Whoah, great tip!

For powder ink users, sometimes it works just to take out the ink powder cartridge and thump it a few times to loosen powder from the inside walls of the cartridge. Note: Do Not Inhale.

Hey Man,

I want to thank you for your story on how to override the Brother Inkjet sensor. I hate the Brother “let me con you into buying color ink when you only print black and white” scheme.

You saved me a world of frustration.

Cheers,

Allan

We are having the same problem with our Brother printer, but the cartridges are different (LC51) and have only a tiny window where ink level can be seen. And the damned thing wouldn’t let me print a black only postage label even though my “yellow” was out, aargh. After printing one sheet with a new yellow cart, it decided black was empty, but I can clearly see it’s nearly 1/3 full.

I’ll try your trick and search for more ideas. Thanks for the heads’ up!

Holy smokes, it worked! I had my doubts, but worked great on the MFC 440CN.

On my Canon Pixma MP150 I can just ignore its lies of being out of ink, and I even found out how to turn off the nag screen (it’s in the interface somewhere).

They also put out misinformation about the print heads, claiming they will clog if allowed to go empty. What’s misinformation (aka BS) about it is that, while they may indeed clog if the ink runs out, the print heads are part of the cartridge! And you need a new cart if it’s empty anyway, so it doesn’t matter if the old one is clogged or not. But they make like it’ll cause massive destruction and don’t correct it if someone thinks the heads are part of the machine. What a racket huh!

Works with the DCP-340CW as well. Or is that the same printer? Anyway, thanks for the tip.

The picture you provided was a HUGE help after much searching on the internet to find a solution to this extremely frustrating problem!! It worked…thanks!!!

Thanks!!!! This was a huge help. The cartridge still has plenty of ink. I have tried shaking but that just made a mess. Thank you for the pictures.

Wow. Thank you. This gives this printer at least 2 more weeks of life until I take the baseball bat to it.

I’ve used this thing 20 times in 3 years and every fifth time I am putting new ink into it.

Absolutely insane.

Too bad I didn’t discover you and this thread BEFORE I left my Brother MFU out by the curb 2 nights ago for some other enterprising soul to scoop it and (ahem) try this trick themselves. Now they have a FREE MFU. And I have a new working Lexmark (having been conned yet again) and I am out 150 bucks.

Hi. the other trick for other Brother printers (Mine is a DCP-150C)is to get some plain old “twink” or white correction fluid. Use the white correction fluid to paint over the clear fluid level indicators. Does the same thing and fools the printer into thinking its full of ink.
Thanks

hi.. it worked for my coloured carts but not for the black one. why?!?

If you do not use the color carts at all, would it be safe and cheaper to use water and food coloring in there, along with the covered indicator trick.

using the different fluids will give the MFC something to clean with even though they are not used.

Is this a bad idea?

What a great idea!!!!!!

I have been fuming over my MFC for the last three years, and had a mild anurism every time I got the “out oif ink” message because there was still SO MUCH INK LEFT. It drove me insane toi have to buy more ink. BTW WalMart has the cheapest ink if you need it “right away”.

What I ended up doing is drilling a small hole in the flat area right above the sensor and using an ink refill kit to fill it with ink. Then I use a piece of electrical tape to cover the hole.
One observation: the color ink cartriges are interchangable (at least the LC41s). Before I figured out how to bypass BIG BROTHERS rip-off ways I would put any color available into the slot. Especially important for faxing on a Sunday night when it goes “out of Cyan”.

Two cautions though:

1) Make sure you use lots of newspaper the first few times, the ink can make a massive mess if it spills, and it does!

2) The color quality of the refills is not that accurate, but then again you are probably not printing photos on this piece of garbage.

Thank you so much! This idea saved me tons of money. I used it to fix my brother 115C printer.

hey i have a Brother MFC-465cn and my cyan ran out. i will try this today. ill first try the sharpie trick then the electrical tape. hopefully it works since i havent printed anything for about 3 months because i didnt want to buy the cyan.thanks for the help

so i just tried out the sharpie and it doesnt work. i tried putting electrical tape on the font but it did not work also. then i tried putting it on the front and warpping it around that piece cuz i noticed the sensors go on the sides of the plastic and then it finally worked. worked good.thanks

THANK YOU DRFAULKEN! Brother is really putting the screws to everyone who buys one of their printers. Your webpage is the first place I have seen any kind of “assistance” regarding the fleecing of customers who buy/own these printers & the debacle of color cartridges being empty when one wishes to print in only B&W! BRAVO my friend!

Oh this is so sweet!!! I tried it and it worked perfectly with my LC-51. As a test I used electrical tape on just the Cyan and Yellow - sure enough the message said the Magneta was low. I slapped some tape on it and- VIOLA! The stupid printer went right into clean mode and I got the printer back.

Thanks so much.

Awesome tip! My printer has been unusable for a few weeks because I didn’t want to buy new cartridges for nothing. I really appreciate the help!

P.S. I used this trick on a Brother MFC-465CN

Grab some black nail polish and put it on the the little skinny spine of the cartridge, wait til it dries then chuck it in. You can use electrical tape but it kept coming off for me.

you’re a god! i have had my brother printer (DCP 115c) lying around and useless ever since i run out of just a single ink! your tip just worked so praise to you! XD thank you so much!

Need help for the cartridges in my MFC-6490cw.

The yellow is: LC65HY-Y

any tips for a lexmark z1300 #29 ink cartridge?

Hey guys,

Thank you so much for the idea!!!

Unfortunately I had previously thrown out my colour cartridges (I don’t even want to print I just want to scan and fax).

I took your idea one step further - I filled the little sensor areas with electrical tape.

Now I can scan and fax - I’m not sure if that will quite let me print but problem solved for the time being.

Thank you so much for sharing your idea.

Dave

We just bought a Brother MFC-465cn fax/scanner/printer. Looks real nice, but we printed 1 colour picture and that was it for the colour cartridges. I covered the sensor part of the cartridges with duct tape and wella, it worked!!! THANKS so MUCH!!!

drfaulken, Thank You!! I had a 1940CN which I complained enough to Brother that they sent me this replacement MFC-640CW because I was so tired of the fact that every time I went to send a fax I got the ‘ol “Cyan is empty” (or yellow, etc.) when I hadn’t used the darn think since the last fax I sent. So, I pretty much use this machine for sending faxes or doing an occasional scan (neither which use ink) and I was always getting that very frustrating “replace ink” message. I just got off the phone with Brother because they GUARANTEED me that this unit would still function as a fax/scanner even if ink was out…and guess what…no such luck!! Their only bit of advice for me was to “go out and buy more ink”. So, I got out my electrical tape (per the original poster), covered up my cyan cartridge…and I’m scanning again like a champ. THANK YOU. BROTHER, if you’re monitoring these blogs…get a clue…you are a scam!!!

Oggi la mia stampante mi ha detto “Cyan esaurito”…non si poteva fare niente. Sono andato subito a un negozio e quel colore anche era esaurito….dopo aver letto questo consiglio sono riuscito a stampare!!! Bravo ! Bravo! Bravo!

Thanks!
Now I have one problem solved.
The other problem is when I forget to switch my DCP-115c off than it wakes me up at night with its cleaning noise.

I have a better solution. Simply use a dark colored sharpie and write over the transparent window for the light sensor or on cartridge wall where sensor looks, on all the cartridges even the black one. The benefit is two-fold. First of all it won’t mark the ink as empty when its only half empty (the window on my cartridges is on the halfway mark) and secondly it allows one to go on printing even when one or more cartridges are eventually empty. My all-in-one printer is the Brother MFC-465CN and I have it set to grayscale. My blue is empty and my yellow and magenta are low but my printer doesn’t know it. This will be the very last Brother I ever buy even if its the cheapest and best printer on the market. I have principles.

Brother inkjets mix coloured ink into the black ink when they are printing black.
(This as well as the frequent automatic “cleaning” and the ~11ml of each ink in the cartridges that are initially supplied with the printer are why you can easily be told you have run out of a colour ink without having done any colour printing.)

So putting food colour into the colour cartridges will feed food colouring through your printhead onto your paper. Maybe not good for PH.

If you are sure you do not want to print colour then you could experiment by putting generic BULK INK specifically made for your Brother printer into each colour cartridge. I am not sure how to get bulk ink into a Brother cartridge.

Gotta luv yer Brudda!
SNARL

Just wanted to offer my thanks as well.

A reminder to those with other printer models:

What’s good for the goose is not always good for the gander. It’s possible Brother has moved the sensor on newer printers or developed some other way to thwart this trick.

So you may want to search the comments to see if somebody else with your printer has had success.

If you do not have the same model printer, you can’t justifiably expect this trick to work, but the idea should be the same (tricking the printer into thinking the cartridges is full). So for example, someone in the comments above suggested wrapping the cart in black garbage bag material, then cutting a hole where the ink comes out. Sounds like that would work, but it might be safer to experiment with a sharpie coloring the exterior of the cart until you find the “sweet spot” where the sensor is looking.

Once again, thanks to the people who are spreading the word.

Thank you for this!

I love you all - thank you so much for this. I have just started a business from home and haven’t been able to print for weeks. This was my last ditch attempt before I slung the (brand new) Brother MFC 260C out of the window. I have had it a matter of weeks and the black cartridge ran out. I had a whole load of replacement ones (OEMs) so thought I was sorted - oh no, by the time I’d tried the third new replacement black cartridge I was in despair!

I tried the white marker trick on my cartridge as I didn’t have a black marker pen handy. My cartridge is slightly different to the pix above - just a tiny window of plastic showing. Painted the front of it - still didn’t work. Looked at where the sensor was (needed a torch) and realised it went right round the plastic column. Painted ALL THREE SIDES of the transparent window/column on the cartridge and it works!!!!

Yippee. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you for the excellent idea! To make this work with a Brother MFC-240C I had to cut a square of the colored cartridge label off and push this into the cutaway in the back.

The sensor on this model reads through from one side of the clear area to the other so you have to cover the sides. Sharpie marker did not work for this model either, it seemed to be able to sense the color. I was about to give up and throw this printer out until I read Betzalel’s post above suggesting using the colored label of the ink cartridge itself.

Works!! on MFC-465CN using LC51BK, LC51Y, C, M

I got Near Empty warning and shows about 10~20% remaining level on LCD. But when I check the inks, they looks like more than 30% left.

I just put a small paper tape, 1cm x 0.5cm size,
on the plastic window’s front and 2 sides all around together.

That’s it. for 4 inks, I put 4 paper tapes.
MFC asked if I changed Black ink, I pressed YES.

Now all ink levels are 100% left.
Later if I really can not print anything, then I’ll replace only LC51BK because I don’t print colors. Mostly I just want to use Fax and fax report. LC51BK compatible is about $5 which is good enough for this Fax machine.

And if you don’t use colors,
don’t forget to the printer properties setting to “Grayscale”. and “Pain Paper”.
otherwise, MFC still use color inks to produce even black print outs.

MFC 3240C with this one the black tape didn’t completely work it seemed to work and then got upset again so i thought fuck it i’ll just wrap a cut off piece of plastic bag around the cartridges and shove them back in, NOW it’s happy ha ha! love this trick!!!

Well, I’ve tried all your ideas and I still get “near empty cyan”. It’s even a Brother cart!! Any other ideas? It’s the DCP-115C.

Guys, my MFC-215C has the same optical ink level system. However, 2 of my sensors are dead. On this printer, if you remove the cartridge and check the levels with the menu option, it won’t show any reading (all the level boxes are clear). In the defective ink colors (black and yellow) the level is still indicated as Low (one black box in the first level). This indicates a defective sensor as it should not read anything at all. You do not have to reboot the printer, the readings happen in real time. You can exit and re-enter the cartridge ink level menu if it doesn’t refresh quick enough. So in my case, the bloody sensors are dead, always reading lowest level of ink. Luckily the printer still prints but keeps warning about low ink levels. Pretty cheap.

you are awesome!!! It worked on the brother MFC-685CW- save me some headaches!!!!!

Thank you all for your postings and help. The electrical tape worked like magic on my Brother MFC9420 printer.