Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

All CX4600 ink tanks go down even though only black is used

Dec 3, 2004 9:00AM PST

We got the rig a couple of months ago. We rarely use color, in fact, I can think of only one time, a MapQuest map.

So, the color tanks have been pacing the black tank in ink usage.

I have gone through the Print instructions to make sure no color instructions are in force.

What is going on.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Wag. It's set on...
Dec 3, 2004 9:08AM PST

Photo quality or something other than text. Sadly they don't reveal the exact effects of these selections.

Bob

- Collapse -
Re: Wag. It's set on...
Dec 3, 2004 9:23AM PST

I checked that out and found early on that the default was indeed 'photo' (thanks alot) Changed it to text, with little obvious result.

- Collapse -
Re: Wag. It's set on...
Dec 3, 2004 8:03PM PST

Understand, in order for any color to be "ready" to print when asked, the inkjets are refreshed(cleaned) upon a cleaning cycle at varying times, usually at start-up, thus some ink gets used. Also, even if not at "color" setting, trhe ink still gets used to be more robust in output, yeah they want you to use ink. Older models truly stuck to "monochrome" (black) as a desired output but recent models don't follow that. They feel its best to keep the ink pathways, refreshed at all times to prevent clogging or smears, etc., yeah right. if you want save some ink, check setting for draft or basic ink output from any "high-qulaity" setting, thus less ink is used.

good luck Grin -----Willy

- Collapse -
Used our first black cartridge on our Epson CX4600
Mar 9, 2005 6:44AM PST

We have used our first black cartridge, set at Draft.
We also used about 80% of the color cartridges although we rarely used color.

I guess that firing up the printer to print one black text print a day, uses up almost the same amount of color.

Bummer, a very expensive bummer. Too bad the reviews that praised this rig highly, failed to mention that.

You get your most efficient ink use if you print the entire cartridge in one pass. Otherwise, it gets very expensive per page and the less printing you do, the more expensive per page it gets.