Ink cartridges and ink level

Hi,

I bought a Dell V515W multifunction printer last fall. It was easy to install on several PC’s including wireless. It prints, scans copies and faxes great. There is a big problem with ink consumption and/or ink level sensing.

I haven’t kept an exact count, but I seem to be getting less than 200 sheets of normal quality black printing from a regular series 21 cartridge. That is terrible. I bought some good ink and a fill kit and it is easy to refill the cartridge, however, the ink level never changes to the printer. The printer keeps saying the ink is low, and eventually it will not print unless you put in a new cartridge.

There is a chip like an RFID chip on each cartridge that identifies it to the printer. Unless the chip is reset, it will not increase the ink level. There is no way for us to reset the chip yet.

The printer doesn’t directly sense the ink level. It must calculate ink usage by pages, lines and print quality. There is no connection from the cartridge to the printer like some printers have. Dell does an estimate of how much ink they think you have used.

They intentionally underestimate the usage to prevent the print heads from drying out.

On this Dell printer the print heads are in the printer. The V313w, V515W and V715W printers and possibly others are like this.

Some printers have the print heads in the ink cartridge so when you change cartridges, you change print heads.

If the print heads in the printer do dry out, you may not be able to clean them at all.

There are remanufactured cartridges out there at very reasonable prices, so some folks have new chips or they know how to reset the chip.

This may interest some people that would like to refill and have cheaper printing.

I will keep investigating. It has become a pet project of mine.

I don't print much color, but it is exactly the same, very low pages per cartridge.

I will update with what I find.

Any additional info will be appreciated.