Firmware designed to waste ink?

[Inkie]

I've been dealing with this question for along time and wanted to see if I can get any discussion on it.

I have a Canon i960 photo printer, a six cartridge unit with photo cyan and photo magenta.

99 percent of the time, I'm printing in draft mode, the other one percent is the occasional standard print
when I forget to manually select draft mode. I can't remember the last time I actually ran a colored copy.

Never the less, the ink levels are always declining from printer use.

It's now my opinion that even in draft mode, other colors are introduced for the sole purpose of draining the system.

 

[websnail]

It's now my opinion that even in draft mode, other colors are introduced for the sole purpose of draining the system.

The problem with this theory is that it assumes that a printers printhead nozzles will work no matter how long they are left idle and that if you buy a Magenta cartridge with 16ml in it, then you should have 16ml left when you come to use it after 2 months of printing nothing but black text.

Unfortunately the best way to explain why this is not the case is to consider your printer as if it was a dog... Forgetting the issue of feeding it just consider the exercise side of things... A dog needs exercise or it gets fat, bored and starts doing things you don't want it to do.. When you do want it to chase next doors cat off your lawn after 2 months of sitting inside, it will probably be too slow and unable to do the job you got it for so you go on a bit binge of taking it out for walks until it's fit, then it catches the cat once and you're good for another couple of months when you forget to take the dog out and so the cycle repeats...

The only problem with this analogy is that the dog still has to go outside for a bit of a poop and a pee, so it uses up dog power anyway but it's not actually doing the job of chasing the cat...


Printers are the same, especially inkjet printers... In order to keep them in working order the printer deliberately exercises the nozzles by running occasional cleaning cycles at set intervals when nothing has been printed. If it didn't it would end up clogged silly and this tends to happen anyway thus the need to run numerous cleaning cycles to clear the crud out.

Ultimately if you are not a regular printer, I would seriously consider moving over to a laser, possibly even a mono-laser as they don't need the same level of "exercise".


... and yes I apologise for that appalling analogy but it's the best I can come up with... Oh and I have two cats so none were hurt in the writing of this post... Hope that helps explain why you're seeing the issues you are.

Martin

 

[Inkie]

Very cute analogy.

I've never heard my printer run this cleaning operation so I assume it's in stealth mode. I always wondered why the manufacturers didn't design this function into the printers, so am now grateful that they did.

I always keep my printer on, was under the impression that keeping the system energized also helps reduce plugged nozzles. Amazingly, I have never had nozzle issues for the 4 plus years of ownership and lack of use.