Abnormal nozzle test pattern on MP600

My Canon MP600 has worked very well for 8 years, but in the past few days I have noticed that on a page of black text, about half the lines are in a light gray. The nozzle test is attached. It looks like a cityscape, with some tall rectangles and some short ones, with a few completely empty columns. And it's completely, exactly reproducible. This doesn't look to me like plugged nozzles, but I did three Clean Nozzle cycles and one Deep Clean, with no effect. I also turned it off overnight.

Any suggestions? New print head or printer needed?

David Smith, Durham NC USA

that's a decoder chip failure, in the printhead where binary addresses are decoded into the individual nozzles, and there a binary group is gone. That failure cannot be cleaned away or fixed otherwise, it's time to look for a replacement of the printhead, or the printer. There is a risk that the printhead will completely fail soon

Hi David and welcome

Your own diagnosis is correct the print head has developed an electrical problem on the PGBK black nozzles and the only way to fix this is with a new print head.

Your MP600 is well worth trying to save and a new printer is not all there’re crack up to be, a print head will however cost more that a new printer so it’s down to you whether you want another 8 years of faithful service or not.

You can in the mean time continue to use your printer even with the missing black, here is a thread which deals with exactly the same problem as you have and a way to continue to use your trusty old friend in definitely..

http://www.printerknowledge.com/thr...-printhead-black-bci-3ebk-half-missing.10288/

Look on Craigslist. You may get lucky and find an MP600 for cheap and use its printhead. It's where I get my replacements.

BTW, welcome to the forum.

Thanks very much to all three of you for your prompt and informative answers. Now I know what I must do....

Hi all

I have the same printer and it's producing virtually the same nozzle check pattern, except that the PGBK pattern is the other way up. The head was replaced 2 years ago after the 1st gave up (U50? error - unrecognised print head).
Before I go rushing off to get another replacement is it possible that a logic board fault is responsible? If so is there any way I could check that myself please?
I know it's old now but it produces such fine output (from Linux Mint/GIMP/Darktable/Digikam) that I fear an equivalent printer would not only cost me dearly but may not work as well with my set-up.

Cheers

Graham

First to exit is the printhead i.e. the nozzles and the logic board of the head.
Second maybe (!) the logic board of the printer but there is a good chance to survive a damaged head, for some time. Problem is: you can't be sure..

@froddyman, You could try and soak the head in some warm water and a little Fairy washing up liquid, leave it overnight then dry it thoroughly and do a head clean and another nozzle print, it may improve and if it does then keep working on it.

In the mean time try using the previous old head that gave the U50 error and see how that preforms, it will either work perfectly or not at all, again it’s worth a try..

Hi folks,

Thanks for your replies and sorry for the delay in responding.

Things have changed a little; at the weekend I physically handled some prints from a Pixma mg6350 running under Ubuntu with a Canon supplied (miracles do happen!) driver and was very impressed. A slightly shop soiled example of one of these little beauties is on it's way to me now for less than the price of a replacement mp600 head!

I'm going to try cleaning the mp600 head and hope it keeps going long enough to at least use up 2 complete sets of genuine mp600 inks then retire it. Otherwise it's eBay for the ink to fund some supplies for the new printer. Trying again with the old head was not an option as it went in the bin after a frustrating w/e trying to persuade the printer to recognise it.

Thanks for the help

Graham