CLI-8 Cartridges, How does the chip really monitor ink?

[Grandad35]

canonfodder,

Even though I don't have a chipped printer, it would be interesting to see what you did. If it's not too much work to document your tests in this manner, others will benefit from this information now and in the future, including those who don't yet know about this forum.

 

[websnail]

I printed at least 10 sheets in a row where the PM was missing, and did not burn out the printhead. It WAS more difficult than normal to get all of the nozzles unplugged, probably because the empty nozzles really baked on whatever was left in them. To get everything back to normal, I manually cleaned with rubbing alcohol followed by compressed air. Running the heads empty is not a good idea, but it is not necesssarily fatal.

Just a small note on this...

I suspect you can get away with maybe one colour running dry but I can pretty much guarantee that you WILL kill the printhead if ALL the colours run dry... The smell of ozone when I did my little printhead Pzzzzttt routine was rather pungent and obvious..

 

[mikling]

Courting disaster is not for everyone. Surviving one heart attack is not indicative that it is not generally considered fatal.

 

[Tin Ho]

How about my story of an i960? For a reason only can be considered stupid I did a cleaning cycle with all 6 carts removed. After that I got distracted by something and forgot about it completely. When I got back I printed something I do not really remember as there was nothing on the paper. Guess what? The print head never had a chance to survive it. I think at lease one or two colors were completely out. Nothing ever printed out frm them again despite many rounds of aggressive cleaning were done.

 

[Grandad35]

Running the heads empty is not a good idea, but it is not necesssarily fatal.

I never said, nor did I mean to imply, that it was a good idea to run your print heads dry. I was only saying that it is not necessarily fatal.

It is not uncommon for someone to experience banding, but to be able to fix the problem by various cleaning cycles. Since banding is caused by clogging in a few individual nozzles, it is obvious that single nozzles don't burn out from a temporary lack of ink. In my case, I had 1/8 of the nozzles run dry without burning out the print head. In websnail's and Tin Ho's cases, they had all of their nozzles run dry when they burned out their print heads. Since the ink is what cools the print head, I think that Websnail hit the nail on the head:

I suspect you can get away with maybe one colour running dry but I can pretty much guarantee that you WILL kill the printhead if ALL the colours run dry... The smell of ozone when I did my little printhead Pzzzzttt routine was rather pungent and obvious..

 

[canonfodder]

Grandad has asked a question concerning my empty cartridge experiment and the automatic cleaning cycles. There is concern that Canon may have turned them off also when turning off the function of the optical prism detector. If the automatic cleaning cycles are turned off, then refillers will have to do their own.

Presently I have still experienced the automatic cleaning cycles, but that doesn't prove anything.

With respect to cleaning cycles my experiment has a flaw.
The flaw doesn't damage our present conclusions about the prism detector. It doesn't undo the fact that an empty tank was ignored when the printer considered that cartridge a refill. The flaw does prevent us from knowing everything about the automatic cleaning cycles.

The flaw:
My printer still has some OEM cartridges in place. We don't know what it will do about automatic cleaning when it believes ALL cartridges are refills. It could turn off automatic cleaning cycles when all are refills.

I must do the empty tank experiment again when all the cartridges have been declared totally empty by the printer.

My printer's present condition does enable an additional experiment, which I plan to do. The printer has switched off the prism detector, at least for one cartridge which was not reported when I know the tank was empty. Does it still have the prism detector enabled for an OEM cartridge still in place? This cartridge has plenty of ink to go. I will empty the tank of that OEM cartridge and ask the printer to print.

 

[tkalfaoglu]

Panos,

The one sure way to find out is for someone to buy a printer and test it. Amazon lists the iP4200 for $129.99 (http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PIXMA-i...r_1/104-8610415-2339101?ie=UTF8&s=electronics). There may be less expensive printers that use the CLI-8 carts, and they would be a better choice.

For the $130 you get 4 new CLI carts, so the printer itself only costs about $75.
Install a set of refilled carts in the new printer, navigate the nag screens and let it print until it either tells you that it's empty or quits printing. If it prints until it quit printing, try another refilled set of carts to see if the head was burned out or if it can be cleaned and rejuvinated. It may be an expensive experiment, but it may also be the only way to get your answer.

If someone had a printer that was having problems or had already printed a lot of pages, the new printer could replace the old printer and the old printer could be used for the test, further reducing the net cost of the experiment.

Well guys I just got an ip6600D, I'd be happy to test out things.
I am all for cracking this thing! I hate ink that's more expensive
than GOLD pound-per-pound, er, gram per gram.. -t

 

[Grandad35]

Well guys I just got an ip6600D, I'd be happy to test out things. I am all for cracking this thing! I hate ink that's more expensive than GOLD pound-per-pound, er, gram per gram.

Thanks for your offer to run this test on your new printer, but canonfodder has already run a definitive test and posted his results (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=8769#p8769). The printer DOES disable the prism detection system for a refilled cart.

 

[Tin Ho]

I recall seeing a post somewhere on the internet. Someone unwrapped his new Canon color cartridges without pulling the tape to break the seal for the vent on those cartridges. He got a few pages of color prints then the printer turned into a black and while only printer. He proceeded to use the printer as was for another year. A friend visited him and found that all but BCI-3ebk remain sealed. The friend broke the seals for him and all in a sudden all the colors poured out like a new printer printing colors the first time. Funny but interesting. I saw the post many years ago. So it must be an old printer. I am still in disbelieve that I fried the i960's print head. Nozzle density in Canon's print heads are getting higher in newer models. Does this mean they are now easily fried if ink stops flowing? Whether it is true or false it is never a bad idea to safeguard or watch ink feeding or ink flow of the print head. It seems most of the troubles start from ink flow problems.

 

[websnail]

Hi Tin Ho...

I think the reason it's easiest to fry heads if you have nothing flowing is that there's nothing at all cooling the head.. The more clogs you get the more likely you are to get heat build up.. but in my case there wasn't actually a clog, there was nothing even close to the actual head because it had boiled away and wasn't flowing (I'd left the clamps on my tubes).. so all that got in was air and that coupled with heat is definitely not good. I'd rationalise that the heads are more densely packed now too which must have a knock on effect in terms of same amount of heat over a much smaller space equals greater chance of combined heat blowing things...

Anyway we're getting off topic here so perhaps save that for a different topic..


As for the auto-clean.. I've just turned both my printers on after a day of being off.. The one with one remaining cartridge still registering has run an autoclean cycle while the other which has all cartridges registering as empty has just printed straight off. However just as I was typing this up, it decided after 30 seconds to run a small cleaning cycle or something very akin to it.. Further tests required I suspect