Purchased my "First" Printer

[maxse]

Hi guys. As you can tell I am new here and thanks to this wonderful forum purchased the Canon MP530 which I plan to refill with the German method.

My workhorse HP 820c can now be replaced.

I am just concerned about one thing. I would like to print crisp black and non-black text on both sides of the page (duplex) but found out that some Canon printers don't use the pigment ink for duplex but use a composite of dye inks to create black... And not even just black dye but a combo of the colors...

Is the printer I bought the same way? Maybe it's better for me to spend a few $ more and get one that truly uses all black? I bought mine from Amazon justnow for $137... Also I should have no problems disabling the low-ink monitor correct? Thanks for your help in advance.

 

[Trigger 37]

maxse,.. I have both a Canon MP730 and a Canon iP6600D. The MP730 has pigmented black. For this printer the only way to print Duplex is to select that mode and print the "N" pages. Once they print you turn them over and put them back and tell it to go and it prints all of the back sides. Pretty simple,.. even I could do it and it is all pigment ink.

The printers that have the built in duplex printing create black using Cyan, Magenta, & Yellow,.. after all,,.. equal parts of all three make a perfect black. That is how all photos are printed, either on plain paper or on photo paper. The reason the printers do this if they have a built in duples function is that the Pigment ink is not dry enough by the time the sheet is turned over and the ink comes off on the rollers and of course this smears on the paper.

So there are two questions left; 1. Do you really care if it uses Dye ink to print your duplex documents. The resolution of these printers is so high, you don't need pigmented ink to achieve "Outstanding Black Text". 2. The 2nd question is, "Can you force a Duplex printer to print Fast black only and have it print the first side of all pages and then manually turn them over. I thing the printing is actually faster because the printer does not have to wait for the turn around of the page. Yesterday I printed my copy of all my income tax data in Duplex using my MP730. It is a faster printer that my iP6600d because it has a large black print nozzle and the large black ink cart. It printed the first side of all pages and told me to turn them over. I did and as soon as I hit "OK", it was off printing at max speed. Therefore I had my job done in record time.

I just checked the user's manual for my iP6600d which does have "Automatic" duplex printing, and the answer is, this printer will do both Automatic and you can disable the automatic duplex printing and you will get Duplex printing in manual mode where you have to turn the group of pages over once they complete. So you have it both ways.

The User's Gude explains all of this. It also explains that you can only print Auto duplex when you use plain paper or Photo paper with dual sides and one of these is selected as the paper type. Go to the Canon web site, locate Support and select the MP530 and look at the Users manual. I did see a note that you can control the "Drying time" for each sheet before it turns it over in Auto mode,... so maybe they have another option for printing with Pigmented ink.

 

[ghwellsjr]

See this thread and follow the links for a very thorough discussion about duplex printing:

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=11960#p11960

To summarize, the reason Canon mixes pigment black ink with the color dye inks is to reduce the darkness of the printout so that it will be less visible from the other side of the paper.

 

[maxse]

Thanks guys. Do you think I made a good choice for the printer?

I should have no troubles disabling the ink monitor right?

 

[Trigger 37]

ghwellsjr,... Thanks for the link to your original post and the testing you did on standard nozzles prints. I know you explained it in two different ways,... but could I ask that you update your post with a picture. Pictures are worth 1000 words and for some of us they are worth more than that. Some peoples brains do not have the capacity to absorb more than 2 complex thougths or desciptions in one or more paragraphs. While your descriptons are great, they don't connect the dots.

I suggest a simple image. Print a copy of the nozzle pattern and with just the following letters you can mark up the image to show what inks print where. (C,M,Y,B,b)

You can't imagine how valuable this will be to many of us that need to diagnose what is wrong with our printers and which ink cart or nozzle is causing the problem. I could do it but I'm almost positive I would get it wrong. Since you are the person that did the work, you should be getting the credit.