My canon ip2600 won't use it's black ink cartridge.

[hegeeet]

Hello, I've recently bought a canon pixma ip2600, I've had it about 2 weeks, now this isn't my first canon printer or printer in general and I've never come across a problem I couldn't fix myself yet. However my printer doesn't seem to be using it's black ink cartridge at all. It uses a black cartridge and a three in one colour cartridge, so that 2 carts in all. It came with a full set and I bought another full set at the time of purchase. I never expect the cartridges that come with a printer to last very long at all. I printed a bunch of stuff and the colour ink ran out, which I replaced with the other cartridge I bought, but the black ink in the printer ink monitor window was still reading as full. I've carried on printing and the second colour cartridge ran out, but the first black cartridge is still showing as completely full in the ink monitor window (that's the one the computer shows you on screen).
About half of the stuff I've prinited has been black and white photographs, so the natural assumption is that the printer has been using the colour cartridge to do all the black printing.
I've been through all the settings of all the programs I've used, looked in the control panel, tried everything I know. So there must be some setting I've over looked, or some stupid mistake I've made. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

[SpideRMaN]

I think that the black is pigment ink and is used specifically for black text pages.

 

[hegeeet]

Thanks for the reply, I tried printing out some black text using word pad and the text came out green,as did a test page, so the printer seems to be using the colour cartridge for that as well. I tried printing out a black and white photograph and that came out green as well, (because the colour ink is running out, everything is blue or green).

 

[SpideRMaN]

I never owned an ip2600 thus I cannot be 100% on it

At the moment I own mp980 and this is how it works

If I enable dublex printing it uses Dye ink (the black that is used for printing photo's) even if I print text only pages. the reason for this is so that it wont mess the rollers with pigment ink.

to use pigment ink only (on text documents) i have to disable the dublex printing and select fast printing

in your case the printer is not using the black pigment ink at all. It could be a fault in the printer or maybe you are missing some driver settings. but I thinks your printer will use color cart for b&w photos

 

[hegeeet]

I managed to get it to print black text and a black and white picture (on pain paper, so not photo quality) using the black cartridge. I had to uncheck borderless printing in the printer preferences. Can anyone recommend a printer which does use the black cartridge when printing photographs?

 

[SpideRMaN]

if you are in b&w photograpy (like me) the mp980 is very good.

It uses black, grey, and some of the 3 other carts with one side affect that is to waste a lot of ink

 

[hegeeet]

Thanks for all the input, SpideRMaN, how many photo's would you say you get out of a set of inks on average?

 

[SpideRMaN]

I cannot say exactly but it depends how you use it.

eg.
If you power the printer on and do 30 photo's at a time it's much more cheaper then power on, print a photo and power off. the reason is that it do a print head cleaning on every power on.

I learned that:
Leaving the printer on (to avoid a lot of clean print heads)
Refill & Change all the carts at one go (to avoid a lot of clean print heads)
print a batch of photos is more economic on carts & ink

 

[pharmacist]

The problem is in fact the printer itself: the IP2600 does not have an extra dye black ink, therefore for borderless printing it relies on mixing the Cyan/Magenta/Yellow ink in the colour cartridge to create something which is supposed to be black/grey and therefore you will never consume the black pigment ink in the other cartridge.

On more expensive printers there is a dye black cartridge: this is used when you do borderless b/w printing, however it still relies on the CMY ink to create the lighter "grey" tones and a colour cast is easily introduced in your printing. You can overcome this problem by using the MP980, like SpiderMan has stated above.

On photopaper you might think the printer is using the black in when printing black/grey or dark area's, but the printer is still mixing the CMY ink to create your picture, completely omitting the black pigment ink, as pigment ink will not be used on glossy photopapers. Now you will understand why a 5-colour printing system is superior: the black and dark area's on photo printing is far superior than the 3-colour CMY printing system and also uses much less ink to produce the same picture.

 

[tyamada]

On Canon printers that have pigmented black cartridges use the ink when you use the plain paper setting. Paper settings other than plain paper will mix the color ink to make black, which causes the black to have a green tint.