However if for some other reason you feel it cant, then rinsing the head with water or allowing it to stand in a cleaning solution
for a while is usually sufficient to resolve a clog, other than that there is nothing else you should do with it within reason.
Dismantling is a last resort for me.
Dismantling pieces from your print head rarely achieves anything other than the total loss
of the print head altogether however you can get lucky and it will still function properly later.
I have carefully reassembled and disassembled about 4-5 print heads when clogs were bad enough that warranted it, but mind you, I did sit them in solution for a few days. Whilst it is extreme, it's only a last resort before I replace the printer or print head.
Poor quality output and missing colours can be misinterpreted easily as nozzle clogs but are more often
down to poor ink delivery from the cartridges above and in fact are not print head related at all.
I do agree, but it's really easy to tell if there is a clog when you put a tube over the screen and apply pressure through the tube. A free flowing nozzle squirts easily while a clogged one does not.
Have you ever asked yourself why you regularly get these problems with your print head in the first place,
could it be a problem with your inks, refilling procedure or poor cartridges?
Yes, I have several other printers and I was getting a clog every other day using image specialists ink, in particular the magenta and cyan. I switched them all over to OCP and 99% of my clogs went away. This one printer, cyan remained a problem and I'd have to manually unclog it every so often. I ran this printer hard and my guess is that some residue remained from the image specialists ink. (I suspect they are not using enough anti fungal chemicals in their magenta and cyan inks)
The clog was not in the nozzles or the gasket but between the screen and the plastic out ports before it hit the gasket.
Another thing that tends to get overlooked early into any print problems is the purge unit itself,
checking to see if it is functioning properly is a relative easy thing to do that doesnt require any dismantling.
Purge unit looked okay, did the windex on the park pads test.
Canon Print heads on occasions can clog but a normal cleaning cycle usually clears the problem quickly
and you can continue to print normally again..
Normal/Deep cleaning cycles would occasionally work, but I found that it was hit or miss on the length of time before the next clog. Clearing the clog manually with a tube and syringe over the screen seemed to give me a considerable amount of time before the next clog, whereas sometimes I'd get lucky on a normal or deep cleaning cycle only to have it clog a few minutes later. As i said, I finally attributed it to the Image Specialists ink which was causing all the problems.
(this is my own personal experience with the stuff, yellow,pigment black,dye black from IS are not a problem, just their Magenta and Cyan)
The real test is when i put a new printer into the mix which has never had Image Specialists ink run through it. (I'm curious to see what kind of longevity I'll get)
This most recent troublesome clog has been the 2nd of such difficult clogs. The 1st time, I pulled out the head, and put a spare in and soaked the 1st head for about month after I forgot about it. I then tried the tube over the screen and it was still clogged.
(this was before i switched to OCP) (clog was in the same place, not in the nozzles or the gasket but between the screen and the underside before it hit the gasket)
So IMHO it's some type of residue build up under the screen, given the large amount of printing I've done using IS ink. I've had stubborn clogs, but this one was a beast, I've written the printer off and got an MG3520 to replace my 4700.
(I was almost going to replace the print head, but the new printer was $10 more)
One last thing. IS inks in 1p4300 and ip4500 rarely gave me problems. My mp500 would occasionally clog but could always be cleared using a cleaning cycle.
The IP4600 & IP4700 printers would clog on IS ink frequently. (using OEM carts)
While I prefer the performance of Canon printers over Epson, I have had several issues with the way Canon does things to ensure that their products have a definite end of life. I still have 4300 & 4500 chugging away that rarely give me problems no matter what ink I throw at them. I can tell you that I even discovered in the ip4300 & ip4500 would blacklist a cartridge after so many refills (this was before the resetter existed) and come back with an unrecognized error. After i got my hands on a resetter, these unrecognized cartridges magically were no longer unrecognized.
The conspiracy theorist in me believes that the print heads in ip4600 & 4700's (and anything newer) are a lot more sensitive to what ink you are using, whether by design or by fluke, is anybody's guess.
