MX920 won't print in black and white when color cartridges are empty

[talentetta]

For over a year at least, my color cartridges have been empty, and I haven't had a problem printing or copying in black and white until now. I have an error on the machine that says to replace the 3 color cartridges. I only need black, so how can I work around this error and get back to printing? Recently the lg black 255 was out of ink, but it was still printing fine. I replaced that cartridge with a generic refill, but that hasn't helped. I still get the picture showing arrows to the 3 color cartridges, which are empty. I never printed in color, and yet they all drained down, even though I had grayscale and draft selected.

I am running Windows 10 on a Lenovo Thinkpad.

[gb9]

I have same problem and can not understand why a smart company would do ths to their customer. it is a dumb feature thst is intentionally inflicted on us and it should be fixed in an update.

[gb9]

This is not the only foolish or shamefull feature. There are two black cartridges - one standard size and one significantly larger. The smaller cartridge is used for black and white printing which I suspect is the major mode for most users. So  having two cartridges increases the cost of the system with no benefit to the user. A very disappointing design. 

[SamanthaW]

Hello gb9 and loose_canon2!

Welcome to the Canon Forums and thanks for your post!

I wanted to clear up a little confusion about the inks in your PIXMA MX922. First, greyscale is not black and white printing, it's actually color printing! What I mean by that, is greyscale is a scale from white to black, which requires the use of color inks to create (because black ink is just black, and can't be lightened without white ink, which isn't included in our printers). Our printers are programmed to automatically use the Pigment black (the larger of the two black cartridges) to print black text, unless otherwise instructed. So when greyscale is selected in the settings, it will force the printer to use a composition of the color inks to create the scale of grey that greyscale is programmed for.

As for the differnece in the two black cartridges, the PGBK cartridge is a pigment based black ink which is used for text because the ink sits on top of the paper and doesn't soak into it. This creates that sharp lettering needed for legible text. The BK cartridge is a dye based black, which is used for photos and graphics. This ink soaks into the paper, and is good for creating a deeper black when using photo paper.

There are many ways to help conserve ink, but I'd recommend these to start:

1) Don't turn off your printer after each use; instead, let it go to sleep. The printer uses very little power in sleep mode, and does not have to go through the initialization process before printing if it's not turned off.
2) Set your quality to low/draft/quick when printing text. This will allow your printer to use less ink, because text does not require as much detail as a photo would.

3) Keep your mode set to color printing, as our printer will see you're printing text, and use the larger PGBK cartridge by default. 

If you have any other questions about how to conserve ink, our support team is happy to go over other ways to save HERE.

I hope this helps!

[gb9]

Thank you for explaining the difference between the two black cartridges. It does confuse me that the PGBK cartridge is used by the printer to print it when in text mode, yet if I select the color mode when printing a text document, the printer recognizes the document as black and still uses the PGBK cartridge. So why does the printer not print a black text when in either mode if a color cartridge is empty.

[SamanthaW]

Hello Again!

I'm happy to explain further! When a cartridge is empty, the printer will keep you from printing in order to protect the print head from potential damage. Without the ink available in all cartridges, you risk having the print head clog because that ink isn't available to keep it from drying out. Since the print head is the most expensive part of the printer, we like to protect it a little extra.

I hope this clarifies!

[gb9]

Yes, it does make sense now. Thank you.

[JasonS]

I can appreciate the need to protect the print but the explaination still leaves a bit to be desired.

Wouldn't the ink at the head still be at risk of drying out when a given color is not used for a protracted period of time?  For example since buy a replacement set for the smaller cartridges, I have set my print preferrences to grayscale to avoid using any of the colors or the smaller black cartridge.

If this is not an issue then why would printing using just the larger black when one of the smaller cartridges are out cause any isssues?  In either situation there is no ink being drawn up through the smaller cartridges and the potential for ink drying out on the print head should be constant.

It is fairly well known that smaller ink jet printers are sold at a loss with the expectation of making up the profit margin on ink.  I accept this as the cost of getting a decent printer at a lower entry cost.  I just hope at some point someone will challenge the market with the more customer friendly business model.

[chiphenry]

I'm going to buy a black and white printer and I won't be replacing any cartridges on my Canon. I recently bought the larger black one thinking that would serve me for quite some time. I had no idea it would lead me to replacing all of the above. I won't stand for this. 

[inyan78]

that's funny because if I use it to copy other physical documents it prints in black and white just fine

[chiphenry]

They don't offer a Black Print options to fleece more of your money pretending that colors are required. I have already sent my opinion and I will not buy a color cartridge. I'm going to replace this printer very soon. They don't deserve my money or yours.