Can printers use the black ink cartridge when in color mode?

[Arker]

Hi. I hope this is the appropriate forum for this question... It is kinda hardware related.

Anyways, my question is this:

Do modern printers use the black ink cartridge to print the black parts of color documents? My old printer could only have one cartridge (black or color) in it at a time, so I needed to swap them out depending on the document. I just bought a new Epson CX5400, which has four separate cartridges (black, cyan, magenta, and yellow) which are all in the printer at once.

Now through cups configuration, I can set the DEFAULT print mode to black & white, greyscale, or color. When I set this to "color", and print a plain text document, is the printer or driver intelligent enough to use the black cartridge to print? Or will it mix the colors to make the black...

I'm just curious whether it's necessary to keep changing this setting depending on the document I'm printing so that I can conserve color ink. It would be nice if the black cartridge was used for black regardless of the default setting in cups.

Thanks for clearing it up,
~djc
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[Kabuto]

In the olden days many printers went cheap and only allowed one cartridge at a time like your old printer. This made black a greyish color unless you used a black cartridge. Can't think of any printers like that anymore. All allow at least two cartridges and will use black. Epson and Canon will use single color cartridges so they will have 4-6 in them. Nice when one color runs out you don't have to replace a whole tri-color cartridge like HP for example.

For black text at color setting it depends on the printer and driver. It should use black though.