Refill Canon Pixma CLI-8 und PGI-5-Cartridges: Inner life of a cartridge
There´s a difference between ink-cartridges sold by Canon and manufacturers like HP and Lexmark: The further contain ink only, the latter come with an integrated print-head.
There are two chambers in each cartridge. The rear one holds two sponges and a small fleece at the ink-outlet. The frontal chamber contains the pure ink without a sponge.
Canon-CLI-Cartridge: Sponge on right side, hollow chamber left.
At the front end of the cartridge is a small chip, where the printer stores the present ink-level. When the chip signals an empty cartridge, you cannot continue printing, but just for the moment. We show you on page 7, how to deactivate this monitoring.
There is a small air-duct on top of the cartridge, which cares for pressure equalization: If ink is supposed to flow out, air has to flow in. You open this duct by removing the plastic-strip when you want to insert a new cartridge.
In the picture above we have removed the complete label which covers the air-duct. You don´t have to remove the label to start printing, just the plastic-strip has to go.
