There are a lot of ways that you can reduce the amount of ink and toner that you use on your printer. These methods can help you make your ink and toner cartridges last longer and eventually allow you to save.
Tips:
Use Colour Cartridges When You Need To
Sometime when you print, you don’t need to use colour cartridges. This especially applies if you usually print documents which require only black ink. The other thing is that colour cartridges cost a lot more to run compared to black cartridges. When you are printing a document with no colour using colour cartridges, the print will appear off-black as the printer will try to combine the black and the colour cartridges to match what is being printed. So it is a good idea to tell your printer to print in black and white. However, there are some printers that still print in colour even after doing this. This stops the use of the colour cartridge, but it does not stop it completely. The best choice would be to get a black and white cartridge when you don’t need any colour. Also try to decide if you need a colour cartridge at all instead of wasting money and buying cartridges you don’t need.
Reduce Output Resolution
Laser printers come with a resolution setting that you can use when printing. At lower resolutions less toner particles are used to create the image making the printed output not as dark as it may be at higher resolutions. If your printer is currently set to use resolution of 600 or 1200 DPI, try changing it to use 300 DPI. This way you will use less toner, but your printer will print faster. A lot of laser printer models also have a feature that can automatically reduce the amount of toner which is being used while still keeping a reasonable quality output. You can make your printer do this by turning on the Toner Save feature.
Use Draft Mode
You can also use the draft mode on your inkjet printer to reduce the amount of ink your printer uses. Inkjet printers produce output by moving the print cartridge along the page and spraying ink dots to create the printing. In Normal mode, which is what most printers are configured with, the print cartridge makes multiple passes over the same area and sprays multiple coats of ink to make the characters bolder. However, in Draft mode, the printer makes a single pass and moves to the next line. This creates characters which are not as bold, but still effective. Since the printer does not lay multiple layers of ink on the same space less ink is being used to print your document.
Reduce Print Density
With multi-function machines that have a printer, fax and scanner, you may need to really reduce ink and toner usage. You can easily do this by reducing the density of your copied documents. Some laser printers have density settings that you can use in order to reduce the amount of ink and toner you use on your printer.