Banding with Pro 100

Hello All,

I'm making one more attempt to get a Canon printer going with refilled carts before I give up. I've been printing on Canon printers with PC inks for about 5 years & have been through all of the magenta inkflow problems that this forum & Mr. Mikling have wrestled with. Last winter I picked up a Canon Pro 100 new in the box from a third party who had gotten it on one of the rebate deals. This was right when PC was changing over to the new magenta inks so it has never had anything but the new PC inks in it. The problem I'm having showed up right away but I was too busy printing with my Epson to bring it to the forum but now I need to know if this printer will ever work. When it has sat for a few hours it will give a good nozzle check & then print one or two perfect A4 size pictures. But then this banding shows up. It can start in the middle of a print. But the nozzle checks are still good or perfect. The attached nozzle check was done right after the attached image. So even after the banding shows up the nozzle checks are good. This is always after it has printed a good image at least once.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance. You guys are a terrific resource.

Pkk

My first impression is that at least one of your refilled carts has a flow issue. Nozzle checks do not demand significant ink flow. A test image (such as solid color bars) is a better challege to reveal the problem.

Since the printer was new in the box, how did it perform with the original OEM carts that were supplied??

@ppk, I have to agree with @turbguy, a nozzle check tells a lot about the print heads condition but doesn’t necessarily tell you everything that's going on elsewhere.

It just means the print head is working 100% properly but it can’t tell you anything about the state of your cartridges, 99% of all poor printouts are a direct result of cartridge problems, nozzle checks can still look great even when poor ink flow is present or exists.

You have 5 years experience at refilling but that in itself can be a problem, complacency can't be ignored nor can the obviously, when you’re looking in the wrong place for the answer that’s just not there, the nozzle check proves that.

Here is a test print sheet for you to run after you get a another good nozzle print, just run several prints one after another and examine each for signs of ink starvation, especially the CM, MY and M but don’t overlook the other colours also.
cut and paste to your App. or save to your desktop.

Cartridge ink flow problems can be very easily fixed but then some times it can take an extra special effort to get a stubborn cartridge problem back preforming to it's 100% level.

It’s not criticism of your refilling procedures that I am referring to, but sometimes a cartridges can underperform after only one or two refills and it may not have been from something you've done wrong, it can happen anytime or not at all.

I am talking about experiencing exactly the same thing with one of my cyan cartridges it needed a lot of soul searching, patients and 6 purges to get it back working properly, diagnosing the exact problem correctly can sometimes be overwhelming..

Thanks for the quick reply. Turboguy's question first. I never installed the original carts. I knew about the "yellow jello" problem with the yellow & learned about the new magenta coming out so I still have them with no chips on them of course. To The Hat's reply I know this has to be a cart flow problem & I've now concluded that most of my problems with Canon printers have been that-not head clogs. I've been reluctant to proceed because of the danger of burning out the heads by printing with obvious inkflow problems. I can post another more glaring example of this banding but we've agreed that the problem is in the carts. These CLI8 carts were prepped as per Mikling's instructions-that is, throughly flushed & dried. The only thing I know to try is put the chips back on the original carts or get CLI8 carts from Mike that he knows were done right. Any chance this is a firmware issue?
Pkk

Okay here's the test image, printed through PS CS5. I went ahead & put the chips back on the CLI 42 Magenta & Photo Magenta carts. Didn't seem to matter. The nozzle check was after the test image was printed.

Based on the appearance of the test image defects, it IS confirmed to be an ink starvation problem (IMO) in magenta...perhaps in the print head passageways rather than the carts.

I would perform a "print head in windex overnight" soak and cleaning.

As an alternative, you might try switching to "Quite Mode" in the driver. That slows up the print process and might permit your existing ink flow to suffice.

Okay, I'll try those ideas.

Pkk

turbguy said:

My first impression is that at least one of your refilled carts has a flow issue. Nozzle checks do not demand significant ink flow. A test image (such as solid color bars) is a better challege to reveal the problem.

Since the printer was new in the box, how did it perform with the original OEM carts that were supplied??

Click to expand...

Or this one from Mike ( PC ):
https://www.sendspace.com/file/0e0zfw

I'll keep an eye on this post.

I've suffered magenta issues on HP, Epson< and Canon from day one with refill inks.

Like you, I have acquired pro-100s and have two recently set up to start using, finally.

I have one with true-blue Canon ink set, and another with PC inks.

The PC inks machine started with a PC inks yellow virgin or flushed cartridge, a new head, etc.

Until I run out of Canon ink, I am going to play with having two printers with competing ink.

If this new pro-100 suffers magenta problems with fresh new improved non-fungal ink from Precision Colors, I will quickly take a long walk off a short pier.

I will be running some of these test images tomorrow, been only doing nozzle checks too.

Not related to your problem, but can't in all creation get the pro-100 preview print to agree with the actual print, cropped, truncated, etc. I am sure it is a problem on my part.

I'm on windows 7 using Canon software from my 5D disk, Irfanview, Gimp, etc.

I would like to boil it down to using my 5D and pro-100 on my many PCLinuxos installs, but that is another mission.

Okay I soaked the head for 24 hrs. Didn't help & might be worse. The patterns below are the result. I tried one with each of the drivers. The color patters in the earlier post were with the XPS. Does anybody thin it could be a firmware problem?