Printer Ink

General Chat Tech & Gaming
#1

So I was printing a load of revision materials last night, my printer decided to tell me it had run out of Magenta ink. Overrode that warning and it continued to print, a few minutes later it’s run out of Cyan.🤦 Override that warning and it continues to print!

It went for another 120 pages until the material I needed had fully printed. The colours throughout from start to finish are all exactly the same despite the fact it claims it’s out of ink.

So the question really I’m getting to is, do printers kind of underestimate what ink is remaining in the tanks? Given that it carried on printing fine with no loss of colour on any page.

I’ve replaced the “empty” ones today ready for the next batch of printing.

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#2

Yeah, don’t trust the sneaky printer people. Replace early and you buy more so they make more money

What are you studying?

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#3

Thought I’d risk carrying on the printing to see what happened, yes quite sneaky of them. :rofl:

I’m redoing GCSE English, I got a D twice at school. A brochure came through from the council, thought whilst locked down with nothing better to do, I might as well attempt to correct that mistake. We’ve got 1st mocks coming up in January so bought some e-books with all the revision material on to practice over the Christmas break.

At the moment actual exams are still going ahead in May and June. All that could change if Boris changes his mind again due to Corona :rofl:

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#4

I bought a printer in lock down and signed up for HP’s instant ink service. I think i get 50 pages a month for £2. Ink shows up at my door every so often as the printer tells HP that I’m running low.

For the minimal price, I absolutely love the convenience and not having to worry about whether or not I’m being ripped off for ink.

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#5

Yeah I did look at those when I bought my printer in September. Ended up buying a Canon one instead, I’d not actually planned on printing so much stuff off at once, so didn’t have spare ink in the house.

It’s probably a good job I didn’t have spare ink as I wouldn’t of discovered I can keep printing even though it claims it’s empty. I’d of changed it there and then had I had some.

#6

Yeah. My old HP printer will print for ages after telling me it’s run out. I always wait til it goes faint before changing the cartridge.

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#7

Good plan I’ll be doing that in future now I’ve experienced this. I was watching every page come out thinking well you’ve not faded yet.

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#8

How do you override an empty warning to continue printing on an HP printer? I only print in black but it appears you need all colours to do this. I looked at instant ink and it didn’t get good reviews. I think you get stung if you go over the print threshold. I use HP912 cartridges but no ones got them on stock. Even the HP Store hasn’t got them. Finally, does anyone know of a supplier(s) that sell HP compatible HP cartridges or as I assume HP can tell and will just disable your printer if you don’t use authentic HP cartridges?

#9
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#10

I’ve got a Canon which takes the following:

PGBK - 580 cartridge
Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black 581 cartridge

They’re all separate to each other, I just got a warning on the printer screen, which I acknowledged to say the cartridge had been changed, it just continued printing even though I’d not changed it.

#11

By buying a very old printer. Mine is from about 2015. I bought it because it was cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy ink for my old Canon printer.

#12

One thing that CMYK printers often do, is use CMY while printing Black - it can, apparently, improve how ‘black’ the Black looks. So I’m told.

I’m sure there’s also a bit of a ink reserve after the warning comes up, maybe so that a print never fails before the warning comes on - much like the fuel light comes up way before you run out totally.

(Beyond of course the general scam that is ink cartridges).

B+W laser printers are the way forward though, if you can get by without colour

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#13

Just realised my printers very nearly instant ink, it monitors the levels and tells me when it’s time to order via an email. Obviously it couldn’t predict that for me as the bulk printing last night wiped out the ink levels.

It’s now moaning that it’s out of both blacks, not today printer, not today, I know your little tricks now :rofl:

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#14

I’m on this same instant ink plan as you. I’m a bit disgruntled about having to subscribe to print, but when I factor the cost of replacing and maintaining ink cartridges, it roughly translates to about that £2 per month anyway, which is how I justified it for the level of printing I need (just a few forms a few times per year that have to be processed by snail mail, or when a company doesn’t know how to allow their PDF software to print or flatten my markups).

Quite bizarre how much I needed a printer during lockdown, despite managing to survive for a decade without one. Nothing about my workflows or life had changed much, except for the fact I suddenly needed to print a lot more documents.

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#15

So it was time to order some new ink cartridges, I recalled this thread and did a search for alternative ink providers.

Rather than another £60 for a Canon branded set I’ve gone with cartridges from the link below, it’s 75% cheaper too :ok_hand: