How to trick your printer’s sensors into letting you print b/w when you’re out of color ink
by Signaltheorist on May.04, 2011, under Uncategorized
I bought some movie tickets online the other day and had about 10 minutes to print my tickets before I had to run out the door. I hit print and looked expectantly at my printer, but as usual it was blinking at me saying that one of my color cartridges was empty. I rummaged through my ‘stuff’ drawer and noticed that I was clean out of ink, so I switched adobe reader to print in greyscale and hit print again. My black cartridge was full and brand new, but the printer said this:
Are you kidding me? Not enough ink to maintain image quality? on a black and white document? Obviously my lovely printer manufacturer (I have a Brother MFC-495CW) is trying to make more money on ink cartridge sales. Tough luck. So I pulled out one of the color cartridges and took a peek. This is what I saw:
The ink cartridge has a little window on it that shows you how much ink is left inside. After a bit of searching the web, I found out that the printer shines a light through the ink window to see how much ink is left. So I proceeded to see if I could fool the printer into seeing ink in the cartridge. I first tried to sharpie the window but that didnt seem to help.
Next, I grabbed a roll of electrical tape and stuck some on a few strategic spots as you can see below
Success! All three cartridges are now showing as full!
Some of you may be wondering if you lose print quality if you dont select greyscale mode at this point. Dont worry, I’ll show you what happens with a little help from Teddy Roosevelt:
It seems like a lack of color cartridges has little negative effect. Success!
June 22nd, 2011 on 8:02 am
Great hack — saved me some money.
Thanks for posting!
July 8th, 2011 on 7:20 pm
Awesome fix – I have an MFC-J265W and it kept telling me I was out of ink, when obviously I wasn’t
Tried the sharpie too, didn’t work – how odd…
Thanks!
July 16th, 2011 on 8:02 pm
How’s that working for you in the long-term? I did your trick today after being VERY frustrated with my machine many times! However, I’ve read that an empty ink cartridge can damage the print head. Have you had any problems since your fix?
July 21st, 2011 on 11:19 am
Hey Brandon,
I haven’t had any problems so far
Rob: It worked on there too? excellent
Jaryd: My pleasure
September 22nd, 2011 on 11:05 am
Thanks so much for sharing this trick. I needed 3 more pages for a project for my son’s birthday party and did not want to go to the office supply store. By the way, the last pages printed great.
December 9th, 2011 on 7:54 am
Ah Hah!
Sharpie didn’t work for me either, but thankfully I had duct tape to hand.
Excellent trick and thanks Signaltheorist.
and p.s. the quality is just fine.
February 11th, 2012 on 10:37 am
Haha genious. Saved my day too
February 15th, 2012 on 4:49 pm
dude, your awesome
March 5th, 2012 on 10:07 am
Used it for my Brother MFC-885CW…worked like a champ!!! Thanks!
March 6th, 2012 on 5:21 am
Great.
The only tape I has got is yellow. I put it in the yellow cartridge and in the display immediately the yellow sensor reached 100%!
Thanks a lot!
For those guys are afraid the ink head gets damaged in the long term I read in another forum (I don’t know if it results…) that we can put destlled water in the ink cartridgeds to be nor used. This way when the auto clean function works there is always some liquid in order printer head does’nt dry.
March 24th, 2012 on 3:28 pm
I had the same problem but no electrical tape. I used the foil wrapper from a piece of gum and worked no problem. Thanks!
April 8th, 2012 on 6:50 pm
Yeah, this worked great, thanks so much. Yes, totally frustrating – I was so shocked when I took the cartridge out and noticed how much ink was visible in the little window when you held it upside down and wasn’t going to get used…. WOW!
Thanks so much
shane
June 5th, 2012 on 7:13 pm
so, I realized that I have a lot of ink cartridges sitting around that were never fully used. The problem I see is that the printer cost me about $100, and I have purchased twice that in ink. I can buy a new printer if I wear out the heads. No wonder they pay you $2 buck to “recycle” your old cartridges. They can get 4 times that in ink out of the things.
July 1st, 2012 on 7:11 pm
sweeet, worked for me i only needed the black ink…thats pretty annoying what they do…thanks a million.
god electrical tapes own.
July 29th, 2012 on 8:30 am
SignalTheorist.. you are the MAN! the trick worked! thanks!
August 12th, 2012 on 4:30 pm
OMG it works! thank u so much!!! You are the best!
August 15th, 2012 on 11:17 am
I did this a year or so ago and it worked great. But now my printer won’t print in black and it’s NOT telling me that a color cartridge is empty. Could it be the print head? (What’s a print head?) Anything I can do about this, or do I need a new printer?
August 28th, 2012 on 5:04 pm
OMG! Thank you so much. I was going insane trying to get the printer to recognize that there was still ink in the cartridge. Thanks again!
August 30th, 2012 on 12:32 pm
Hi my friend, i got a MFC-J265W, exactly what you hack? could you please put more picks i cant see if you remove the entery window, open complete the catridge…BEST REGARDS!
August 30th, 2012 on 12:32 pm
PD its similar cartridge that you hack!
September 13th, 2012 on 11:34 am
Integrity is a empathetic listener and makes each customer know he values their time.
October 10th, 2012 on 10:05 pm
So I googled “i know i have enough ink, but my printer says I don’t” This showed up third link down. And it was exactly what I needed!
Thanks
October 24th, 2012 on 12:23 am
awsome have a mfc-790cw and stuck a little paper between the window and it worked!! thank you!!!
November 12th, 2012 on 11:02 am
you are a lifesaver
November 26th, 2012 on 5:02 pm
Yep, worked for me too. Putting electric tap over that little window did the trick very well.
However, in the interests of full disclosure, you should probably post this link for your readers because it contains a warning in the first paragraph by Brother about why their printers tend not to print when color is out.
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/BSC/public/us/us/en/faq/faq/000000/002400/000061/faq002461_003.html?reg=us&c=us&lang=en&prod=mfcj835dw_us&Cat=103#step2
November 27th, 2012 on 7:21 pm
Worked for me! rock lobster.
December 24th, 2012 on 3:55 pm
Thanks. I had the opposite problem, the black ink was out, so I tried changing the document color to blue, but it still wouldn’t print. This happened on Xmas Eve, and I wasn’t about to go to the store just for an ink cartridge, so I googled the problem and found this site. I had to try twice before it would read the cartridge. Not only did it fool the printer, though, but I was able to print it black and it came out fine!
December 27th, 2012 on 9:54 am
You rock! Thanks for posting! Worked like a charm!!!
January 11th, 2013 on 12:35 pm
awesome..worked! if do not have tape USE FOIL! like one of the commenting people says!! yay!
I have a brother MFC-J591ODW
and I put it on the top and bottom screens too.. not sure if that made a difference!
January 20th, 2013 on 11:53 am
Needed a quick fix for an urgent fax coming in. No electrical tape, no duct tape. A little black nail polish did the trick! (Of course let it dry first). It’s so ridiculous that the printer does this. There was definitely still magenta in there. Plus, not to have the option to print with the black ink only is also really frustrating.
January 23rd, 2013 on 9:44 am
Can I just say how much I want to marry you right now? I just can’t justify getting a new printer when I just got my “brother mfc-j415″ even though its been nothing but a headache. Grrrr, my faith in humanity has gone up a few notches!
February 4th, 2013 on 5:52 pm
Hey man! You Rock!
Brother Printers Suck! but you ROCK!
Thanks so much for sharing that with the world!
February 19th, 2013 on 5:31 pm
You are the best…you saved me 30 bucks…I have been messing with this ink situation for so long buying and throwing away cartridges…you are a true environmentalist…:)
March 2nd, 2013 on 8:59 pm
I am not sure where to place the tape . I have a MFC J435 . I covered the sensor as i use to do with my old CN420 . It seems that my cartriges are a little different . What am I doing wrong? Would appreciate the help.
March 2nd, 2013 on 9:00 pm
I am not sure where to place the tape . I have a MFC J435 I covered the sensor as i use to do with my old CN420 . It seems that my cartriges are a little different . What am I doing wrong? Would appreciate the help.
March 23rd, 2013 on 8:07 am
Thanks for the tip. Worked like a charm on my j825dw! I used masking tape. You have to make sure you thread it through the hole. 1st time I covered the hole & went all the way around with the tape & it didn’t work. What I don’t understand is where is the color ink going? I print b/w 99% of the time…Hmmm.
April 9th, 2013 on 9:58 pm
Searching for this for some time now – i guess luck is far more advanced than look for engines
April 13th, 2013 on 11:55 pm
thank you so much for this! i didn’t have electrical tape so i used white out and it worked! can’t thank you enough!