Why does my printer cartridge run out of ink so fast?

We all know that when printing, a day will come when the printer cartridge will run out of ink.  What frustrates, is after printing what we consider few documents, we see the printer blinking low ink level.  This indicates that we will soon need to fork out cash to get another replacement cartridge, yet again. 

It’s easy to believe that there is a leak in the printer cartridge that is the reason we are not realizing the full benefits of our investment in the printer cartridge.  This belief is comical and misplaced and gives no benefits.  We can realize benefits when we understand measures that can be taken to reduce the rate at which printer ink is used up. 

Understanding page yield. 

Every printer cartridge is manufactured to print a minimum number of pages, known as the page yield.  Most OEMs derive their page yield with an assumption of 5% ink coverage on each printed sheet.  This roughly translates to a normal sheet with tripled spaced sentences running across the whole sheet.  If you print a lot of images or text with no spacing between them, you will run out of ink faster as you will use up more ink with these print activities. 

Printer cleaning. 

Printers at scheduled times or after a defined period of use or after they have undergone a specific sequence of activities. Will clean the print head to prevent clogging and drying out of the nozzles.  This self-cleaning though beneficial uses up ink which would have been used for printing.  To avoid this, you can change the settings on the printer to reduce the frequency of cleaning. 

Some printers do not have this option.  You can also remove the printer cartridges if the printer will not be used for an extended period of time.  This helps prevent the printer ink from drying and reduces the amount of ink used up by the printer for self-cleaning when the printer is idle. 

Printer setting.

A lot of people print only black and white images on a color printer.  And expect that even if the black ink level gets depleted over time, the color ink should still remain plentiful.  Depending on your printer type, this is likely, not true.  Most printers, except specifically instructed, will use part of the color ink to prime the black color when printing black only images.  This unnecessary depletion of the color ink cartridges can be averted by selecting either monochrome or greyscale on the printer dialogue box to ensure only the black ink color is used for the black and white images.  This setting assists in conserving the color ink levels.

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