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Why are there two black ink cartridges in my printer?

I have a Canon Pixma MP530 printer. Is there a way to print when one of the two black ink cartridges is empty?

  • It seems as though if you have two black ink cartridges that when one is goes empty that you would automatically be able to use the other ink cartridge. Unfortunately, when one goes empty it does not allow you to continue printing unless you replace the empty cartridge. Is there a way to bypass it? It seems to defeat the purpose of having two cartridges.

  • Answer:

    The two blacks are different inks and have two separate roles. The big one is pigmented ink and is used for text printing. The small black is dye used for photos or graphics. The printers is programmed to know which to use and it will not use the other one in place of the other if empty as it has no independent thought process so just takes ink for where a human told it to take it. At the end of the day it's same amount of ink you will use as if it used the other black then you'd have two empty blacks to replace. You could try setting the paper type for photo paper and it might then use the small ink instead as it thinks its printing a photo not text.

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Indeed the MP530 has two black cartridges but they are not the same ink and are used for different purposes. So normally they must be all full for the printer to operate normally under any request. However, there are ink saving programs (software) that you can use to make your printer use the other black automatically when one is over. Alternatively you could go into the driver and try and make a couple of test prints with different settings to find out when it is using the one black and when the other. Then you can make those changes to get your printer to print from the full cartridge. An even better suggestion would be to just buy something very cheap for your cartridge, here are some suggestions as in http://www.inkfilling.com/inkjet-refill-Canon--PIXMA--MP530.html For 2.39 usd you could get a chip to make your black look like it is full: http://www.inkfilling.com/printer-inkjet-chip-canon-pgi-5.html Better yet a resetter where you can reset the chips your cartridges already have: http://www.inkfilling.com/printer-ink-canon-resetter-cli8-pgi5.html Even better add some 9.99 ink on them and have the printer print however driver dictates: http://www.inkfilling.com/printer-bulk-ink-60ml.html

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