Printing With an Empty Color Cartridge Can Damage Your Printer
If you think your color inkjet printer should print in black when a color cartridge is empty, you’re not alone. It’s reasonable to think your color printer can act like a monochrome printer when a color cartridge is empty, but you still have plenty of black ink. After all, your car still runs when you’re out of windshield fluid.
When your printer stops printing and cries for a color cartridge, open the printer properties page and look for the black-ink-only option. You will find that there is no such option. You can choose the next best thing, grayscale printing, but the printer still cries for a color cartridge and does not allow you to print. What gives?
Inks Play Multiple Roles
Printers use some color ink when you print black text and black ink is used when you print color images. Also ink cools and lubricates print heads. If you could print with an empty cartridge, you might destroy a print head from the friction of printing without ink to cool and lubricate the head. Also, if your printer indicates a color is empty, there is still residual ink left at the bottom of the cartridge. The residual ink can easily clog the print head and blot ink onto pages and even permanently block the print head.
You may be able to trick a printer into thinking a cartridge has ink when it does not. This trick may enable you to print in the short term, but it may also reduce the useful life of your printer in the long term.
Filed under: Blogroll, FAQ, Inkjet Info | Tagged: blocked heads, cooling, empty cartridge, ink, inkjet, lubrication |
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