Canon i960 Black Indication Correct all others at fixed half full

[vienna01]

Sorry if this isn't a new request. New user to forum. Did not find answer to my problem.
My i960 has half full indications for all of the colors. Never changes even with new carts. My black indication is correct and the low warning came at a proper time (I think).

Can someone point me to ways I can try to fix this?

 

[fotofreek]

Canon ink monitors are not like the gas guage on a car or the oil dipstick. When you put a new cart in it shows full. As you use the printer the monitor guesses the amount of ink used and shows less than full at some point. When the ink from the reservoir (without sponge) side is used up and the little prism at the bottom is exposed the ink monitor will show low ink. It then roughly calculates ink usage until it decides to give you the empty warning. There is still a little ink in the sponge area as running the cartridge totally dry would damage the printhead. When you get a warning, either low or empty, and you replace the cartridge, the ink monitor then reads full. It also causes the printer to run a cleaning cycle to be sure the new cartridge is delivering ink - like priming a pump.

 

[vienna01]

Strange--- It fixed itself yesterday after being wrong for six months plus. I was trying several of the service codes sequences mention on this forum. Don't know which one did the trick. Still fixed today.

 

[fotofreek]

Sorry, Vienna - there is no real "fix" for these ink monitors. The only time they are close to accurate is 1) when you use a cart til the empty signal pops up and then replace it with a totally full one. (actually, if you replaced the empty one with a half full one the monitor would still register full as it expects you to put in a new OEM cart!) 2) when the reservoir becomes empty and the monitor registers "low". All the rest is some sort of guess built into the Canon ink monitor system.

The monitor has no way to actually measure what is left in a partially full cart.