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  4. PGI-580, CLI-581 Refill options
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  4. PGI-580, CLI-581 Refill options

PGI-580, CLI-581 Refill options

The newer Canon models have effectively replaced many of the older printers that use the PGI-550/570 and CLI-570/571 type cartridges but with these new printers the chips and opportunities for both compatible and refilling alternatives have drastically reduced.

If you have a printer that is using the newer cartridge types and refilling is essential to your needs then we would strongly recommend you get an earlier printer model that uses the 550/551 or 570/571 cartridges and put your 580/581 compatible printer on ice for now.

The reasons for this are simple:

  1. Compatible single-use chips for these printers have been available since late 2018
  2. There are still no ARCs (Auto Reset Chips) available. They did appear briefly in September/October and promptly disappeared again within a couple of months. It’s highly likely the firmware in the chips was unreliable and had to be withdrawn.
  3. There are no Chip Resetters available for these chips and some years on it looks incredibly unlikely that one will be developed.

Ok, so that’s most of the bad news… The good news is that you can still refill your OEM/Original cartridges with a compatible ink and use those but you will have to disable the ink monitoring so regular, direct monitoring of the cartridges (remove and weigh for example) will be required to avoid running empty.

There’s more bad news though.

DO NOT refill your yellow cartridge unless you thoroughly clean it until all traces of the original ink have been removed. Using the 581Y (or equivalent from any other sales zone – like the CLI-281Y) with a refill ink is likely to result in the yellow jello issue that has plagued many other Canon cartridges since the issue appeared with the advent of the CLI-42 and CLI-551/251 yellow with their new ink formulation.

Solutions?

Inks

We now have an ink set developed for the 580/581 cartridge types (and equivalents in other global sales zones).

Cartridges

[In development]

We are now in the process of cleaning PGI-580 and CLI-581 XL cartridges, particularly the 581Y (Yellow) type to allow end-users to modify and use these cartridges with refill inks. Ink monitoring would need to be disabled but, coupled with refill tools (electronic scales, etc..) should provide a refill solution without necessarily needing to purchase a set of XL OEM carts yourselves. More testing is required however.

Refill Tool Kit

[In development]

The tools and information required to make it possible to refill cartridges and monitor ink levels manually without needing a chip resetter.

We will of course, still be keeping our eyes open for a solution that retains ink monitoring and will adapt our refill options accordingly.

Products

Watch this space… We will update as/when we have the relevant products available.

Updated on 9 December 2021

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