Can 281c run black copies if no color cartridges are present

[repeatcopiers]

This is in addition to a previous post. Customer says they have been running b/w copies for 5 months w/o a magenta cartridge installed. Now they are getting a CF20. Could this be due to no magenta toner?

[jamesyboy]

no but you can lock down to disable colour usage via user codes

[michaelc]

Most likely. It will still use colour toner on start up, after sleep mode etc. when it does a IQC check).

[mckinley]

Disconnect the colour toner detect sensor (on metal plate above revolver, at very back)
switch off all IQC codes, the machine won't try to do anything involving colour then :-)

[Austech]

No better way to break a colour machine than to not use colour.
The machine will always do an IQC check once the fuser temp gets below a certain level or after a predetermined number of copies are produced.
This is absolutely going to use colour toner and in certain models no replenishment is going to take place in this mode, and the developer is going to be stripped resulting in the CF20 error.
There are a number of other possible causes of this error code in this model, but having no cartridge is the smoking gun.
Something must have been done to make this work without the cartridge, as you would normally get "Check colour cartridge" on the display and the machine would be unuseable?
Yes, IQC can be disabled, and that may be a permanant enough fix, but that just means the machine will just ignore the errors from the sensors.
Best of luck
A

[repeatcopiers]

Thanks, did go out and put in the color cartridge and everything is working fine now.