Canon InkTanks and the Notorious Air in tube issue

[brwinters]

If your printer has 3 dye inks, C,Y,M and 1 pigment black then it only uses the dye inks when printing on glossy paper, these rules have always applied..

If you print only black images, plus text on plain paper when using duplex then the printer will use a C,Y,M mix along with pigment black to lessen the chances of smudging on the reverse side...

Very interesting... That might explain why it's always the PBGK line that has issues and not the color, when I'm using the purge sheet... Might need to try and find a way to fix that.

Use Word and print a single letter with 450 point setting and it will use only Pigment black ink ..

Would a PDF format also know to use PBGK if it's a text character and not an image element?

It’s also a falsehood to think that ink tank printers are cheaper to print with than cartridge based printers.. They are nothing but trouble..

I would be interested to see the metrics on that. But I suppose my only retort is that they've come to be the best balance for my use case. The refilling part was always the messy PITA whereas telling the printer to fire out a 5¢ waste sheet, or at worst doing a cleaning cycle every so often, is worth it for convenience sake. Granted I'm sure that depends on the cartridge... Cheap Canon all in ones with the head on cart design are a pain because of small capacity and needing modification, and Epson cartridges in general are fiddly and have aggressive DRM that makes it not worth trying for me. The exposed sponge style Canon carts like the iP100 are easy to refill if not mildly messy. But I stopped refilling them when I realized how much better cheap, overstock OEM carts from eBay looked in comparison.

 

[The Hat]

Would a PDF format also know to use PBGK if it's a text character and not an image element?

The Adobe PDF system is a very strange one to say the least, it has a different way of formatting an image before it prints and I’m not sure what exactly it does to text, that’s why I mentioned Word, it handles Fonts much better.. but only just..

But I suppose my only retort is that they've come to be the best balance for my use case.

Tank printers are great if you print all the time, but leave them ideal for any length and they get a bit reluctant to print without a head clean, not to mention if you let the ink tanks get to low before refilling..

I reckon Canon gave the punter what they wanted with their ink tank printers and then left them to suffer the consequences, even the OEM inks in them are not up to scratch either..

Anyone who ever fitted a CISS onto a Canon printer knows only too well how difficult it is to maintain them continually..

 

[brwinters]

Tank printers are great if you print all the time, but leave them ideal for any length and they get a bit reluctant to print without a head clean, not to mention if you let the ink tanks get to low before refilling..

I reckon Canon gave the punter what they wanted with their ink tank printers and then left them to suffer the consequences, even the OEM inks in them are not up to scratch either..

Anyone who ever fitted a CISS onto a Canon printer knows only too well how difficult it is to maintain them continually..

Spot on

The Adobe PDF system is a very strange one to say the least, it has a different way of formatting an image before it prints and I’m not sure what exactly it does to text, that’s why I mentioned Word, it handles Fonts much better.. but only just..

Yeah, word is more predictable but it also costs money and therefore not everyone will have it. Any chromium based browser has at least a basic PDF viewer onboard. Which is why I wonder.

 

[The Hat]

I have the latest Word 365 loaded, but I can’t use the Feckin thing, so I reverted to 2010 Word as an acceptable alternative… I hate most Windows Apps.. Don’t get me started..
P.S. Find an old Win CD and see if you can load Word from that..

 

[James Mike]

Yeah, word is more predictable but it also costs money and therefore not everyone will have it. Any chromium based browser has at least a basic PDF viewer onboard. Which is why I wonder.

Maybe libreoffice writer DOC/DOCX support Is Compatible Enough to display a test sheet correctly to be a non-paid substitute or the file can be saved in word as librewriter's ODT file instead of DOCX?

 

[brwinters]

I have the latest Word 365 loaded, but I can’t use the Feckin thing, so I reverted to 2010 Word as an acceptable alternative… I hate most Windows Apps..

No arguments there... I miss Windows 7

Maybe libreoffice writer DOC/DOCX support Is Compatible Enough to display a test sheet correctly to be a non-paid substitute or the file can be saved in word as librewriter's ODT file instead of DOCX?

Perhaps. It's all in how the printer formats the file that's spooled to the printer I imagine. The next thing is how to automate the print job. Does word/libre have a terminal command to send a file to the printer? I believe my current task scheduler script runs through MS paint or something crude like that...

 

[James Mike]

No arguments there... I miss Windows 7



Perhaps. It's all in how the printer formats the file that's spooled to the printer I imagine. The next thing is how to automate the print job. Does word/libre have a terminal command to send a file to the printer? I believe my current task scheduler script runs through MS paint or something crude like that...

i havent personally tested it however Word seems to be able to do this via commandline thru the macro switch(some explanation for the switches here) although you may need to record your own macro for it to print the page across all your printers without user intervention and beyond what is set as the default printer.Printing atleast to a default printer using the premade macro is reported to be available with word 2013 but must have read only mode disabled for the file.

As for Libreoffice it seems they have a dedicated printing command line switch for it that should suffice for printing to a specific printer.

 

[brwinters]

i havent personally tested it however Word seems to be able to do this via commandline thru the macro switch(some explanation for the switches here) although you may need to record your own macro for it to print the page across all your printers without user intervention and beyond what is set as the default printer.Printing atleast to a default printer using the premade macro is reported to be available with word 2013 but must have read only mode disabled for the file.

As for Libreoffice it seems they have a dedicated printing command line switch for it that should suffice for printing to a specific printer.

Thank you for the info... I will look into implementing this soon 🫡

 

[brwinters]

Thank you for the info... I will look into implementing this soon 🫡

Link to the new file here. Google automatically changed the file into its own trash format without asking. New link here.

Works as tested with LibreOffice 24 and a Canon G7020*. I chose LibreOffice because it's freely available, unlike Acrobat and MS Office which both require a license at least some, if not all, the time.

*This works to print with the black nozzle as long as duplexing is not enabled for the print job... If you have duplexing enabled, it still uses the composite black, presumably to save time or reduce ink getting rubbed off inside the mechanism or something. The print command I use for automating the job doesn't enable the duplexer even with it being set in the printer's defaults, so that works out.