CFOG's PIP, March 1988, Volume 7 No. 2, Whole No. 64, page 20
Inkfinity: An Endless Ink Supply?
by Benjamin H. Cohen
Copyright 1987 by Benjamin H. Cohen. All rights reserved.
It seemed like a good idea: a little felt pad that you glue onto your ribbon cartridge and saturate with ink. As the ribbon goes by it picks up ink from the felt pad. Re-inking on the fly! Never a light unreadable printout again. Almost.
Installation wasn't difficult. A little instant glue [not provided with the kit] and the felt pad was in place. You glue it on the cartridge next to the takeup side of the ribbon so that it's inked as it reenters the cartridge. The pad is cut on an angle and you stick it on so that it sticks out a little bit beyond the plastic, making the ribbon rub on it as it goes by. Let it sit overnight. Saturate the pad with ink. Print. Print. Print some more.
It does sort of work. I went a long time before I finally decided that the print density had deteriorated and the cartridge had to be conventionally reinked. But all was not smooth. The regular need to put a few drops of ink on the pad wasn't the problem. The problem is that the inking can be terribly uneven. When the printer isn't running the ribbon sits in one place, resting on the saturated ink pad. So don't add ink to the pad unless you're going to be doing a lot of printing at once. The pad will make the resting ribbon too wet, resulting in random sections of your text turning out appear to have been printed in bold.
Finally, when I printed a long run of some form letters advertising PC-File 8O the Inkfinity pad just couldn't keep up, no matter how well I seemed to ink the pad. I suppose I just needed to put more on and with some experimentation I might be able to get it to stay dark. After about 75 pages of dense text things were getting a bit light. I took the ribbon off and put it on my MacInker.
Inkfinity is from Raven Systems of Oakland, N. J., P. O. Box 253, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07414. For $6.00 you get two small felt pads, a small bottle of ink (30 cc.), and one page of instructions in a Zip-Loc sandwich bag. Shipping and handling is $3.00 plus 25 cents per item ordered. Kits are available with black, blue, brown, red, yellow, or green ink. Additional pads are $3.75 for three. Ink is $3.50 per bottle.
If you don't use a lot of ribbons and consider the initial investment for a MacInker or similar inker too much, Inkfinity can extend the life of your ribbons at a much lower initial cost. Whether you'll be happy with the results is not entirely certain.
More Ribbon Re-inkers
We haven't tried Lelnker(tm) from Ben Torres Ribbon Company, 590 East Industrial Road, Unit 15, San Bernardino, CA 92408, but we've seen a few good things said about it. The universal inker with power supply is $59.95, and you can save $5 if you don't need the 9 volt transformer. Four ounces of black ink are $7. A standard bit is included, which will suffice for many ribbon cartridges, but be sure to inquire about optional bits for the ribbons YOU need to reink. Shipping is $2.50, and you have 21 days to ask for a no-questions-asked refund.
As we've said before, if nylon ribbons are satisfactory for your print requirements, reinking will save you a bundle on ribbons.