Anatomy of a Canon print head

[ghwellsjr]

It appears that none of the nozzles are clogged. You've already taken one step in isolating the problem beyond clogged nozzles and that is to try another print head. Another step if possible is to try your two print heads in another printer. It doesn't have to be an iP4000, it could be one of the all-in-ones like an MP780. Another thing you could try is some different cartridges, especially Canon OEM. Good luck.

 

[bruckshaw]

Many thanks.

That solved it. All I did was change the magenta cartridge and the cyan took care if itself for some reason!
Why didn't I think of that before?

 

[sticreative101]

Thanks ghwellsjr, your posts are amazing

 

[GLO]

thanks for your post! I really found it very interesting and it got me thinking!

If i put the wrong black ink into the wrong chamber, would it simply leak all the way through? Given that i probably put the finer black into the wrong chamber?

 

[The Hat]

thanks for your post! I really found it very interesting and it got me thinking!

If i put the wrong black ink into the wrong chamber, would it simply leak all the way through?
Given that i probably put the finer black into the wrong chamber?

If you have mistakenly put the BK black into the PGBK black cartridge it wont leak out or cause your printer any problems.
Youd be advised to purge (Clean-out) the PGBK cartridge when its empty before attempting to refill it with the proper ink again.

 

[nuchy]

Well, very interesting,thanks for sharing

 

[Music Image]

ghwellsjr, what an amazing thread. Thankyou for posting all this info and great piks! WOW.

 

[martin0reg]

As we know about canon bubble jet print heads, external cleaning can resolve clogs - as long as the nozzles are not burnt yet! So you should examine the status of the nozzles to see if any cleaning is worth the effort.
Thanks to a tip from mikling I used my ccd scanner (in a canon mp810) as a microscope, by bumping up the dpi setting:
1: qy6-0075 printhead with burnt or damaged nozzles
2: used qy6-0075 which I had "in stock"
You need a ccd-scanner because most others "cis" scanners don't have the needed depth of field to scan 3d-objects
Also a good loupe for opticians, 20x magnification, will do

 

[turbguy]

martin0reg, I don't think the scans above even begin to reveal the intricacies of the nozzle plate of a Canon printhead. Can you discriminate or highlight a single nozzle?

 

[martin0reg]

@turbguy
These scans are 4800 dpi, I have just tried to scan with 9600dpi on the pbk row which has bigger nozzles. There you can guess the shape of the single nozzles, the brownish pattern that ghwells called "cul-de-sac" (first post) - but it is not sharp enough to discriminate single nozzles.
(If it was sharp enough I would hardly be able to explain it in proper english either..)

So you are right, you can not identify single nozzles - but you can see the burnt and damaged nozzle rows of the first print head.
My latest prints with this print head had very few stripes but were lighter than normal. The nozzle check was weird: no big gaps or stripes but colored letters on the left, which should be black. An extended nozzle check then indicated more than a clog: the half of some test patterns were blank, electrical problems to be expected. And finally this scan revealed the ruined nozzle rows.
Fortunatly I could recover my mp810 (before damaging the mainboard too) with a used but working printhead - which I would of course scan before using...
http://www.druckerchannel.de/forum....ster_buchstaben&t=duesentestmuster_buchstaben

With a 20x loupe you could also recognize the shattered clear surface of the bad printhead...young and sharp eyes may see this with a simple reading lens...