Hacking the Printer

Look into my eyes, Brother (MFC420-CN)… repeat after me, “I still have ink left.”

This ink never runs out!

I have a Brother MFC420-CN (multifunction printer) and it religiously cleans its heads as long as it is plugged in. This combined with the facts that it will not print unless it has ink and the cost of ink make for a pretty nice business plan for Brother. This is common practice with most budget bubble jets, I suppose, since I’m sure they lose some money on the ~$100 device. Even if you want to print in black, and you’re magenta is empty, it will refuse to print. I’m a little conflicted about how I feel about this, because Brother does provide open support for Linux, which is a good thing. Anyway, the solution is clear: trick the vile thing into thinking it has ink. In fact, all the times I’ve received the “replace ink” message, there has still been a little ink in the cartridge…. and after tricking it, you can still print in that colour (until it actually runs out, of course). Googling resulted in a post on a forum somewhere about applying a strip of black tape to the ink cartridge, but wasn’t very clear. After some trial and error, I hope this picture clarifies things. I guess the tape blocks light of some sort, which it uses to monitor ink level.

(Wasn’t really sure how to classify this post… don’t have a how-to category. I should upgrade to WP 2.3 and use tags….)