HP 7475A Plotter: Refilled Pen Performance

Squirting brightly colored CMY ink mixes into an assortment of not-quite-dead-yet plotter pens produced reasonable results:

The blotches on the legend in the lower left corner show that a refilled plotter pen can accumulate a droplet of ink around its nib, which should come as no surprise. I wiped off the excess immediately after refilling each pen, let the assortment sit for a few hours to (presumably) let the new ink reach the nib, and wiped them off before inserting them in the plotter’s pen carousel. All I can say is that I used up a bunch of paper towels in the process…

A closer look at the plot shows Pretty Good If You Ask Me results:

The two blue-ish pens have less flow than the others, resulting in dotted lines that should be continuous. As nearly as I can tell, that’s a function of how much OEM ink has solidified in the fiber nib and, most likely, the fiber rod that draws ink from the sponge reservoir inside the body.

And, of course, the colors produced by adding CMY printer ink to the surviving OEM ink aren’t found in any catalog. I’m also blithely ignoring the difference between the inks inside plotter pens intended for paper and those for overhead transparencies; at this late date, that’s defined to Not Matter.