How is ink used for various purposes other than printing?

Ink may be used for purposes other than printing.

When you use the Canon printer for the first time after you install the bundled ink tanks, the printer consumes a small amount of ink in the amount to enable printing by filling the nozzles of the Print Head with ink. For this reason, the number of sheets that can be printed with the first ink tanks is fewer than the succeeding ink tanks.

The printing costs described in the brochures or websites are based on the consumption data from not the first ink tank /ink cartridge but the succeeding ink tank /ink cartridge.

Ink is sometimes used to maintain the optimal printing quality.

To keep printer's performance, Canon printer performs cleaning automatically according to its condition. When the printer performs cleaning, a small amount of ink is consumed. In this case, all colors of ink may be consumed.

[Cleaning function]

The cleaning function helps the printer to suck air bubbles or ink itself from the nozzle and thus prevents print quality degradation or nozzle clogging.
 

Does black-and-white printing use color ink?

Black-and-white printing may use ink other than black ink depending on the type of printing paper or the settings of the printer driver. So, color ink is consumed even when printing in black-and-white.
 

Why does the printer have two black ink tanks?

There are two kinds of black ink in the printer: dye ink (BK) and pigment ink (PGBK).

The dye ink is used mainly for printing photos, illustration, etc., and the pigment ink is used for text-based documents. Each has different purposes so that even if one runs out, another will not be used instead. If either of them runs out, the ink tank replacement is required.

These two inks are automatically used depending on the type of printing paper or the settings of the printer driver. You cannot change the usage of these inks yourself.
 

The ink lamp indicates when ink is running low.

When the ink is running low, the ink lamp flashes slowly.

Then, when the ink runs out, the ink lamp flashes fast to indicate that the ink tank needs to be replaced with a new one.