MP780 wasting colored ink......

[doctodd]

Well, this week the magenta ran out. The cyan is also about out....only ink left is in the sponge. No pictures or colored printing has been done. I havent truned the machine off at all....has sated in power saver mode. I may buy another new one for the office to compare, make a switch....who knows. Any suggestions?

T

 

[doctodd]

Another thing....i may take this one to work where it will only print in black and white. Will the printer be damaged if i let the color cartridges run out and never replace them? I heard the printer heads can burn out, but i dont care about the color ones.

Thx

T

 

[Osage]

To doctodd,

I have an Mp730 and an ip4000--and its the ip4000 printer engine that the Mp780 is based on. With neither printer have I experienced the kind of ink wasteage you report.

But I assume you are still in warranty----I would call Canon tech support and ask why? Maybe you have a bad unit or have something wrong somewhere---maybe its time to let Canon tech support weigh in. What your printer is doing sure sounds abnormal to me.

 

[doctodd]

I called tech support. We looked at the printing preferences, and i had "checked" my gray scale printing setting because i thought it would force black and white printing. At least that is what it looks like on the menu. He said that actually uses the colors, even though it says mono printing.

So....ill try this. Can anyone confirm? It seems just the opposite.

T

 

[Nifty]

I called tech support. We looked at the printing preferences, and i had "checked" my gray scale printing setting because i thought it would force black and white printing. At least that is what it looks like on the menu. He said that actually uses the colors, even though it says mono printing.

So....ill try this. Can anyone confirm? It seems just the opposite.

T

That sounds very plausible to me and would definitely believe that to be the problem.

 

[doctodd]

So let me get this straight..... Say i want to print out a brochure that has some color in it, but i dont want any color, just a quick draft print in black and white. If i want to print in black and white only, i have to use grayscale printing, but the colors will be used up anyway(and pretty rapidly i might add)?

Makes no sense.

T

 

[Osage]

To a certain extent I wonder if its in fact your problem---there is nothing wrong with changing your settings to greyscale printing to force monochrome printing. But if you always leave your settings on greyscale it may result in ultra rapid ink use in cleaning cycles. And the way to test that hypothesis is to change settings back to normal after you print and see if your excessive cleaning cycle ink usage persists.

And if that proves to be the case--that in fact your excessive ink useage is due to the greyscale settings---then you can ask Canon what defects in their printer driver software causes this----but until you pin point where this excessive ink usage occurs and does not occur, you are basically no closer to a solution to the problem.

We may be talking a software defect----and any attempts to impose human logic on a computer or anything driven by software is always futile.----the device simply does what its told even if unintended consequences not the intent of the programmer result.

So your makes no sense lament may be logical but goes nowhere in solving your problem. You are just going to have to change some settings and see if the problem goes away using some systematic method.
And if there is something mechanically wrong with your unit---let Canon replace it under warranty--after all, thats what a warranty is for. ----but if its due to a setting---any replaced unit will likely do the same thing.

But as I re-read your last post another question occurs to me--are you losing the ink in excessive cleaning cycles or due to the actual printing process--with the Canon software making black by possible excessive mixing all colors in greyscale mode? When black could be better made by using your large text black or even just your photoblack cartridge.

 

[Nifty]

I was under the impression that with these Canon printers that "grayscale" actually uses the colors to produce "gray".

Here is what I would try with your printer to test this theory: Put your printer in grayscale mode and print a picture then:

1) If you have access to a high power magnifying glass or some kind of microscope (I use one of those 30x kid ones for $8.00 from Discovery Toys) try to look for the individual dots that are making up gray and see if there are traces of color.

2) Use grayscale mode, but modify the color settings by dragging each individual color bar to very very light. See if changing each color individually, then printing, makes a difference. If lowering magenta intensity gives you a different colored image then maybe you could hypothesis that colors are being used to create gray and not the BCI-3bk or BCI-6bk cartridges.

Anybody else with an i560, i860, ip3000 ip4000 mp750 mp780 want to try this?

 

[pebe]

I have an IP4000 and tried your suggestion.

Selected Plain Paper: Set to grayscale. Could not modify colours - that section was greyed out. Printed colours came out in shades of grey as expected.

Selected Matt Photo Paper: This is the setting I normally use for photos. Selected manual and modified colours, so: Magenta = min, Cyan = min, Yellow = normal, Black = normal.
Printed colours came out as shades of grey - no predominance of yellow. So I assume that when grayscale is selected, only the 6BK cart is used.

 

[doctodd]

Well, today is March 25 and my yellow reservoir is out and is showing as very low on the screen. My cyan and magenta reservoirs are almost out, but showing as half on the screen. I have made maybe 1 or 2 color copies in draft mode. Not one picture has been printed.

So the advice from tech support didnt turn out to be true. I bought 2 other machines recently.....one for the office and one for my dad. Will compare.

T