Canon Ink Measuring a bit dodgy?

[AshleyC]

Ive got a Canon Pixma Pro 100 and its been reporting that the black and grey in cartriges have been getting low, this morning it claimed that the black was now empty. So I opened it up and popped out the carts to replace them. Now seeing this would suggest that theyre still almost half full!



I swapped them out anyway but just wondering if its Canon's monitoring software claiming things are empty when clearly not!

Also as an aside, these are the official cannon cartriges, the left hand side seems to be totally empty space. Are there 3rd party versions that have use the full area for ink?

 

[ecoleman]

My HP laser printer was telling me that my black toner has been empty for the last 3 months.
I think I must have printed a good 2000 pages since it first told me.

It's also telling me that some of my colour toners are nearly empty, but as I have only printed 2-3 pages of colour, I'm sure that's wrong too.

 

[Nod]

The left had side of the Canon carts (as viewed in the photo) is the actual ink reservoir, the felt bit is a sort of flow regulator. When the printer starts reporting that the ink is running out, the reservoir actually appears to be empty but the felt bit looks more saturated than the examples posted. Since the actual print head can be damaged by running when dry, there has to be a small amount of wastage (unfortunately!)

 

[Cobra]

There was a thread somewhere recently, that suggested that the chip could be "fooled"
by using a pin to "reset" the cartridges, as to whether or not its true I've no idea.

After @Nod s comment I maybe reluctant to try it anyway.

 

[Nod]

I don't know how much a replacement head is if you DID fry one but I reckon a few drops of ink is a relatively small price to pay for peace of mind!

 

[AshleyC]

yeah thats fair enough then i just looked at it and thought it was still half full! I never noticed the fresh ones having anything in the left hand side. In fact i just looked at the spares i have still in the box and they are indeed full up on the left. Operator error, bloody users etc etc

 

[EOS_JD]

This has been going on for years. They report very very early in the hope you use a lot more!
Same with Toner. I ran a laser printer for almost a year with the toner running out message! Hundreds of prints

 

[chris malcolm]

I usually go on printing with the empty cartridge until I get a funny looking print, when I change it immediately. My guess is that even if they weren't being pessimistic, they ought to report "empty" if there might not be enough to handle one more A3+ page which rather heavily used that colour.

 

[gramps]

From 2003 (Telegraph)

Ink for home printers is seven times more expensive than vintage champagne and many cartridges say they are empty long before they are, according to an investigation by Which? magazine.

A typical replacement cartridge for a Hewlett Packard inkjet printer with a capacity of 17ml costs about £29. This works out at about £1.70 per millilitre, compared with 1985 Dom Perignon at 23p per millilitre. An Epson cartridge costs £21 and holds approximately 12ml of ink, putting it in the same league.
Many of the printers tested gave warnings that they were about to run out of ink long before they did. The Epson AcuLaser and Minolta Magicolor lasers said that new toner was needed just halfway through the cartridge's lifespan.

Embedded in Epson's ink cartridges are microchips that stop the printer working when the ink runs out. Which? found that by using a £20 tool, it was possible to reset the chips that were reporting themselves empty and to print 38 per cent more pages.