Brother printer using too much ink?

[Jalida]

Hi,
I have the Brother MFC-J6710DW printer that I bought a reasonbly short time ago.

The issue that I have is that I never (repeat, never) print in color. I only print text documents and I have it set to only print in grayscale on every document that I've ever printed.

However this printer uses an extraordinary amount of cyan, yellow and magenta ink, even though I never print in color, never.

I buy my black cartridges online from a third party company and to give you an example of how fast this printer goes through color cartridges here is an example, I use the black XXL cartridges that so far has lasted me aproximmately 5 months and it's still got about 1/8th level according to the printer display, in that same time without ever printing a color picture or document, I've gone through 3 yellow, 2 cyan and 2 magenta cartridges and the display is now informing me that the cyan cartridge is getting low again and will need to be replaced soon.

I just don't get it. How does this printer eat so much ink when I never even print anything at all in color? How do I stop this?

Is it at all possible that I can somehow flush out the color print heads and maybe install black cartridges in the color slots so that I don't have to buy the color cartridges anymore? It seems far cheaper to replace black than the colored ones so if that could be done then I'd go that route since I have this in our home office and we will never print color in the future either. Or perhaps somebody has another solution to this like some kind of a software update that will cause it to stop consuming color ink when I don't print in color.

Am I perhaps just using it wrong and I should print out an image once a month or every 3 months that will stop it from consuming the colored ink when I'm not printing in color maybe?

I'm really kind of fed up on paying for colored ink when I'm not even printing in color. I love my brother printers but this is just out of control in my opinion.

Thanks,.

Are daisey wheel printers even made anymore, and if so are they cheaper to operate with regards to the ink ribbons that they'd need to use, or are they so antiquated that the price for ink ribbons is so high that they're not economical to try to use instead of a ink jet printer?

 

[Richvarsay]

same problem happen in my cannon printer....i think you should not buy cartridges from third party..

 

[Jalida]

Yeah but the thing is... I buy only Brother color ink cartridges (there the ones that empty out without even printing color pages, images etc. The only ones that I buy aftermarket is the black because they hold something like 5 times the amount of ink that the xxl black Brother cartridge holds.

And the price comparison (roughly):
Brother black XXL cartridge at local office store: $32.00 for a 2 pack.
Aftermarket XXXXXL black cartridge bought through Internet site: $3.50 EACH.
Savings of 29.50 on 2 cartridges.

With that in mind, why would anybody NOT buy aftermarket black cartridges?

I guess what I'm going to have to start doing on this next cycle is to buy aftermarket color cartridges as well since they are only about $4.50 compared to $16.75 in the local store, it'll still be a waste but at least I'll save $36 or so on the 3 color cartridges unless Brother puts out a firmware update to make this thing stop wasting color ink when no color pages or images are ever being printed.

I thought about going with a black and white laser printer but from what I've heard I'd only get about 5000 pages (with about a 20% coverage) and the laser cartridge locally is about $80 to $120 and then there is the drum that wears out rather quickly as well which when that happens everything that I've read suggests that you just buy another laser printer since the drums are absurdly priced.

If I could only find a BLACK only ink jet printer I'd be happy. None of this "stops printing black only documents when one of the color cartridges runs out of ink junk" would be a very nice thing. We all know they sell printers so cheaply now because they more than make up any losses as well as huge profits by selling those consumers name branded ink telling them that it's better, it lasts longer, it does this, it does that, it even scrubs your toilet bowl for you... bla bla bla. It's a load of manure. Years ago we did visual tests on different printers with color images for sharpness, color bleed, color fade, etc and by the end of our impromptu test over a month, of the 4 or 5 models that we tried out, they all pretty much had the same looking photo, although in the beginning there was one that didn't look as good as the other 4 from what I remember (we decided to disgard that printer in our testing), but this was a few years ago so I an't remember the exact details.

Anyway, thanks for the reply

 

[Olasek]

Jalida, How did you save the problem? I wonder because I have a very similar problem.

 

[Jalida]

I put electrical tape over the clear ink level windows on all the color cartridges which makes the printer think they are always full. So the computer cartridges are empty but the printer thinks they are always full Obviously you can't print in color since they are empty but at least I don't have to buy any more color ink

 

[Olasek]

I did the same, thanks for your reply.

 

[kanavsingh]

I am using the canon e460 and facing the same problem