Help needed: Canon iP4000 printing color instead of B/W

[minstrel]

Whether it's done on purpose or not, I, personally, still think it's a design flaw, from my point of view. Whether the Canon techs see it as such is irrelevant, to me. Sorry, but that's how I see it. I'm a customer, and the customer is always right.

As for what language the driver is in... I'm in Sweden, and Swedish is my native tongue, my Windows version is in Swedish, and most drivers for hardware bought here are in Swedish. I'm using the driver which came with the printer, so it's in Swedish.

Cheers!

 

[Trigger 37]

minstrel, I did the checking I said I would do and here are the answers from Canon.

Why color ink may be used when printing in black and white
Even when printing in black and white, color ink is used for the following reasons:

Automatic cleaning of the print head.

To prevent the print head nozzles from clogging, the print head is automatically cleaned periodically. At that time, a small amount of each color ink is consumed.

Therefore, although printing in black and white is performed, color ink is also consumed.


Color inks may be used to create black.

When printing in grayscale or on photo paper or when duplex printing, although printing appears in black and white, the color black may be created using the three (cyan, magenta, and yellow) color inks. Printers without a pigment black tank / cartridge will print black / grayscale will create a composite black using color ink even on plain paper.

Therefore, although printing in black and white is performed, color ink may be consumed.

In order to keep the heavy black ink from smearing on the page or in the printer, color ink is used when duplex printing to help create black text.

However, since you are using an iP4000 which does have a pigment black, what their information says to me is that when you print in duplex, if they use the pigmented inks, since it really isn't dry as it exits the printer, and if they duplex it and turn in over, the ink will smear on the rollers and then on the paper. Soooooo they print both sides using the colors to make black. I've noticed on my Canon with BCI-3e black (Pigmented), the black ink is still a little wet when the page comes out. I have called Canon and asked about this as I think it is always using way to much black ink. I print everything I can in "Black-Fast" mode, but I never need to print duplex. The ink is so wet I can smear it easy with my fingers. It has to dry. The answer I got from them was,.... sorry, that is the way that our print driver is set up. They suggested that if I don't like it I could always create a "profile" and adjust the level of black, and save the whole thing as a special paper print profile.

None of this is going to help you. If you have to print in duplex, you better stock up on ink. By the way, it should not make any difference to you. The Dye Color ink for the Canon iP4000 is cheaper than Pigment ink anyway. I don't think it takes three times the ink (i.e. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) to make nice clear black. I don't know the amounts but it could be something like 1/3 C, 1/3 M, & 1/3 Y -make a good black dot,. who knows?

 

[minstrel]

Well, there's always the option of feeding the papers manually from the top one at the time, and achieve "manual" duplex printing. I've done that when printing on cardboard, for instance. It's just a pain when you want to print a lot of pages that way...

 

[ghwellsjr]

Just be aware that if you tell your printer that you want to print in duplex manually, it will still use the color inks--just like it does for automatic duplex!!

In spite of what Canon says this time around, I think the consensus of forum participants who have studied this issue is that the reason for reducing the amount of pigment ink and adding in dye color ink is that it reduces the amount of "show-through". In other words, since the pigment ink is so dark, you can see it on the back side of normal 20-lb paper. The driver purposely makes it less dark so that it won't be as visible from the back side of the paper. No other explanation would explain why they do it even in manual duplex mode.

 

[minstrel]

I meant using the paper feeder on top to feed through one paper at the time, then flip that paper so the printer prints on the "back side" of the paper. The printer can be set to print single sided, but you feed the same paper through twice to get print on both sides. That way you can have it print in b/w, and still get print on both sides of the paper. Since the printer pauses when the feeder runs out of paper, this will effectively be "manual duplex". Laborious, though.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Thanks for the explanation. I see what you mean now.

I do a lot of booklet printing which also uses duplex but unfortunately this can't work with your scheme.