Ink Level Monitors Exposed
by Barry Shultz
When you print a page on your inkjet printer, if you
have your drivers properly installed, you will see a
small screen pop up telling you how full your
cartridges are. How does your printer know this?
Most printers count ink drops. Every line of print
is produced by tiny droplets of ink and your very
smart printer keeps track of every one of them. It's
pretty impressive because it's nothing for todays
inkjet printers to lay down 12,000,000 drops per
second.
Canon also uses an optical method. The ink sensor
monitors the ink levels through optical detection
and dot counting and alerts users when the supply of
any color ink is low.
Canon's ink level system is probably the most
accurate although you can still trick the printer
into printing more from an "empty" ink tank. Just
tell the software that you have installed a new
cartridge and you can get more pages out of it.
You can reset the Epson cartridges after they run
out and get a whole lot more pages out of them. Of
course you need an Epson universal resetter to do
that.
Things can happen to throw off this counter and you
may get erroneous readings from your ink level
indicator, so don't put a whole lot of trust in it.
It's just a guide.
It goes both ways too. Sometimes your levels will be
good but your ink cartridge runs out of ink. It
could be that the cartridge was not filled properly
at the factory but it most likely is caused by
faulty ink level data.
The data can get corrupt by things like power loss
from lightning storms, a virus, hard drive crashes,
Spyware, corrupt printer drivers etc, etc.
So when you think you have a tough job just be glad
you don't have to keep track of 12,000,000 drops of
ink per second all day long!
About the Author
Barry Shultz is the author of Atlascopy News, and
President of Atlascopy, Inc. Atlascopy specialized
in affordable alternatives to the high cost of
printer supplies. Sign up for the Atlascopy
Newsletter and get 10% coupons every week in your
email.
http://atlascopy.com/signup_new.htm
Go to Atlascopy to save a bundle on your printer and
refilling supplies.
http://atlascopy.com
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