges to rectify the colour issue. For cheap nasty work it will be ok, but not the thing to impress a client I can tell you.