Re-Inking Used Printer Ribbons
From: Chuck Darling
February 12, 2025
Re: The Re-Inker
Back in the early 1990's,
the company I worked for
used Okidata Dot-Matrix Printers
that used Red/Black cartridges
that cost 18 dollars each...
They cost $62 dollars now...
We used six per week...
I found a Re-Inker machine
advertised in computer industry
periodicals.
The Re-Inker had a spindle, specially
ordered to fit the Okidata ribbons.
It would drive the ribbon at about
one inch per second, past a tubular
ink reservoir that had a pinhole
on the side.
You could adjust the reservoir height
to re-ink the ribbon where it was worn.
This worked out fine for the large red/black
ribbon cartridges, re-inking only the black.
Once I got it going, we saved on
four cartridges per week.
Four cartridges @$18 = $72 dollars/week.
52 week operation saved $3744 annually.
That would save $12,896 per year today...
Not bad.
Small black ribbons can be pulled out
in a Ziplock bag, and sprayed with
WD-40. Wear gloves.
If you want to build a reliable automatic
Jig, use an old phono turntable
with a (3D printed) sprocket
to drive the ribbon. Put a well below
the ink supply, to catch and re-use
ink drops.
Back in 1990, we used several IBM AT/286
machines, with the brand-new (beta test)
Intel Inboard 386.
That and a couple multiport serial cards,
and our machine could handle 12 users
on Wyse Terminals, or PC's. Cacheing
Controllers for multiple Hard Drives, and
a custom print-spooler program kept
two OKI 2410's very busy.
Multiuser Multi-tasking Dos ...
[Chuck's 00Cedar JPICedar ]
[ This page built with JPICedar by Chuck Darling Tuesday Feb-12-2025 Time : 9:11a]