Canon pixma IP5000

[stubbles12]

Can anyone tell me if it is possible to see how much ink one has remaining in a canon pixma ip5000 printer
I realise that you get an ink low warning but it would be handy to know beforehand so one can reorder in plenty of time

Cheers

Stubbles12

 

[ghwellsjr]

Actually, you get a yellow warning when the reservoir is empty every time you print, but you still have plenty of ink in the sponge part of the cartridge to print for quite a while and reorder your cartridges. As long as you don't remove the cartridges and look at them and re-insert them, the printer will keep track of how much more ink you use from the sponge part and put up a red alert when it is time to replace the cartridge.

I have adopted Grandad35's procedure which is: when you get a red alert, look at all the cartridges and replace any that have emtpy reservoirs or only have a small amount of ink left in them, like maybe 3/16 inch. The reason for this is that the printer will do a purge cycle which uses up a lot of ink on all the cartridges when it has detected that you have replaced one of them and you want to minimize the number of purge cycles to minimize the amount of wasted ink. If you don't do this, you will find that shortly after you replace one cartridge, it is time to replace another, then another, etc.

 

[Tin Ho]

There may be still some ink in the sponge but the ink flow may begin to reduce once you begin to print with the remaining ink in the sponge. By doing this the risk of getting a clog is greatly increased. The sponge is for regulating the ink flow. If you begin to use the remaining ink in the sponge you will not get a correct ink flow that feeds the print head. If you are in the middle of printing something it is safe to fininish it. But it is not a wise idea to steal a few more pages.

When the ink flow is reduced for any reason, icluding a blockage in the cartridge or simply being empty, the quantity of ink in the nozzle is reduced. Some ink may be vaporized instead of being ejected as an ink bubble. When ink is vaporized inside the nozzles the dried dye will accumulate in the nozzle and eventually block it up really good. You may get a few nozzles blocked up initially so there is only a slight banding. If you keep printing more nozzles will be blocked and the banding becomes worse. By that time even the empty tank is replaced with a new OEM cart it is already too late.

 

[mikling]

Also you must realize that there is only ONE pump for the head. That means that anytime a cartridge is changed, the printer flushes ALL the cartridges. If you replace one at a time you will have flushed 1 less than the amount of cartridges extra. If you are refilling it NEVER makes sense to refill one at a time. Do them all at once and save the ink.

What Tin Ho is describing is the Classic Canon problem.

 

[Grandad35]

There may be still some ink in the sponge but the ink flow may begin to reduce once you begin to print with the remaining ink in the sponge. By doing this the risk of getting a clog is greatly increased. . But it is not a wise idea to steal a few more pages.

I have been using the "Print until empty" system for at least 18 months and have not had a problem. I figure that since Canon designed the printer hardware and software to work this way it must be OK. My family is used to getting near-perfect colors, and they let me know if the color is off even a little bit. If the ink flow was reduced when "printing from the sponge", it should cause obvious color casts - the colors don't appear to be any different. In a similar manner, if the "suction pressure" on the cart's exit affected the drop size, I would expect to see the color change when switching between (refilled) carts from different sources. I don't see any such color shift. There is a post somewhere on this forum showing the change in suction pressure as a cart empties.

There is no harm in refilling before the "empty" signal, but keep two things in mind:
1. If you refill before *any* cart signals a "Low" or "Empty" situation, the printer will not know that a cart was replaced and may not run the purge cycle that is normally run after a cart is replaced - this could leave an air bubble in an ink channel and cause an ink starvation problem.
2. If you refill on "Low" instead of "Empty", you will run about 10% more "Cart Replaced" purge cycles, and will fill the waste ink sponge more quickly.

Also you must realize that there is only ONE pump for the head. That means that anytime a cartridge is changed, the printer flushes ALL the cartridges.

This may be true for most Canon printers, but not all of them. The i8500 and i9900 have 2 groups of 5 nozzles, only 8 of which are used. These printers offer the option of cleaning the first 5 sets of nozzles (PM/R/K/G/PC), the second set of 3 nozzles (C/M/Y), or all 8.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I think the popular advice to replace cartridges as soon as the yellow low ink warning appears was to guard against getting air in the sponge which was deemed to be a contributor to blocked cartridges when they are used for refilling. For people like stubbles12 who are not refilling but ordering new cartridges, it is better just from that standpoint to use as much ink out of the cartridge as it was designed for. If you look in the on-line User Guide for your printer, you will see that it recommends that you get a replacement cartridge when the yellow low ink warning appears and that you replace the cartridge when you get the red empty ink warning.

Now the other issue has to do with minimizing the number of purge cycles that not only waste ink, but contribute to the waste ink tank inside the printer and hasten the day that you get the dreaded "Waste Ink Tank Full" message. Whether you refill or buy new cartridges, it would seem to be a good idea to change at least as many cartridges as will soon be empty, if not all of them if you are refilling. But, there's a catch.

The issue of how many purge pumps a printer has has been brought up. If you do a cleaning from a Canon printer that has a pigment black cartridge as well as dye inks by using the Maintenance control panel, you will see that you have the option of cleaning just the pigment, just the dye or all of the cartridges.

Now this raises an interesting question: if I get a low or empty warning on just my pigment black cartridge and I replace some of the dye inks because they are getting low, will the printer purge just the pigment black head or both heads? The answer is: it only purges the pigment black head.

The same is true the other way around: if I get a low or empty warning on just the dye cartridges and I also replace the pigment black cartridge, it will not purge the pigment black cartridge.

So, in these cases, it would be wise after replacing the cartridges to manually do a cleaning of all the cartridges. Fortunately, the printer will not repeat the automatic purge cycle if you do a manual one.

But this also suggests another good idea: if you get an empty warning on only the pigment black, just replace that one even if some of the dye inks are low. Also, if you get an empty warning on only the dye inks, replace as many of those as are low but not the pigment ink.

I haven't tested the i9900 but I'm sure it also only purges a head for which there was an empty or low warning and for which the cartridge was replaced.


Here's how I performed the tests on my iP4000:

First install cleaning cartridges in all slots. Do a deep cleaning. Do a nozzle check and verify that no ink is coming out, just cleaning solution.

Second, install normal cartidges in all slots except one which gets a cartridge with an empty reservoir. Close the cover and verify that the printer Status Monitor has detected the low cartridge.

Replace the empty cartridge with a normal one.

Do a nozzle check. Verify that it takes a long time while it is doing the purging/cleaning cycle and when the nozzle check prints, it only prints ink for the type of cartridge that was empty. For example, if the pigment black cartridge was empty, then only the pigment black pattern prints. If one of the dye ink cartridges was empty, then all of the dye ink patterns print normally but not the pigment black.

Repeat the test with the other type of cartridge being empty.