CLI-8 Cartridges, How does the chip really monitor ink?

[Orerockon]

For this who wish to try. Set your xp driver to include printer pooling (just under the "enable bi-directional").

Gave a minor improovement.

Best of luck.

Printer pooling cannot be enabled unless more than one port is selected. What other port did you check off?

 

[chippedoff]

For this who wish to try. Set your xp driver to include printer pooling (just under the "enable bi-directional").

Gave a minor improovement.

Best of luck.

Printer pooling cannot be enabled unless more than one port is selected. What other port did you check off?

eeesh


My MP830.. usb02

 

[Trigger 37]

Just to add more fuel to the fire,... Yesterday I printed 3 new 8x11 high qualitiy photos. On the seconc print the Canon ink monitor for my iP6600D popped up with "The ink in the Yellow cartridge is very low" (These may not be the exact words) and the picture of the carts showed the yellow low. After the print I opened the cover and took out the yellow cart and the reservoir was half full???? I will contact Canon tech support today about this and see if they know their readings are way off and if they plan to update the print driver.

I also found one other problem. I used the Kirdland heavy weight paper for one of the prints and while the photo was terrific, I saw several lines of tiny railroad tracts in the reflective angle of the print. They were not visible unless you held the paper at an angle to the light. I had another problem with this printer feeding 4x6 photo paper from the bottom cassette, as it would leave some scrach marks on the face of the print. These were also not visible face on but could be sent at an angle. Canon told me to go into the utility and set the printer mode to "Prevent Paper Abrasion" in the custom settings. I did this and then as you print the next photo it gives you a warning that the printer is set to "Prevent Paper Abrasion" and this may affect the quality of the print. I took the suggestion from people on this web site and stopped printing 4x6 photos from the bottom cassette. However, since the Kirkland paper is 10.4 mil thick,.. there is no other way. I'll talk to Canon about both of these.

It seems we all worry about not having the Canon Ink Monitor,... but it has already shown me that it isn't reliable anyway.

 

[lolopr1]

Trigger 37 I also found one other problem. I used the Kirdland heavy weight paper for one of the prints and while the photo was terrific, I saw several lines of tiny railroad tracts in the reflective angle of the print. They were not visible unless you held the paper at an angle to the light.

The best photo paper for ip6600d is of course canon OEM photo paper for over a year I used hp advance photo paper ($19 for 8.5x11 66lb 100 sheets at Bj's) with excellent results. I quit canon printers after 9 years of using them I just put away my ip6600 just give up on the cli-8 chipped cartridges, last month I decided to try the Epson r380 (and I love it) I was totally amazed with the results of the r380 (QUALITY), another great benefit is that you are able to find REFFILABLE CARTRIDGES with auto reset chip. I hope I don't offend anybody with my post is just my opinion.



Best Regards

 

[jackson]

What (photo) paper?

 

[canonfodder]

I quit canon printers after 9 years of using them I just put away my ip6600 just give up on the cli-8 chipped cartridges, last month I decided to try the Epson r380 (and I love it) I was totally amazed with the results of the r380 (QUALITY), another great benefit is that you are able to find REFFILABLE CARTRIDGES with auto reset chip. I hope I don't offend anybody with my post is just my opinion.

Best Regards

No offense taken by me. You are getting a bit off subject for this thread, but you are not the first to do that. As to talking about Epson instead of Canon on this Forum, you are not out of order. Sometimes it may seem to be a Canon forum, because Canon does make some of the best, so gets lots of forum space, but it is NOT a Canon Forum. All brands are fair game for our praises, our COMPLAINTS, our problems, and our solutions.



(fine forum, nifty)

 

[Trigger 37]

Back to the subject of the Ink Monitor. I've just got the nasty message from the ip6600d monitor that my yellow is too low to detect. It says, "The remaining ink level of the yellow cart can not accuratley be detected. If you want to continue printing, press OK, otherwise replace the ink Cart." Well, before I could even open the cover to check the level of the ink, the error message changed to, "An ink tank that was once empty has been installed. Printing under this situation my damage the printer.
If you want to continue printer press "Yes". This operation will release the function from detecting the remaining ink level." I opened the printer and checked the yellow and it is down to about 1/4" in the rerservoir area. This I don't understand since I have not printed but a couple of pictures this week and it was about 1/2 full last week. What I don't understand is how it could use that much Yellow. The rest of the tanks are 85% full. On all my other Canon printers, I hardly ever use much yellow, and this printer seems to eat it up. It could be that the cleaning cycles are taking more yellow than it should. After all, this is a new printer and it really hasn't had that much use. I still use my i560 for grunt work.

Here is my question. There is an option in the "Status Monitor" window that 'Enables the Status Monitor". If I turn it off does that kill the error message, or since it has already detected "What it thought" was an empty cartridge, I have no choice but to continue by clicking "yes" and go ahead with my refilling process. If I turn the monitor off now, will it continue to detect low levels for the other colors and not report that to me,... and therefore end up setting the "Empty Cart status" in the Chip eeprom? Hopefully some else has gone through this and knows the answer.

Will anyone offer theire experience on how much ink they use in printing typical photos. For example, on my Canon i560, I purchased 8oz bottles of each color at the same time. Over this year I have gone through 10 oz of black, 7oz of yellow, 6oz of Magenta, and 5oz of Cyan. I should mention that I also have a MP730 that uses the same inks, and I print about 1/3 of my color photos on my Epson 1280. My usage on the iP6600 will be growing as I get past this "Low INk" error junk and proceed with refilling all those carts. Wouldn't it be great if "Disabling the monitor" shut down all their error updating,...Ha Ha Ha,.. not a chance in %$#)(*^%. It is clear that the "Ink Status Monitor" is only a subroutine in the main print driver. If they wanted to, Canon or someone else could easily patch that and forget writing to the eeprom. That is as good as some expensive chip resetter.

 

[Tin Ho]

All these message will go away and never show up again if you click the YES button each time it appears. But the very last one will say Press Resume Button on the printer for longer than 5 seconds... Once you do that there will be no more messages to bother you. You will also see that ink level status will no longer show any level. You will have to go through all these for each ink tank. So it may take a while before all messages are shut off.

All these messages are designed to scare you away from trying to refill the ink tanks. Just keep clicking the Yes button to acknowledge that you have heard it and this will silence it eventually.

Just remember that ink level is never a true ink level on Canon printers. It is all about estimate of ink usage based on counting the number of electronic signal that fires the nozzles. The ink level status is never accurate anyway. I never look at the tiny ink level status display especially knowing that it is never accurate anyway.

Once all those horrible messages are shut off you will find no more ink level status. Canon shuts up on the messages at the same time it also shuts off the ink level status. Each time you print something the little useless ink level status window with no ink level status will pop up to tell you that it is working on the print job. The little window popup will go away once the print job is completed. So it doesn't bother me a bit.

The printer will be a joy to print beyond this point. It will never spit at you with any more message regarding ink levels. All you need to do now is to keep refilling. Remember that there is no more warnings about ink levels so if any ink tank becomes empty there will be still no warnings. A few days ago my pgi5 ran out of ink and the printer never said anything. I happened to be watching the print while it was being printed. The text began to disappear. I immediately refilled the pgi5 tank. The printer took no time to resume printing text again. This experience confirms that while Canon shuts off ink level status display it also shuts off the optical sensor for detecting empty ink tanks. This really is a death trap for the print head if you keep printing when an ink tank has become empty and you are not aware of it.

If you are at the point that all warning messages are shut off and no more ink level status is displayed you must begin to check ink level by yourself visually. This means you will need to open the lid and look at the ink cartridges. You need to remove all the cartridges to check each one out. You can take the opportunity to top up everyone of them. You will want to watch the print whenever you are printing. You will catch it whenever an ink tank runs out of ink by surprise. This is important to keep the print head from getting killed because of the death trap.

My ip4300 has printed probably 3000 to 4000 sheets of stuff. The pain from the warning messages has long gone and it has been a fantastic printer since then.

 

[Stevevo]

Yes that is true that the messages go away when you have confirmed that you want to continue printing without the status showing but if you want it to revert to new all you have to do is insert a cartridge that has not been in the printer before and it will start the status as if new. I had a chip go bad on one cartridge of my MP500 and had to buy a new one and that is what happened.

 

[InkMon]

Hi all I am the author of the Inkmon project. I created it principally for my old but a goodie HP720c.

When it showed promise I placed it on the web and started a forum to get feedback. The first versions up to 1.5 were a bit inaccurate. So with the assistance of one canon owner giving me data I revamped the system. The new 4 colour system is available on the Yahoo Inkmon forum to download as is a help file which is only available on the display. The help file will explain the concept.

I have just finished the canon two black version and a trial version will be available soon. The 4 colour can be used and all it would mean is that you would fill the pigment black more frequently than you should. If you remove cartridges to check I am told the printer goes through a clean using as much as 10% ink.

The best way to fine tune this device is to compare the canons monitor with the InkMons one and adjust accordingly. I set up the forum so that printer users could discuss the use of the device and offer suggestions.

I have an Epson RX530 which does have a good monitor and I can reset the chips. I refill at 30% so with this printer I do not have to worry. The waste tank is another issue.

The software is still under development but InkMon4 is much improved. I have analyzed many spool files and used the information to calculate usage, allowing adjustment to make the software truly universal.

Join the group and help develop InkMon. I am giving 10 commercial copies of InkMon5 to contributors there are 8 left to give away.

The 4 colour version will always be free to home use and incorporate the latest calculation system.

There is one point, I have not been able to reliably capture multy copies so printing has to be print by print. I am working on it with API's. This is not a big problem with home computers.

I would like to make these points. I can only test it on XP. It is a guide only and although the 3 warning levels can be set very low, I am not responsible for a printer running dry. This is about the worst thing that can happen next to attacking it with a hammer.

Work with me and you will have a better monitor than supplied with the printer, any printer that does not use accurate sensors that is.

Re capping, it was made originally for all those older printers with no means of indicating when to fill. Just for the record I have filled the removable cartridges in the HP dozens of times and so far the print heads have not worn out and I have saved heaps. I do wipe the heads with a soft cloth soaked in metho. occasionally. Even boiled the heads in water when the ink did run out and they clogged. I am a 64 year old pensioner and I print a lot of family photos so cost is a big factor.

I talk, no type too much.

Contact me on the forum if you are interested.
Terry