A HP 301 XL cartridge being tested by Reciclados del Cinca
Spanish remanufacturer Reciclados del Cinca finds that HP 300 XL and 301 XL colour cartridges cannot be remanufactured effectively more than once after many are returned with defects.
Reciclados del Cinca, which is also a member of ETIRA, has announced that it “cannot accept recycled housings” of HP 300 XL and 301 XL colour cartridges “seeing that we can not guarantee the reliability of the second use cartridges” and “we can not guarantee its proper operation”; with the company noticing “an increase in cartridge returns” of the two models.
After analysing the returned cartridges, the company found that “virtually all returned cartridges have electrical problems” and “much of the increase” in returns can be accounted for by “cartridges that have been recycled a second time”.
As a result, the company said that it decided in February to acquire new equipment allowing it “to check each time the status of the resistance and the cartridge nozzles” of the faulty cartridges; and concluded that “the OEM has introduced changes in the strength and durability of the injectors, preventing reuse” of the cartridges “we may once have recycled”.
The tests were performed on 100 previously recycled HP 300 XL and 301 XL cartridges and found that “only six of them have worked well to run out, the rest were detected misprints […] or simply stop working after being rejected by the printer”.
Explaining the problem in more detail, Reciclados del Cinca said that “an original HP 301 XL colour cartridge (new or used) must have 612 injectors […] as the cartridges are depleted, the number of injectors that work correctly decreases”. As a result, the company found that cartridges with between 500 and 612 working injectors “can cause mild defects”; those with between 400 and 500 working injectors can cause “serious print defects”; and any with less than 400 correctly working injectors “will be rejected by the printer”.
Javier Martinez of fellow Spanish remanufacturer Consuprint remarked that with these findings, HP “are going in the wrong direction” if they wish to comply with the new EU Ecolabel “and by no means could they apply for this accreditation on these products”; with the EU Ecolabel’s guidelines released in January strongly favouring products that can be easily remanufactured or recycled. He added that as the products had previously been “built to last”, the products “must have been weakened on purpose” by the OEM.
Have you encountered the same problem with these cartridge models, or any other OEM cartridges? Write to us in the comments below or email news@therecycler.com.