How Do I Use Only Black Ink?

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I have an HP Photosmart C3180 All-in-one. As I haven’t had any need for color lately, when I last replaced ink, I only replaced the black cartridge. It didn’t work, even when printing grayscale-only images, even when telling print-set-up grayscale-only. Is there a way to tell my printer to use only the black ink cartridge. My test image is a handmade postscript file that only use setgray to set the color.

5 thoughts on - How Do I Use Only Black Ink?

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    i do not know answer, but what i can tell you is that all color printers have adopted one type or another ‘smart cartridge’.

    they have done so to prevent users from using refill kits to refill ink cartridges. this is evident by all the contacts on cartridge near ink outlet.

    many color printer tie into the cartridge to detect when cartridge ink runs out and ‘locks’ the cartridge in a state where even if refilled, it will not work again.

    many of the cartridges are even monitored to level of ink left.

    because of this and other reasons, refill kit makers have taken their products to a point of special cartridges that have tubes run from cartridges to external ink supplies so cartridges will always show full.

    you just may have to pay the price of a new cartridge, oem or kit maker, and install a new color cartridge.

  • get a B&W laser printer, the cost per page is a fraction of what inkjet’s cost, they can print well on cheaper paper and everything.

    save the color printer for color jobs like photographs.

  • To be precise: Black lines were black, but pale gray areas were an even paler yellow. I’ve just discoverd that the printer does the right thing with text from a pdf. The black ink cartridge is getting used, just not enough.

    I used HPLIP, but it has been a while, so no details. Before remembering HPLIP, I’d tried to install the printer with just CUPS. It would not print. Using HPLIP, I got a rather long-named queue that would print. The other queue, the one with the name I wanted, will accept jobs, but never finish them.