Canon Pixma iP5200 ink efficiency problems

[long]

Hi All,

I have a Canon Pixma iP5200 which I rarely ever use for colour printing. I mostly use it to print black and white text documents and so it is set to 'Greyscale' in the properties section (Windows XP).

Now I assume the printer uses only the main black ink catridge (not the one for mixing and printing colour images) therefore I don't expect the other colour ink catridges to run out. But they do even when I never print colour images.

As you will understand this is a waste of money since I have to replace all the catridges if one of the colour ones is empty even though I don't use them.

My question is: has Canon designed this printer so that even though I only print in black and white the other colour catridges run out on 'purpose' and therefore I have to spend more money? Or is there a way of preventing the colour catridges from running out considering I never use them and you cannot use the stand alone main black in catridge?

Thanks in advance.

[Scps]

Hi,
even though you mainly use this printer for black and grayscale printing , this machine has a 5 colour printhead (large capacity black, photo black, cyan, magenta and yellow) the printhead sits in th carriage assembly underneath the ink cartridges

ink by its nature is designed to dry quickly so it doesn't rub off when it comes out of the printer, unfortunatly this means that it can dry up in the microscopic 'nozzles' of the print head.

to help prevent ink from drying up and clogging the nozzles, manufacturers design their printers to do a ' cleaning operation' these are the noises you hear your printer making when it's turned on or before a print job starts printing.

each time the printer does a clean it uses a small (variable) amount of ink,
most modern printers have different length cleans for different cicumstances ( how long the printer has been off, if the printhead or any cartridges were removed, etc,) the iP5200 has about 5 different size cleaning cycles

so you see, the ink being used is really to maintain the printhead which is the highest technology and most expensive part in the machine, if you were to fool the machine or disable this function in any way, your colour print quality would probably suffer

happy printing

[PrinterMedic]

try doing a ridiculous amount of these printhead cleanings

[long]

Hi,
even though you mainly use this printer for black and grayscale printing , this machine has a 5 colour printhead (large capacity black, photo black, cyan, magenta and yellow) the printhead sits in th carriage assembly underneath the ink cartridges

ink by its nature is designed to dry quickly so it doesn't rub off when it comes out of the printer, unfortunatly this means that it can dry up in the microscopic 'nozzles' of the print head.

to help prevent ink from drying up and clogging the nozzles, manufacturers design their printers to do a ' cleaning operation' these are the noises you hear your printer making when it's turned on or before a print job starts printing.

each time the printer does a clean it uses a small (variable) amount of ink,
most modern printers have different length cleans for different cicumstances ( how long the printer has been off, if the printhead or any cartridges were removed, etc,) the iP5200 has about 5 different size cleaning cycles

so you see, the ink being used is really to maintain the printhead which is the highest technology and most expensive part in the machine, if you were to fool the machine or disable this function in any way, your colour print quality would probably suffer

happy printing

Thanks for getting back.

I understand what you said but I believe that even if one of the ink catridges ran out the printer should give you the option to carry on printing without that colour. I strongly believe that this is a design built into most inkjet printers to maximise running cost of the printier as most inkjects can be picked up for less than £100.

Here is a link from CNET that supports my view.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13554_3-10084935-33.html?tag=nl.e432

This practise is really distastefull. I'd rather they be honest upfront and charge whatever they need to charge to break even rather than trick people with low price inject printers with high running costs.