A day of futility...End of life failure???

[nanosec]

I print pretty heavy with my printers, last night I had my ip4600 fail on magenta.

Some information:

Image Specialists Ink with a auto reset refillable cart. On a cleaning cycle, and a full test page print of red, the red dies half way through the page. Moving a known working cartridge into the mix produces the same result. (i blew through 2 complete refills doing "cleaning" cycles.)

The print head is clear (a tube right to the inlet screen shows me clear easy flow of windex, no clogs, nothing)

Again, it always seems magenta is the color that fails on all my older printers.

The pattern is the same on all printers that have failed, everything is printing fine, then BAM ! no magenta. It doesn't start to clog, it just stops. I'd like to say it's electrical, but if I run a cleaning cycle, I can get half a page of red before it stops printing. In some cases a cartridge purge will do, but when it finally dies, no cartridge will work. OEM or otherwise.

I am of the belief that this is an end of life failure. The amount of refilling that i do, in conjunction with the amount of printing, combined that it's 99% always magenta that fails. My printers always seem to die in the order they were bought in. It's usually a year of heavy use then they die.

I tried using refurbed printheads on my older machine, and they seemed to work only for a month at best. (they worked 100% out of the package) I've come to believe (and I may be terribly wrong here) that these machines have and end of life point. Where a new printhead will only last so long before they fail. In particular, it seems to be with models newer than the ip4300.

The ip4300's I bought died because I was inexperienced with refilling, When they died, it was obvious the printhead was failing.

The only thing that I can say is if the magenta ink isn't up to snuff, but if it *WAS* causing the printheads to die, how do I get half perfect test pages? If a printhead is dead isn't it dead??

The odd thing, it's *ALWAYS* magenta. And it goes from working to not working. No slow clog, just boom. Magenta is not printing at all. Nothing on nozzle check.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Are you saying that when this problem starts happening, you can, for awhile, get the print head working again, but only for a short time? It will only print a half page of solid red and in order to get it going again you have to do a lot of cleaning cycles but then it will only print half a page? It still could be an intermittent connection somewhere, like in the ribbon cable that connects the print head to the printer. Next time you have the problem, why don't you just let the printer sit for a day and see if it will start printing half a page the next time you try to use it. I just find it hard to believe that an ink flow problem could be abrupt.

 

[nanosec]

Are you saying that when this problem starts happening, you can, for awhile, get the print head working again, but only for a short time? It will only print a half page of solid red and in order to get it going again you have to do a lot of cleaning cycles but then it will only print half a page? It still could be an intermittent connection somewhere, like in the ribbon cable that connects the print head to the printer. Next time you have the problem, why don't you just let the printer sit for a day and see if it will start printing half a page the next time you try to use it. I just find it hard to believe that an ink flow problem could be abrupt.

If I do a cleaning cycle, all looks well on a nozzle check, so I started printing full pages of red, to make sure that it was printing correctly. It gets to the half way mark and stops. I've had this problem before, and in some cases it was the cartridge needing purging. In fact, that's the very first step I try. Did that no luck. Took a working cartridge from another machine, did a cleaning cycle, same thing happened.

I tried yesterday and just now, and it's no longer printing any magenta at all. I'm positive that this problem is somehow electrical, and not dealing with flow from the cartridge or printhead.
I'm about to bite the bullet on a new printhead. I'm not even getting any streaks to show that magenta is printing at all. (just did a deep cleaning cycle too, still no color)


I am definitely open to suggestions!!!

 

[ghwellsjr]

When you have had this problem before, does a new print head solve it? If so, and it works again, that would rule out a cable problem.

BTW, I've had many cases where a set of nozzles for a particular color will print light for one half of the nozzles which is a clear indication of an electrical problem but in your case it's a little hard to tell. But for my situations, when it happens, it never goes back to working again. If in your case, sometimes it starts working again, that would imply that the problem was in a moving part that can go intermittent, in which case a new print head would not solve the problem.

Do you still have your other printers that have similar problems? Do they use the same print head as your iP4600? Are you planning on buying another iP4600 or just a new print head?

 

[nanosec]

When you have had this problem before, does a new print head solve it? If so, and it works again, that would rule out a cable problem.

BTW, I've had many cases where a set of nozzles for a particular color will print light for one half of the nozzles which is a clear indication of an electrical problem but in your case it's a little hard to tell. But for my situations, when it happens, it never goes back to working again. If in your case, sometimes it starts working again, that would imply that the problem was in a moving part that can go intermittent, in which case a new print head would not solve the problem.

Do you still have your other printers that have similar problems? Do they use the same print head as your iP4600? Are you planning on buying another iP4600 or just a new print head?

My other printers have had similar problems, and on a few I replaced with refurbished printheads. However, they have also failed after a time. (this may be because they were refurbished)
I have other printers that use the same printhead, but I'm following advice on *NOT* putting good printheads from another in a problematic printer.

I don't want to have 2 bad printers! I almost believe it is a type of DRM if you will, where after so many nozzle firings the printhead won't fire anymore (yes I'm a conspiracy theorist)
I'm going to try buying another printhead, as new 4700's are sitting at $135 in my area (when they phased out the 4600 they were clearing them out at 39 or 49 dollars). I'm just not willing to fork out
that much for a printer when I know they go for much much less when they get discontinued.

I'm hoping that the new printhead (buying new this time not refurbed) will sort this mess out, as it seems it's not a clog nor a cartridge problem.

I have always keep the ink topped up on these printers, so my last speculation is that the Image Specialists ink is suspect, however, because I have a liter of it, I don't want to suspect it!

The only other thing was initially I was using an auto reset refillable cartridge and from other posts I've read say that these may not properly flow causing stress to the printhead.

An odd occurrence, in the past months magenta would stop printing and I'd press on the cartridge while it sat in the holder and that would sometimes cause the magenta to start printing again. (I know I should have paid more attention to this issue. (this was after a long night of troubleshooting and I "stumbled" upon this solution after pushing the cartridges down as a last ditch attempt)
I didn't always have to do this to get it printing, just now and then.

If I had to guess, I'm guessing it had something to do with the electrical contacts on the printhead making contact with the printer. I tried cleaning the contacts, but to no avail.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I don't understand how buying a new print head and putting it in this printer is "*NOT* putting good printheads from another in a problematic printer." How do you know if this or any of your previous printers are "problematic" as opposed to just the print head being problematic? You can never really know when you have a problem like this if the problem is in the printer or the print head or both until you swap print heads and printers, which, of course, is a risk, but so is buying a new print head.

What I like to do is buy used printers that may have partially clogged nozzles to use as test print heads to try in suspect printers.

 

[nanosec]

A long time ago, somebody suggested that putting a good printhead in a "bad" printer could cause the good head to fail. I figure to minimize my loss, just get a new printhead and try it.
I'm far enough along to believe that this is some sort of electrical problem with the printhead itself.

I could try a printhead from a working printer, I'm just concerned about transferring problems to a working one. If I buy a new printhead If it doesn't work then my cost is about $50.
At the very worst if it doesn't work, I may end up with a spare printhead. (maybe I'm being paranoid, but other posters have made mention of this phenomenon.)

 

[strobemonkey]

Why don't you buy a new printer and try the old printhead on it. If it works perfectly then you know the old printer is faulty, and you will have a brand new spare printhead.
If the old printhead doesn't work on the new printer, then you'll know it's the culprit and you have a spare printer body.

 

[ghwellsjr]

(maybe I'm being paranoid, but other posters have made mention of this phenomenon.)

Yes, I have made mention of this phenomenon many times, just to alert people to the risk involved and especially that they don't try experiments with a friend's printer/print head. You are taking the risk entirely on your own which is good. I wish you the best of luck and I hope it works out for you.

 

[qwertydude]

If you put in new OEM carts does it print normally? This almost sounds like what was happening to mine a while ago and it turns out it was more an ink flow problem because the foam inside the cartridges swelled up.