I bought a Brother 5440 multifunction color printer scanner fax machine when I started working from home over three years ago. It was reasonably affordable, and my previous forays into inkjet printers explained why: the printer exists to get you to buy more ink cartridges. The 5440 didn’t come with fully-filled carts. I wasn’t insulted, I’d gotten over that little screwjob the last time I owned an HP inkjet years and years ago.

What particularly pissed me off about the 5440, and other Brother multi-function printers as I have come to find out, is that the unit periodically cleans itself by using a small amount of ink. Of every color. At regular intervals. I tried to fax an expense report, less than a year into owning the machine.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!

I jumped straight up in the air. What the fuck?

REFILL CYAN

I just wanted to fax something. Why did I need cyan ink? I really needed to fax my expense report in, so I drove to OfficeMax and got a replacement cyan cartridge. I snapped it in, reset the printer, and attempted to fax again.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!

What the fuck?

REFILL BLUE

Oh, for fuck’s sake. For about half the cost of my MFC I bought enough ink to shut the machine up long enough to fax my report in. I ordered a box of carts from eBay and pushed the issue aside.

The trick to the Brother MFC is that the color cartridges are half the size of the black cart. Over the next two years, I ran out of yellow, blue, and cyan twice more. I had only printed one page in color, ever. Last month I needed to fax in over twenty pages of documentation to my staffing firm in order to start my new job. I also needed to scan some documents in for their records. I powered up my MFC and pushed the fax button.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!

REFILL YELLOW

I reached into my eBay box o’ carts, only to find out I had used up all of the color ones. Motherfucker.

I searched the Web and found out there is a sensor in the printer that checks ink levels. The sensor uses a beam of light to do so; if the light bounces back, the machine assumes there is ink in the cart and continues to operate. If the light is not bounced back, the machine assumes that the cart is empty and starts beeping.

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Note that I’m not actually out of ink. According to the machine, I need to buy a full replacement. If you look towards the right of the unit, you see where I marked the “spine” of the cart with a Sharpie. This is the area checked by the printer’s sensor.

Following a suggestion I found online, I took black electrician’s tape and placed it around the cartridge’s spine.

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I shut the door to the printer and restarted it. I pushed the fax button, and away we went. Problem solved.

The danger of such a procedure is that the print heads for each color may become clogged. Little bits of ink supposedly dry on the heads, and the machine routinely cycles a “small” amount of fresh ink through the head in order to keep things clear. I find two and a half carts of three colors over three years to be a bit excessive just for “cleaning.” I never use the color printing option for my MFC anyway, so who gives a fuck.

I thought it was absolutely ridiculous that you couldn’t scan or fax without a full rack of ink, and thanks to the Power of the Internet™ I am able to use my Brother MFC 5440 again.

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