Refilling the Canon CL-38, CL-41 or CL-51 colour ink cartridge at home is very easy and can offer you great results, with very little equipment. All you need is at least one syringe, plus some universal . Simply remove the label, widen the fill holes (if necessary) and fill the relevant chambers of the Canon ink cartridge with the amount of ink mentioned below.
For these cartridges, we recommend injecting the following amount of ink into each of the chambers (cyan/magenta/yellow):
CL-38/2146B001: 4ml (12ml Total)
CL-41/0617B001: 7ml (21ml Total)
CL-51/0618B001: 7ml (21ml Total)
The air holes of these units are very small, and you may have trouble getting the needle of the syringe to fit. If this is the case, I would recommend using the tool provided with many refill kits or a small drill bit to widen it.
We recommend sticking to the lower fill for the CL-38 as these cartridges have a smaller sponge and are physically restricted inside the cartridge. As such, over filling them can result in ink spilling inside your printer.
Once this cartridge has been refilled, your printer will retain the same ink level estimate it has previously. These cartridges have no way of knowing that they now contain fresh ink, and only estimate ink levels based upon how much printing had been done previously. Eventually, your printer will believe that the cartridge is completely empty and prevent you from printing until a small prompt has been given. More information on this topic can be found here.
This guide is intended purely to show where to inject the ink into these cartridges and how much we recommend using. For full refill instructions for these cartridges, please click here.
Video Guide
Compatibility
These cartridges fit a variety of Canon printers including the Canon MultiPass 450, MP150, MP160, MP170 Canon Pixma iP1200, iP1300, iP1600, iP1700, iP1800, iP1900, iP2200, iP2400, iP2500, iP2600, iP6210D, iP6220D, iP6310D, MP140, MP150, MP160, MP170, MP180, MP190, MP210, MP220, MP450, MP460, MP470, MX300 and MX31.
