Advice on Printers Ink Cartridge Issues

I have a question regarding the new inkjet printers that have multiple cartridges. They usually have one for black (a larger one), then three or four others, a different color each. The printer I bought, Canon Pixma MP560, will NOT print anything if ANY of the ink cartridges are empty. So, you can't print in color if ithe main black cartridge is empty. Does anyone know of ANY printer out there that does NOT do this? One that lets you print from other colors if one is empty?

I have an Epson R220 that will print no matter what inks are full or empty, BUT, doing so means the missing ink shows out and makes it a bad print, and if you're wanting to let the colours produce black print in Lou of that cartridge being empty, then it's worth noting that end results may be mixed, and the remaining colours (used to make the missing colour) will run out more quickly than if being used for what they are intended. Surely the easiest option is to just get another black cartridge I'd of thought ? I usually buy 2 sets of ink at a time, and double up on the black cartridges, mine is a 6 ink cartridge, so as I am about to run out of my last ink, I place an order for 2x6 cartridges so I have a spare set (cheaper in shipping usually), then I add say another 4 black cartridges on top of that, then I am good to go when the printer next runs out, much better then trying to print when you run out of a cartridge using remaining inks, just a thought.

I should stock up, but the cartridges are expensive. And the main problem is I always run out of one unknowingly right when I need to print something important. And, it's usually like the yellow one, when I only need to print black. This is my first experience with any printer that does this, so I wondered if it was just Canon (to make you buy more cartridges) or if it was all of them. Thanks for the advice! By the way, what I ended up doing was taking the cartridges out of an old printer and using that ink to fill mine. Did I EVER make a mess. See photo…

I have a question regarding the new inkjet printers that have multiple cartridges. They usually have one for black (a larger one), then three or four others, a different color each. The printer I bought, Canon Pixma MP560, will NOT print anything if ANY of the ink cartridges are empty. So, you can't print in color if ithe main black cartridge is empty.

Does anyone know of ANY printer out there that does NOT do this? One that lets you print from other colors if one is empty?

Well my HP Desk Jet will print when the black is out, but only colors, anything that requires black it will not print on the page, just blank, but anything color yep print, mine did it last night it's a HP DeskJet C4400 with a scanner.

Forgot an old epson my wife once had, and if colors were out it would print but yeck it looked bad.

Jimbo1

Just to follow up, The ability for a printer to print with the remaining cartridges when one is empty is a valuable feature and needs to be considered carefully when buying a new printer. As you say its a shame when an empty black cartridge prevents the printing of anything..even a colour only photograph for example. I think the printer manufacturers favour making the machines unusuable when just one cartridge is empty……there may be sound technical reasons for this but undoubtably it has financial implications for them as well. Most of my printers (actually all of them,) do have the ability to print, even though, say, the black cartridge is empty and this is a big feature as the remaining colours can combine to make up a "composite black" which although not quite as "defined" as a genuine "keystone black" is a servicable alternative in some circumstances. I also invested in a sryinge with a blunt needle, 4 large bottles of injet inks (I buy them in 250 Milli Litre bottles, (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) and can refill my own cartridges very quickly and very simply. With a bit of practice ( quite a bit of practice actually ) it possible to refill a black cartridge, and refit it in the printer and be printing again in about 1 minute, and this includes donning a pair of surgical grade latex gloves to prevent the results shown in your excellent photo ! and spreading newspaper over my workbench. A 250 ml bottle of inkjet flush is also a wise investment together with a small supply of tissue paper. My laser printers are treated in a similar way but the 4 laser toner cartridges (on the colour laser) take a little longer to refill using bulk purchase toner powder and the resetting of them can be a bit fiddly….however as the cost of replacing all four (rather than refilling them is in excess of GBP £1000 (approx USD $1600) its worthwhile as the 4 bottles of toner can be bought for, just over one tenth of the price mentioned above (approximately) Hope this helps Regards paws

I also invested in a sryinge with a blunt needle, 4 large bottles of injet inks (I buy them in 250 Milli Litre bottles, (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) and can refill my own cartridges very quickly and very simply.

With a bit of practice ( quite a bit of practice actually ) it possible to refill a black cartridge, and refit it in the printer and be printing again in about 1 minute, and this includes donning a pair of surgical grade latex gloves to prevent the results shown in your excellent photo ! and spreading newspaper over my workbench.
A 250 ml bottle of inkjet flush is also a wise investment together with a small supply of tissue paper.

Got to ask here, do you just punch through on top some where to refill these things. Was thinking here because of the cost of replacing them things really adds up.

Jimmy

I have a canon MP160 printer/scanner/copier which prints black as a grey colour when my black is empty. I just have to change the settings to "print in colour only" . There are holes in the top to refill the cartridge which saves a lot of money also! This model only has teh one colour cartridge which suits me as I do not do a lot of printing in colour anyway. Just thought I would mention that I do have to go into my printers settings on my pc and manually change it to colour only (or black only when my colour is empty, but of course when this happens, there is no way of getting colour from black only ), I am not familiar with your printer, but it is just a suggestion. I think all printers settings are different so this may or may not be an option on yours. Chrissy

@ adasha, LOL been there and done that, but no where near as bad as that lmao Well there are a couple of ways of working with ink, they all have good and bad points, so the individual has to make the call, so here are the points as I know them, they are what I have found from over the years:- The major point to note before considering using non genuine ink or cartridges is it will void you're warranty, so going this route is best advised after any warranty has expired for peace of mind, the other point to note, using bad inks\cartridges can block the printer, therefore making it useless, and worst case you will have to bin it and replace it. Those are the major factors to consider in this, if you're happy to carry on then you have the following choices:- Replacement Ink; these can be bought in bottles of various size, larger sizes can be a bit pricey, but if you're using it a lot probably works out the cheapest, this is also the messiest way to do it (see pic above lol), but once you get used to doing it then you probably have no mess if you get it right, but as mentioned above gloves are a serious must for this, unless you want to have party hands for a few weeks lol. These often come in kits (which usually include needle etc), and usually have instructions for nearly all printers about, there is no universal way to do this, each make can vary, so check the instructions for YOU'RE printer as to how to do it, but in general there are maybe 3 ways I can recall being used. 1st is you have to take the top off of the cartridge (Lexmark comes to mind here), then you will see the holes to inject into, removing the cap requires steady hands, and most importantly control while using strength (more so for me with my health, fit people may not see this as an issue, but I mention it to be safe), you need to use a sharp blade and score round the 4 sides, and repeating and gently applying pressure it comes off, then with the holes exposed you inject into them one at a time. This also has points to note, pretty obvious ones but I mention them anyway, first is make sure you inject the correct ink to the correct hole, the second point is flush the syringe between colours, basically remove any previous colour from it before using the next colour, once complete replace the cap, and use some tape to hold it in place until the next refill, thats it really, good news is it's only the first time you take the cap off you have to struggle, further times just remove the tape each time. 2nd is a possible combination of that 1st, as well as drilling a hole, again the kit usually has this bit, and will tell you what printers require this, and where to do it, I believe they usually include a small rubber plug for such times to close the hole, but have never experienced a printer that needs this way personally. 3rd is what you hope for the most, and thats the holes are freely available on the top, which means no messing, just care not to spill it, I think those are the main methods anyway (been a long time since I've done it), the only other point to cover is take care how much ink you add, the kit should instruct how much you need for you're printer, BUT, the more you use this method the more the cartridge get messed up, the sponge inside can become useless, maybe this has happened due to not doing it right, but I've had to replace the cartridges at some point regardless of ink as they just stop working, also as it nears this stage it may be possible to overfill them, thus creating a mess in you're printer etc, so take care. The next way to go is to buy aftermarket cartridges, this is the way I have found to be the cheapest most efficient (and convenient) way to do this, not to mention the cleanest lol, in the UK they even have stores that will refill you're cartridges for you, but have no idea if they are priced to compete or not, but finding a good aftermarket supplier is my best advice, my ink costs about £10 for 6 inks ($15 US approx), compared to anything from 3 times the price for genuine cartridges. Now the trick with these cartridges is do NOT settle for the cheapest you can find, it's a false economy, like a PSU you get what you pay for, and real cheap ones will gunk up you're printer much faster than better choices, then you will need to buy a new printer much sooner than you need to, but in saying this you don't need to buy the most expensive either, or you may as well buy genuine ones, so research the better aftermarket makers and you should get the best of all worlds. Finally the last points to note, at least I can think of, is when using non genuine cartridges the printers usually pick up on it instantly, they will flag up a warning saying it will void you're warrant etc, this is picked up via the print head, I have seen things about resetting these things, but know nothing more about them, except they have never stopped me from using aftermarket cartridges, and in the years I've done this I've only had to bin 1 printer. But ALL print heads have a life period as far as I know, so using the ink solution you will always need to replace the cartridges at some point, which is why I favour the aftermarket cartridges personally, but thats pretty much my experience and findings with these things, hope it helps you all make choices that save money, although the most important way to save money on ink is to research BEFORE you buy a printer, you will pay more for the printer probably, but ink savings will make up for that long term, so always compare ink costs before buying a printer, that will save you more money than anything, hope this helps.

There's some really good information here..well done everone who has contributed.
Refilling your own cartridges is not for everyone, but for others, and in particular heavy users, then it can save an awful lot of money

Example
for my HP A3+ (larger format printer) the HP "official" cartridges are approx (GBP) £55 in total, for the black and the colour, That's around (USD) $88…….whereas the cost of my "refilling" amounts to (GBP) £1.75 That's around USD ( $2.80)
So you can see why I do it!

One extra tip….if you are going to refill your cartridge then you strongly advised refill it immediately it becomes "out of ink" or the print quality deteriorates…even if you leave it 20 minutes before refilling you are making it much harder to get a decent print quality (using home equipment and without a centrifugal cleaner etc)……

To be on the safe side refill it before you are actually dealing with a completely empty cartridge…… and I always prefer to have separate syringes/blunt needles for the 4 colours (even though they are flushed with solvent/inkjet flush between uses. .That way the possibility of cross contamination (and potentially "muddied" colours is reduced.

If like me you are a heavy user (I have 5 printers…. occasionally all of them going at once!) then I found it worthwhile to make a simple jig & clamp) that holds the cartridges in exactly the correct position, and enables me to refill them quickly and easily (avoiding spillages) and to draw through the ink using the tissue paper to provide, a good flow immediately, and without the risk of the ink drying up and clogging the very tiny inkjet delivery holes in the printhead that are many, many, times smaller than the width of a human hair.
Regards
paws

@ paws, I think if you use that much ink it may be worth you're while taking it to the next level, you can get Continuous Ink Reservoirs, these are basically external tanks for holding ink, which in turn feed the internal cartridges, what this means is you only need to top up the reservoir, no more filling cartridges in the printer, they just stay put, topping up become so much faster, and I imagine risk of mess is also minimised, just thought it worth a mention incase you had not come across this before.

Thanks 8210GUY, I have some customers who use CISS and some of them work quite well. (Others I make a reasonable amount of money from… ….fixing them! Its a good thought for anyone doing a large amount of printing, providing the printers can use CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System) as not all of them can, but I guess this is all part of the analysis to be done when considering buying a new printer. Regards paws

lol NP, I'd of been surprised if you hadn't come across them, but thought it worth a mention.