Staples

Originally Posted by brucie

Ever printer i have found has had cartridges in it and they always have some ink in them. Ive been using a hypodermic needle to take the ink out and put it in my printers cartridges. Pretty cool. Ive got a full cartridge right now from removing the ink from 5 trash printers. Good times.. lol doesn't take much to make me happy :O)

I don't have or use printers but get some cartridges with scrapped printers.

Somewhere, I believe, theres 'something weird going on' with the whole subject of printers & ink cartridges.

First, the printer costs less than $100, while the ink, costs 1/2 or more than that, but you get 'free' ink with the brand new printer.



Then they give you good $$ for a empty cartridge, they actually go out of their way to do this.
So for a $4 rebate, they must have a value of, say $10 or they are getting the $$ back some other way. I hear its because they make lots of $$ of the resales of ink cartridges.

I clicked a few weeks ago to sucking the last of the ink out & refilling a used cartridge. But a guy who works in a shop that sells cartridges says "If theres a few molecules of dirt in there, it blocks the ink jet unit".
But then, lots of ink cartridges have their own inkjets on them, so they are disposable. Dosn't make sense.

They also say "Its really expensive to make the ink in the first place". Yes, I can see that, anything chemical needs a LOT of processes. Industrial manufacturing processes are not cheap, clean rooms, Tankers of expensive chemicals, wages, startup costs, industrail waste disposal etc etc.

But, how much does it cost to make a printer?
Plastic molds are not cheap, circuit boards - with gold on them & all the parts, wires, power supply, LCD screens, springs, plastic, screws & bolts, metal manufacturing assembly, shipping, taxes, waste & guarantees etc etc etc...
All up $100? I don't think so.

Try & spend $100 on another sort of electrical item & you won't get anywhere near that volume of material.

The only thing I can add. Is that I have found the gold on the cartridge contacts is quite solid, with very little copper backing & there must be some sort of inherent value in it.
Even the little metal traces on them is gold & it stands up to the HCL/Peroxide extraction a lot better than most other gold items I put into the acid wash.