Dumb tech question re: printers

[El Pollo Guerrera]

With printers that use separate cartridges for the colours (cyan, magenta, yellow), I've always wondered this...

Has anyone here had to deal with a printer that had the wrong colour cartridge in a slot? Has anyone tried putting (for example) a magenta cart in the yellow slot? Do machine have safety measures to prevent this?

[Broomjockey]

Ones I know of tend to have the cartridges slotted slightly differently so that they don't sit correctly, or will report to the monitoring software that it's reporting the wrong colour.

[Chromatix]

Oh heck, I can just imagine the mess that would cause.

I think my current inkjet printer has a "colour pack" rather than individual colours. Much more idiot-proof, I must say, and since it was a low-end model, that's probably a good thing.

Mind you, that's "low end" in Canon terms. Canon inkjet printers tend to stay usable for a lot longer than average, because you can replace the heads as well as the ink. In many models, the heads get replaced *with* the ink. So this printer cost about twice or three times what a "low end" printer from another maker would have.

Which also means that if someone did get a Canon with separate colour tanks, and managed somehow to get them mixed up, it wouldn't be the end of the world. One new print head later, all would be well. Costly, but not as much as a whole new printer.

ETA: the Tektronix/Xerox Phaser series, with their wax inks, have the ink blocks shaped to fit through holes in the tray. A game any two-year-old can play successfully!

[lordlundar]

With printers that use separate cartridges for the colours (cyan, magenta, yellow), I've always wondered this...

Has anyone here had to deal with a printer that had the wrong colour cartridge in a slot? Has anyone tried putting (for example) a magenta cart in the yellow slot? Do machine have safety measures to prevent this?

Oh that could produce some funny results. Using Joi's CEO as an example:

AB: Joi, how come the CEO looks like an alien with pale green skin?
Joi: The Cyan and Magenta ink must have been placed in wrong. Still, it seems to fit her better.

Doubt it's likely to happen though. Even if it's not obvious, the ink cartridges are keyed, and will not accept anything apart from the ones they are meant to, as well as receiving an error from the printer saying low ink or something similar. In the rare event that it does happen, the colour stuff would just look weird until it gets fixed. The print heads are mostly built into the cartridges, so it's not like it's going to take a massive cleaning procedure to resolve the issue. (part of the reason why using refill packs usually don't work)

[draggar]

Most printers that take separate cartridges (or toners for laser) either are slightly different in shape or have something built into them (a chip) that tells the printer what color it is - if it is in the wrong place then it won't work and the printer will give you some sort of error.

I know printers that sell entire cartridges (print heads and ink tanks) and toners have the circuitry in them that'll let them do this but I do not know about just tanks. I'm sure some higher end printers have this built into tanks, but I'm not 100% sure.

Maybe I'll try this with one of the plotters in my office.

[sms001]

There are no dumb questions.

But they are the easiest ones to answer.

Thanks El Pollo, et al, I've never had or worked on separate color cartridge ink jets, but now I know.