Ink Level Monitor / Meter Canon i860

[Nifty]

Friends,

When I first purchased my i860 it did an excellent job of notifying me when the ink was getting low. I've since learned that the first line of defense in the printer / cartridge is the prism at the bottom of the ink tank that senses when there is no more ink in the reservoir.

I'm usually pretty diligent at topping off my cartridges before they get to the point that the prism would sense low ink. BUT it seems that I've missed the topping off point and that my cartridges are past the point where the prism would sound the alarm.

So, I'm wondering if:

1) My Non OEM cartridges' sensors / prisms don't work
2) I really do have a tiny bit of ink in the reservoir and just haven't waited long enough
3) My printer is all confused because I pull out and re-insert so many different cartridges at different stages of "fullness" at different times.

Anybody else have this issue, or does their magic prism always work just fine?

 

[fotofreek]

I'm refilling OEM carts with MIS ink and the ink level indicator is ALWAYs confused. I just inspect periodically by removing the carts and refilling as necessary.

 

[Nifty]

Yup, that's where I'm at too. I use a tiny flashlight to look inside to see the level. If I can't make it out with the flashlight then I'm compelled to remove the cart.

I'm starting to believe that the more often I take out a cart, the more probability for errors. There's gotta be a fix for this. I know with the Epsons there's a whole re-insert a new cartridge trick, but that's with the "chipped" cartridges.

 

[Sieg]

"The Canon Think Tank SystemT uses a combination optical sensor and ink
counters to estimate the amount of ink inside the ink tanks. The
optical sensor can only verify whether ink exists inside the reservoir
or not. When the state of the ink tanks is between 100% and 50%
capacity, the ink level status is determined by the ink counter.

The ink counters estimate the amount of ink left inside each ink tank
based on the ink usage and the purge cycle (the purge cycle refers to
whenever the printer is cleaning itself). When the optical sensor
triggers, this means that ink inside the reservoir portion of the ink
tank is empty and the ink level status should display that 25% of the
ink is available. The remaining ink exists inside the sponges inside
the ink tank.

The ink counters are used to estimate the amount of ink inside sponge
and then will trigger an error message when the ink tank is empty. A
typical problem that may occur is if an ink tank is replaced when the
ink level status displays that the level is higher than 25%. Since the
optical sensor can only determine if there is ink inside the reservoir
and not the intermediate ink level, the ink level status never changes
because nothing triggers that the ink tank has been changed. The ink
level status will probably remain at 50% until the ink inside the ink
tank reservoir empties, then the ink level status will display that 25%
of the ink left and decrement the ink counter as normal.

Since the ink level status is maintained inside the printer and not by
driver, uninstalling the driver will not reset the ink counter. If it
is necessary to reset the counter on a specific ink tank, temporarily
place an empty ink tank in place of the desired ink tank counter that
needs to be reset. The ink level status should display that the ink
tank is 25% full. Replace the full ink tank back into the appropriate
slot and the ink level status should display at 100%. An obvious issue
is that if the ink tank placed into the printer is not full, the ink
level status will still indicate that the ink tank is 100% full. "

 

[Nifty]

Oh yeah, I got that email!

I had focused so much on the top paragraphs of that email that I completely forgot about the bottom one. Thanks for the reminder Sieg, and welcome to the forums!