Digital BW, The Print

Hi,
I just wanted to chime in on the issue of swapping matte and photo 
black ink on 9600 and 7600.  In case everyone here doesn't know how 
to change the inks with minimal waste.  I have done this several 
times and I believe it costs aprox $10 in ink and paper to do.
1 - printer is not switched on
2 - open the ink lever
3 - replace the photo black with the matte black cart
4 - leave the ink lever open !
5 - go into Maintenance Mode 2 by by switching power ON while pushing
the 'Paper source', 'Cut/Eject', and 'Paper Feed down' buttons.
6 - press the 'Paper Feed down' button until you see "SERVICE CONFIG"
on the display - press the 'arrow right' button (not Enter!). It than
shows 'XXD' in the lower part of the display.
7 - press the 'Paper Feed down' button until you see "NPD" -
press 'arrow right' button (not 'Enter'!). A value '1' appears in the
display.
8 - there are 3 possible settings for NPD:
0 - no ink check
1 - pigmented ink (there should be s star "*" at this
setting)
2 - dye inks
9 - change NPD setting to '0' (no ink check) and press "Enter" - a
star should show now next to the '0'
10 - switch printer off
11 - switch printer on
12 - close the ink lever
13 - printer and driver shows matte black
For the 9600 I create a solid black image in PS 23x53 inches and 
print on cheap matte paper at 720dpi.  This only takes a few 
minutes.  You can see where the matte black ink starts on the page.  
I believe the ink wasted is aprox 20-22 ml which cost about $8 and 
the paper will cost about $2.50 or so.  I have done this several 
times and see no ill effect to the printer.  The cartridge chips 
still read correctly and the ink usage is still monitored.  I 
printed out these instructions and keep them near the printer.  The 
swap takes very little time to do.
I post this just in case someone is still wasting $100 worth of ink 
on the swaps.
Greg Philpott


> > Black ink. It is just too expensive and time consuming to change 
to matte 
> > black ink for these trials.
> 
> I agree.  I don't like to change inks either, but I normally 
prefer matte papers and only switch to photo black ink when doing 
digital negatives.
> 
> --Tom