Hello, wise people of Printerknowledge!
I too have a problem with my Pro-1's printhead, but my story is a bit longer.
It all began, when I bought a used Pro-1 from some photographer, who claimed he hasn't been using it for about a year. He was selling it quite cheap, I know canon's unclogg quite well, so I desided to take a chance and revive the beast. And I did. It took a system flush, several deep cleans with long pauses as canon instructs and some usual nozzle cleaning cycles. I did not make any test prints before a system flush and a few deep cleans, for fear of burning nozzles. I used compatible inks to minimize the cost of unclogging procedure, and because I was uncertain of the result.
After I got a decent nozzle test print, I printed some photos and discovered that grey inks were pure trash. Bought OEM greys and an OEM Red, installed them and began printing purge pages of 80% and 50% grey.
When I started to get better test pictures, I did a nozzle check print and saw, that PBK had a faint banding. Cleaning cycles did not help, banding remained in the same location. So I thought the printhead is fried. Test page showed it ran only about 900 prints.
But to make things worse after the cleaning cycles the print head started dripping ink on paper. First Chroma Optimizer.. then Cyan.. then Magenta and Cyan. I checked my cartridges, their ports. No leaks, clean, ports look ok.
Then I dismantled the poor printhead and took off the plastic top cover (the blue handle is fixed on it). I saw, that ink came from small holes under the membrane, that seals the top of the "inner tanks" on the printhead! I showed that so some people who deal with printers more than I do, and they supposed that someone may have been trying to clean the printhead with a syringe and may have applied too much pressure. May be that is true, I am at a loss.
Leaking membrane video:
So now I am looking for a source of genuine Pro-1 printheads. The printer is not very popular in Russia and the supply is short. And surprisingly expencive. I found that eparts_fr can deliver one to me. There are a few on EBay. Does anyone know how much should a genuine QY6-0081 printhead cost?
(sorry if my wording is clumsy, not my native language)
And also - can anyone send me the instructions on how to change printhead correctly? I dismantled the bad printhead myself.. not sure I did that by the book.
. And just a moment ago, I tried reinstalling the Frankenstein print head back.
