Brother inkjet printer: 1 year of printing black-only documents. my color levels are almost as low as my black levels. why??

[kofman13]

I have a brother mfc-J805DW and the only thing i print is sheet music and legal documents. only black and white. i always specifically click "black&white" when printing from my computer. On the printer screen black is shows as maybe 10% of the cartridge left. Actually its been more than a year, not bad i guess. What baffles me is in that 1+ year i have probably printed only 2-3 pages of color this ENTIRE TIME. and each was maybe a small banner of one color. never printed any photos. Yet my CMY levels on the screen show like 20 % or almost as low as my black. if i dont print color, why are my color levels so low?

[Senzelian]

Inkjet printers use ink to clean out the nozzles before each print. They do that to all nozzles, not matter the color you print.

[Kilrah]

Not before each print, but usually at time and page intervals. E.g. if you don't use the printer for a month it'll purge some ink on the next powerup to avoid it drying in the nozzles which if it happens ruins the print head and the printer is essentially trash at that point. 

Laser's usually a better choice unless you need to print photos, especially if printing rarely.

[kofman13]

4 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Not before each print, but usually at time and page intervals. E.g. if you don't use the printer for a month it'll purge some ink on the next powerup to avoid it drying in the nozzles which if it happens ruins the print head and the printer is essentially trash at that point. 

Laser's usually a better choice if you rarely print, unless you need to print photos.

Thanks that makes sense! yes i kind of rarely print like twice a month

[cmndr]

As hinted at... laser is the way to go. A black only laser set up isn't THAT pricey. Whether or not there's a break even for you is another story.

[Godlygamer23]

41 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Not before each print, but usually at time and page intervals. E.g. if you don't use the printer for a month it'll purge some ink on the next powerup to avoid it drying in the nozzles which if it happens ruins the print head and the printer is essentially trash at that point. 

Laser's usually a better choice unless you need to print photos, especially if printing rarely.

Depends on your printer, and how it prints. Not all inkjet printers use the same style cartridges.