That can't be good…

[A Smug Dill]

One of the parcels that arrived yesterday contained 100 no-name ink cartridges. My ‘standard’ precaution these days is to film the unpacking of every shipment from China.

 

As I gave the flimsy black shipping bag a 360° in front of the camera, I noticed there was some clear tape with large, bold Chinese writing on it in red (but difficult to read because of the black background) sealing one edge. Upon opening it up, there was a white padded bag sealed with the same type of tape; the words, which I could then read, was along the lines of, “Wind control quality speci…”, which I took to mean “special tape used by quality control inspectors for shipments by air”.

 

That can't be good, I thought to myself, and it wasn't: inside were two clear bags holding 50 cartridges each, looking like “kill rooms” in Dexter but with blue ink instead of red splatter all over the walls, and some ink has escaped the bags and stained my fingers.

 

 

AliExpress didn't give me the runaround this time when I raised a dispute and submitted the evidence, but issued me a full refund within minutes, and didn't insist on my returning the items by post.

 

[inkstainedruth]

YIKES!  What a mess!  

How hard was it to clean the ink off your hands?

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[A Smug Dill]

2 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

How hard was it to clean the ink off your hands?

 

Most of the ink stains are gone from my hands 12 hours later; but then, I've washed my hands many times in the meantime, both immediately after the incident (which did not remove all that much of the colour) and in the process of doing laundry, food preparation, doing dishes, taking a hot shower, etc.

[A Smug Dill]

… and I was able to salvage 97 of the ink cartridges, after securing a full refund from AliExpress.

 

Hard to believe all that carnage was due (almost entirely) to two ink cartridges with faulty end caps, which just so happened to find themselves in separate lots of 50. Even if the defect rate were (only and exactly) 2%, the probability of that happening, if I'm not mistaken, would only be ⁵⁰⁄₉₉ or 50.50̇5̇%? I wouldn't make it look just so damn ‘convenient’ if I was staging a scam claim.

 

Anyway, what I did was dump all 100 ink cartridges into a smallish plastic container, filled it with water, and then stood it in an ultrasonic bath. Almost immediately I got two floaters that insisted on being sideways, but all the other cartridges were happy to be vertical orientation one way or the other. I removed the two nearly empty floaters and poured the stained water down the drain, refilled the container with clean water, and rearranged those cartridges so that they were all floating with their butts facing up, then put the thing through another ultrasonic cleaning cycle; rinse and repeat, until the bath stayed clear even after the cycle has run its course.

 

I then held the ink cartridges in lots of five or so inside a paper towel, and swung my arm hard to remove the moisture that may be trapped around the seal at the mouth with centrifugal force, and then with the cartridges facing the other way as well. Checking the paper towel, I identified that there was one more cartridge that leaked tiny droplets from the rear end when swung. All the others cleaned up fine and left no ink spots on the paper towel.

 

Inspecting the two floaters that were set aside, there was nothing wrong with their ‘mouths’ which were still perfectly sealed; the incontinence was at their rear ends.

[antares1966]

Welp…could have been Baystate Blue…

[inkstainedruth]

12 hours ago, antares1966 said:

Welp…could have been Baystate Blue…

Yup....

I remember a few years ago the photos someone took of BSB staining a stainless steel sink.  AND how totally PO'd his wife was about it, too....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedturh