How do Maxify chips work?

seseeley

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Do Maxify chips actively monitor ink level? Or is their only purpose to limit cartridges to one use? My understanding is there is no physical difference between OEM XL and non-XL cartridges except amount of ink from the factory.

Can I use a 3rd party non-XL ARC on an OEM cartridge but fill it to XL levels?

Thanks for in insight,
Steve
 

The Hat

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Can I use a 3rd party non-XL ARC on an OEM cartridge but fill it to XL levels?
The Maxify chip is the same as all chips, it plays no active part in monitoring your ink levels, its only purpose is to identify individual colour cartridges and visually shows on screen when the printer registers the cartridge empty, the printer controls all ink levels.

You can use ARC chips to register each cartridges, but over filling is a different matter, you need to put in only the recommended amounts of ink, overfilling will cause the cartridge to leak out, so only fill by weight not by volume.

You gain nothing by over filling and if you run out of ink the printer will stop anyway, so don’t be greedy because these cartridge hold quite a bit of ink anyway, and if you’re a heavy user then top off once a month..
 

Artur5

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Sorry @The Hat, but I disagree.
The printer doesn't knows at all the real ink levels. The role of the printer is to send information to the chips about the ink being consumed during the printing job and cleaning cycles. This information stored in the chips is what keeps track of levels, but it gives only a very rough estimation. If the estimated level goes below a certain amount then it pops a 'low level' yellow warning on the screen, which doesn't stops the printer from working.
The ink detector system at the bottom of the printhead is what decides that one cartridge is really empty. When it sees no more ink coming from one particular color channel, a red 'X' appears on screen saying that the cartridge is empty and should be replaced or else you can't use the machine anymore.
In normal conditions the yellow 'low level' warning appears before the red 'X' signal, but if the ink detector sees no more ink before the chip of that cart is marked as "low", then it pops an error on screen and it stops printing without further indication of the cause and/or fix of this error.
The first time that that happens, the user is at loss at what to do. This is an absurd bug in Canon's firmware/software, because to clear the error only needs replacing that cart with a new one or refill and reinstall, if it's fitted with an autoreset chip.

Now, lets suppose you refill a non-XL cart with XL-amount of ink, i.e. much more than what the chip expects. Then, the non-XL chip will trigger the yellow warning long before the cart is really empty, but the cart won't be declared totally empty (red 'X' ) until the ink flow detector in the printhead says so.
So, I guess that you could keep printing for quite a while with the yellow warning before the red signal appears.
This is my hypothesis. If you want to know for sure ( and dispel our doubts ) try filling to XL level an OEM cart fitted with non-XL ARC.
Anyway, I think it makes more sense to use XL ARC on XL OEM carts. This way, the real ink level on screen would be much more accurate.
 
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The Hat

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The role of the printer is to send information to the chips about the ink being consumed during the printing job and cleaning cycles
You’ve got that arse about backwards, cartridge chips are dumb, the printer EPROM is the brain..
 

Artur5

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As dumb as they're, they store the ink levels information and this what uses the EEPROM to know the condition of the carts.


I'm entering this matter in my (quite long) list of disagreements with @The Hat. :D
 

Ink stained Fingers

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I'm an Epson user, but some of the addressed questions are very similar to those around chips and ARC chips for Epson printers. One question is whether and which data is stored on a chip - I do this -I use a genuine Epson cartridge and print for a while - do a reset and put it back into the printer again - the status monitor shows 'full' for half a second and the ink level then drops back to the previous last level before I removed the cartridge. I do another reset on this cartridge and re-insert it into another printer which uses the same type of cartridge - this printer shows the cartridge as full - what does this all mean - in the Epson environment

- the printer firmware communicates with the chip and writes the value of the ink level to it and stores it as well in printer firrmware/memory

- the printer firmware is able to identify a cartridge - probably by a kind of serial number - and sees prior use of this cartridge and writes back the previous ink level which makes multiple use of the same cartridge impossible - but not in another printer - since this printer does not have an internal record of prior use.

This means that I could re-use regular cartridges - OEM or 3rd party - with non-ARC chips - by swapping between printers and doing a refill before the ink level drops to zero and the chip/cartridge is de-activated completely.

This is with Epson pprinters, and Epson made this approach more sophisticated with the P-900 printer, they are now storing all (or most?) of the cartridge serial numbers of used-up cartridges so there is no way to rotate cartridges between printers or over a longer cycle of different cartridges. There are chip adapters to deliver a new chip serial number with every reset cycle to overcome that limitation - and there is apparently a new chip resettter available doing more tricks but Canon most likely will play other games.

So if you have another Canon printer available you may check whether Canon is playing the same game.
 

stratman

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The ink detector system at the bottom of the printhead
What is this?

So if you have another Canon printer available you may check whether Canon is playing the same game.
No, Canon does not. Either a cartridge resets or it does not. The ink level is stored on the chip and is the same if you put that cartridge/chip in another printer.
 

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