Rechargink, a soda fountain dispenser for inkjet cartridges
By Cyrus Farivar 
posted Sep 28th 2006 8:05PM
posted Sep 28th 2006 8:05PM
Who wouldn't love a really convenient and easy way to refill those annoying empty inkjet cartridges, besides every printer company ever? With that in mind, KIS/Photo-Me is displaying its new "Rechargink" system at the Photokina exhibition in Germany this week, which is great news for consumers and retailers and terrible blow to HP, Canon, and friends. The Rechargink is basically like a soda fountain dispenser, but for ink, based on what we can tell from this photo -- apparently you belly up to the kiosk with your empty container, pull down the lever, and then you have a functioning ink cartridge again within five minutes. No word on price nor availability, nor on what happens if you try to make a suicide soda version of ink, either.
Imagine what would happen if someone switched the machine's ink filling cartriges around. Red has never looked so GREEN!
Do we really print that much ?
This is a pretty good idea, lets just hope the despinser has some sort of safety latch so you can't press the button and it shoots all over your clothes.
Two thoughts:
1) Refilled Ink is a very bad ideal for photo printing. Besides just looking bad, Tomshardware did a study and found that it the long run it usually ended up costing more thanks to increased printer mortality rates.
2) If it is cheap text you're after (and who isn't?) there really isn't any excuse anymore not to own a cheap laser, which will be cheaper than any refilled inkjet would be anyway. Nice lasers can be had for $50-$100 all over the place these days. For that reason I'd be more interested in a toner refill.
Basically, kiosks like these are for suckers.
I will think of this the next time i need to refill about 150 ink tanks.
Actually, every printer company ever wants you to buy new cartidges only because that's how they REALLY make money with printers. Case in point: often you'll find that you can buy a cheap printer only to find that the cartidges cost more than the printer itself(like Lexmark).
neat idea!
I also would say that laser printers are awesome, true the toner cost about twice as much as a single printer cartridge, but then again, my toner has lasted for over an entire year of hard use and is only now starting to run low.
As for this I think it could be pretty awesome to see in action.
Exactly. Look at any HP Printer around $100. They use a 5ml black and color cartridge. If you use it all at once and none of it drys you might get 150 pages. At $15 a cartrdige, that's around $.10 per page.
Suppose you take your same $100 and buy a little Samsung Laser. The $70 toners will last 3,000 pages. That's just over $.04 per page. Better quality text by far too.
And for photo printing, I wouldn't tough anything but Epson with Epson inks. Don't skimp on quality with photos or they'll fade away very quickly.
I've refilled the ink on my HP 5100 deskjet printer well more than ten times. At $30 a pop for a refill (for a damned small cartridge, too), the $15 refill kit I bought a while ago has paid for itself over many times.
Boo on anyone who says it kills printers. And even if it has a slight impact, it's a $100 printer. The kit has paid for a new printer, and I'm still well in the black.
QUOW, HP's respond well to refilling partly because they're poor photo printers. Large nozzle sizes and thermal printing technology makes for crappy quality, but less chance of clogging.
However, you'd be saving even more with a Laser for your same $100. Toner is refillable too, and you wouldn't need to refill a toner 10 times =)
I always said I'd pay premium for a quality printer that simply had ink tanks that could be refilled with any ink you wanted. Maybe a setup like this will force the hand of printer manufacturers to put a stop to this scheme of selling printers at a loss and carts at a ridiculous profit, not to mention all the waste they generate when disposed of.
I remember the results of one study where it was determined that it would cost close to $250,000 to fill a 15 gallon gas tank with color printer ink, making it even more expensive than Dom Perignon.
They'd better nail those kiosks down.
Although its a fact that the printer companies are trying to gouge the consumer to death on these ink cartridges, I've lost two printers to non-oem cartridges with an Epson Printer and a Canon all in one. They just clogged up and I spent countless days, not just hours in trying to unclog them, but they were never the same. I could blame it on a few factors, the heat of where I live in the summer ( las Vegas ) sometimes only using the printers once every two weeks and the cheap ink cartridges I purchased from ebay. On my next inkjet printer purchase I'm going to take it on the chin and only buy oem ink cartridges to see if I get more than a 6mth - 1 year life span out of a printer, because frankly these printers are becoming like bic disposable lighters in my house. Thank God for cheap laser printers that work flawlessly!
I need something like that for gas...
I won't touch generic ink with a ten foot pole. It produces awful print quality, kills off the best printers on the market (Epson and Canon), and produces terrible longevity. It savings are generally false, too, as generics usually have less ink in them than the manufacturer and clog more frequently, causing you to run more ink-wasting cleanings as well as wasting paper and prints in general. And nothing can touch an Epson photo print printed with Epson ink on Epson paper. Worth every penny.
Rechargink? Veddy interestink!
(But stupid!)
JR
Check out http://www.inkisit.com - Kodak is launching a new printer where the ink is significantly cheaper - only $10 for Black and $15 for color ink.
Cheap ink is one thing. High quality cheap ink is another.
When you buy a refilled cartridge from a retail refiller, the quality is all over the place. You can buy coffee at a gas station for 1.00 or coffee at Starbucks for $2.00. Which one will taste better?
How about not buying ink at all! There is a website called www.inkjetsforever.com. When you sign up to be a member, you never buy ink again. This is the best deal anywhere and the ink is the highest quality.