Price Gun Ink Refill: When and How to Change It
Grey print. Half a character missing. A price that reads clearly on one end of the label and fades out on the other. Every one of those is the same message from the tool: you need a price gun ink refill.
The good news is that a price gun ink refill is the easiest maintenance job on the whole tool. There is no cartridge to order, no cleaning cycle and no software. You open a small flap at the nose of the gun, pull one part out, push another part in, and print six labels onto scrap paper. Under a minute, start to finish.
This guide covers when to do it, how to do it, how long a roller should last, and what to do when the print is still bad afterwards. It is written around the Easy Tag 5500EOS, an 8-digit one-line gun on the standard MX-5500 style body, and the same method applies to most one-line price guns.
Price Gun Ink Refill or Roller Replacement?
People search for a price gun ink refill expecting to top up a reservoir. That is not how these guns work, and knowing the difference saves you a mess.
The ink lives in a small foam-cored roller that sits behind the print head. As the wheels rotate past it, they pick up ink. When the foam runs dry, the print fades. So a price gun ink refill in practice means swapping the roller for a fresh one. It is a replaceable part, not a tank.
Treat the roller the way you treat a pen refill. When the foam is spent, fit a fresh one and bin the old one. That is the whole ink maintenance path on this tool, and it is why the Easy Tag 5500EOS kit ships with three rollers: one fitted in the gun and two spares in the box.
One-line ink rollers are sold as ordinary consumables across the MX-5500 style range, so when your spares run out you buy a roller, not a bottle of ink. Keeping one sealed in a drawer means a price gun ink refill never costs you a morning of labelling.
Five Signs You Need a Price Gun Ink Refill
A roller does not die suddenly. It fades, and most people put up with bad labels for a week before acting. These five signs mean a price gun ink refill is due.
- Grey instead of black. The characters are complete but washed out. This is the earliest sign.
- Patchy characters. Parts of a digit print and parts do not, so a 9 reads like a 3.
- One end darker than the other. Usually the roller is tilted in its clips, but on an old roller it means the foam has worn unevenly.
- Priming no longer helps. A healthy roller darkens after five or six squeezes. If ten scrap labels still look grey, the foam is spent.
- Blank labels straight after a long break. A gun left with the ink flap open dries out fast, and a roller that dried in storage will not recover.
Do not wait until the print is unreadable. Faint prices get questioned at the till and misread on the shelf, and a price gun ink refill costs less than one confused customer.
How to Change the Ink Roller: Step by Step
Work over a sheet of paper. Old ink transfers to anything it touches, including your fingers, where it stays for two days. Do a price gun ink refill on a bare kitchen counter once and you will not do it twice.
- Open the ink flap. A small plastic door sits at the nose of the gun, directly above the print head. Flip it open.
- Grip the tab on the old roller. The roller is a short cylinder with a small tab on one end. Use the label scraper from your kit or a pair of tweezers rather than your fingers.
- Pull it straight out. It lifts out of its clips with light pressure. Do not twist it, and do not lever it against the print head.
- Bin the old roller. Wrap it in the paper you are working over. Loose in a bin, it marks whatever it touches.
- Line the new roller up. It only fits one way round. Match the tab to the same side the old one sat on.
- Press it in until it clicks. It should sit square and level, with no gap on either side. A roller that rocks is not seated.
- Close the flap. The gun will print with the flap open, and the roller will dry out faster if you leave it that way.
That is the whole price gun ink refill. If the roller resists going in, take it out and check for a paper scrap or dried adhesive in the housing.
Prime the New Roller Before You Touch Stock
This step gets skipped after nearly every price gun ink refill, and then people report a faulty roller. A new roller has ink in the foam but none on the print wheels yet.
Squeeze five or six labels onto a scrap of paper. Watch each one get darker than the last. By the fifth or sixth, the print should be solid and even across all eight characters. Only then should you start on real stock.
If the print is still uneven after eight scrap labels, open the flap and look at how the roller sits. One side high means it is not fully clipped in. Press it down and prime again.
How Long Does an Ink Roller Last?
This is the question everybody asks before their first price gun ink refill, and the one with no honest single answer, because it depends on how you use the gun.
Three things drive it:
- Volume. A market trader printing 400 labels on a Saturday works a roller far harder than a small shop printing 30 a week.
- How many wheels you use. Printing eight characters pulls ink across the whole roller. Printing a three-digit price only wears one section.
- Storage between sessions. Heat and open air dry foam out. A roller can die in a drawer without printing a single label.
No manufacturer publishes a label yield figure for these rollers, so treat any number you see quoted online with caution. Judge it by the print instead. Do the price gun ink refill when characters start coming out faint or patchy and priming no longer fixes it, rather than on a calendar.
The practical answer for most small retailers is that the two spare rollers in the Easy Tag kit will carry you well past the 5,000 labels that ship with it. You are unlikely to need a price gun ink refill from an outside supplier in your first season.
Before you order anything, look in the box your gun arrived in. The Easy Tag 5500EOS ships with three rollers, one fitted and two spare, so most owners already have months of ink on the shelf. The same kit is sold in two colours, the red Easy Tag 5500EOS kit and the blue Easy Tag 5500EOS kit, and both include the spares.
How to Make a Roller Last Longer
Small habits stretch the time between each price gun ink refill.
- Close the ink flap at the end of every session. Open air is the fastest way to dry foam.
- Store spares sealed. Keep unopened rollers in a sealed bag or their original wrapper, away from radiators, windows and vehicle dashboards.
- Keep the gun cool and dry. The same conditions that protect label adhesive protect the ink.
- Do not over-squeeze. Firing blank labels for fun burns ink for nothing.
- Wipe the print wheels occasionally. Paper dust mixes with ink into a paste that blocks the fine parts of characters. A dry cloth is enough. No solvents.
- Never oil the gun. Oil migrates to the roller and ruins it, and it collects dust against the print head.
Troubleshooting After a Price Gun Ink Refill
The print is still faint with a brand new roller
Prime it properly. Six labels minimum, on scrap paper. If it is still faint, the roller is not fully clipped in, or the spare itself dried out in storage. Try the second spare.
The labels come out smeared
Excess ink on the wheels, or ink that has spread into the roller housing. Print onto scrap paper until it clears. If the smearing continues, wipe the housing with a dry cloth and fit a fresh roller.
Half the characters print and half do not
The roller is tilted. Pull it out and press it back in so it sits level in both clips. If it still prints half, check for adhesive or paper dust caked on the wheels that are failing.
The new roller will not go in
Something is in the housing. A torn label corner or dried adhesive is the usual cause. Clear it out with the scraper tip, never a metal blade, then fit the roller.
Ink is getting onto the labels around the price
The roller is over-inked or the housing is contaminated. Wipe the housing with a dry cloth, fit a clean roller, and print ten scrap labels before returning to stock.
If your problem is labels jamming rather than ink, the cause is almost always in the loading path. Work through How to Load a Price Gun: A Beginner’s Step-by-Step Guide, which covers the sprocket, the inner gate and the first-25-labels rule.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you actually refill a price gun ink roller?
Not in the way you refill a printer. The ink sits in a foam roller, and that roller is a consumable. A price gun ink refill means pulling the spent roller out and clicking a fresh one in.
How many ink rollers come with the Easy Tag 5500EOS?
Three. One is fitted in the gun and two spares are in the box, along with 5,000 white labels and a label scraper, for $24.99.
How do I know the roller is dry rather than the gun being faulty?
Print six labels onto scrap paper. If the print gets darker with each squeeze, the roller is fine and only needed priming. If all six stay grey, the roller is spent and a price gun ink refill will fix it.
Why is one side of my label darker than the other?
The roller is sitting crooked in its clips. Pull it out by the tab and press it back in until it sits level and clicks on both sides.
Does the ink roller fit any MX-5500 style gun?
One-line price gun ink rollers are made to a common standard across MX-5500 style bodies. Buy any roller listed as compatible with one-line MX-5500 guns and it should seat correctly. If a seller asks you to identify the gun, the Easy Tag 5500EOS carries manufacturer part number PG004.
How long does a price gun ink refill take?
Under a minute for the swap, plus about thirty seconds of priming on scrap paper.
Will the ink dry out if I do not use the gun for months?
Yes, if it is stored badly. Close the ink flap, keep the gun somewhere cool and dry, and keep spares in a sealed bag. A roller left in an open drawer in a warm room can be useless by the time you need it.
Is the ink safe to use on food packaging?
Apply price and date labels to packaging, wrapping, a lid or the outside of a container, never directly onto unwrapped food. That is correct practice for any hand-held labeller and it keeps both the label and the ink away from anything a customer eats.
Never Get Caught With a Dry Roller
A price gun ink refill only becomes a problem when you have no spare in the drawer. That is the real reason the Easy Tag 5500EOS ships with three rollers instead of one: the gun keeps printing clean labels long after the first roller gives up.
The complete kit is $24.99 and includes the 8-digit gun, 5,000 white labels, 3 ink rollers and a label scraper. Choose your colour: the Easy Tag 5500EOS in Blue or the Easy Tag 5500EOS in Red.
US standard delivery takes 3 to 5 business days, and returns are accepted within 30 days of delivery on unused kits in original packaging. Easy Tag does not ship to Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico or US territories.
