780 Problem

[jtl]

I recently purchased a refurb 780. Initially when I loaded the ink carts the status for the yellow one shows nearly emptiy on the LCD. I called Canon and the tech said it will correct itself after using the color a few times. Now the BCI-3 is showing the same thing. They are showing full on the computer just not the LCD. Any thoughts or suggestions.

John

 

[ghwellsjr]

You can reset the ink level to full by putting in an empty cartridge, closing the covers, then putting your original cartridge back in. Otherwise, it will reset itself after it is empty.

 

[jtl]

Thanks ghwellsjr,
I don't have any empty carts so I guess I will need to wait until these are empty. I still wonder why this happened out of the blue.

 

[ghwellsjr]

What exactly does the display show? I'm not at one of these printers right now, but as I remember, there are four levels that the display can show:

Full
Half full
Amost empty (this is when you get the yellow low ink warning)
Empty (this is when you get the red empty ink warning)

These are indicated by three segments on the display. The first is with all three segments on and the last is with all off. If I'm remembering correctly, which one is your display showing? If I'm not remembering correctly, what exactly is the display showing?

 

[jtl]

The black and the yellow show 1/2 full which is two lines. There are 3 lines, two of which are wider and the empty is very narrow. Also how can this display on the printer show color when it is monochrome.

 

[ghwellsjr]

The color only appears on the computer's screen when it is warning you about a low (yellow) or empty (red) alarm.

Your printer's screen is claiming that one of your black cartridges and your yellow cartridge are half full but you know that they are almost full. The printer has no way of knowing how much ink is in a cartridge until the reservoir part of the cartridge is empty. It knows this by shining a little light up into the prism on the bottom of the cartridge. When the cartridge has ink in it, there is no light reflected back down to the sensor. When the reservoir is empty, light is reflected back down and the printer knows for the first time that you have a cartridge with an empty reservoir and it puts up the low ink warning (yellow). It then starts keeping track of the ink you use for that cartridge and after a certain amount of ink is used, it puts up the empty ink warning (red). During this time, it is using ink from the sponge part of the cartridge.

Anytime after the low ink warning comes up, when you put in a cartridge that has any amount of ink in the reservoir, the printer assumes that it is full and displays full on the indicator. It then starts counting the amount of ink being used and when it thinks the reservoir is half full, it shows that on the indicator. It doesn't matter how much ink is really in the reservoir (as long as it's not empty) or if you change cartridges to one with a different amount of ink, it always assumes that you put in a totally full cartridge after you took out the one with the empty reservoir, and that you leave it in until its reservoir is empty.

So here's what probably happened with your refurbished printer: The printer had a half full cartridge in it when it was refurbished. Then Canon put in a new cartridge but the display is still sitting at half full.

What they should do to avoid this situation is take out all the cartridges and put in empty ones. Then put in new cartridges which will now be detected as full.

BTW: the new chipped cartridges do not have this problem because the chip in each cartridge keeps track of its ink usage and reports that to the display correctly. When it is finally totally empty, it always reports that it is empty, even if you refill it yourself.

 

[jtl]

Makes sense. My yellow is now out at the resevoir so it is showing low ink (Christmas card project). Another question.
When you print color doing a full bleed (boarderless) I suspect it is difficult to get the paper size perfect for print head so there must be some ink going off the paper. Is this bad for the printer?

 

[fotofreek]

Not bad for the printer, but as far as I know, the printer memory records each cleaning cycle and each borderless print as it does a count toward the "waste ink tank full" warning. Almost all of my printing is borderless. No problems and lots of photos printed without triggering the waste ink warning. Next time you look inside the printer when changing and ink cart you will notice that under the printhead path where the edge of 4x6 and 5x7 paper would be there is a little sponge area that permits the overprint ink to be absorbed and drain into the waste ink pad.

On the page setup area there is a slide adjustment for borderless printing to set the amount of picture expansion you need in order to insure that you don't leave a white edge somewhere. The default on my printers is second from the right (out of four locations), but I move it to the second from the left to minimize expansion as it takes away a portion of your photo.

 

[jtl]

fotofreek,
I don't see that adjustment. What program are you using?

 

[fotofreek]

in the dialogue box that comes up for the printer driver click properties and go to the page setup tab.