Trying to decide if the printer or the printer head is toast

[smufan67]

Hi all. I’ve read just about every thread on here and the canon website and have tried just about everything. I have a canon PIXMA pro 100.

A few days ago, my cyan started printing weird. This has happened multiple times so I assumed either it was clogged or close to running out so I went to change it. I noticed light gray and black were blinking so I went ahead and changed those.

Immediately after, I got a b200 error. I was able to get it back on to remove the printerhead and have not gotten the error since. There was black (or gray, hard to tell) that looked like it had exploded inside the printer.

I ran a test print, cyan wasn’t coming through at all, totally blank. Black, Light Gray and Gray has lines in it. I soaked it in distilled water/alcohol/ammonia. No dice. I soaked it in a small amount of name brand windex. No dice. I soaked it in 99% alcohol. No dice. I bought a cleaning kit on Amazon for the syringe and flushed it with 99% alcohol. Lots of ink came out and I waited until I was sure there wasn’t any ink left inside. I’m pretty confident there is no clog.

Did a test print and yet again, completely blank cyan. I printed off a test sheet from Google and the 90-80% transparency black prints brown. This was with completely new canon ink.

I’m at my wits end here. I’m trying to decide if I should buy a new printerhead or invest in a new printer completely in case there is something else wrong with the printer to make it act like this. I love this printer and would like to just get a new printer head, but at the same time I don’t want to waste money if a new printhead might not fix the problem. I am open to trying a few more things if anyone here thinks it could still be a clog vs electrical failure, but when I tell you I have read every YouTube comment and all 700 pages of forum pages about this topic I mean it!

Thank you all, happy Friday.

 

[The Hat]

Hi all. I’ve read just about every thread on here and the canon website and have tried just about everything. I have a canon PIXMA pro 100.

Firstly welcome, now for the bad parts.. when you have an issue with part or missing segments in your nozzle check, the last thing you should be doing is Test Prints, because doing any sort of prints other than nozzle checks, will surly kill your print head..

99% of the time bad prints or nozzle checks usually means the missing ink is down to your cartridges, and when changing out carts because they are low, you should change the whole set, that way it cuts down on wasted inks.

If and in your case the missing segment in your nozzle check doesn’t return or improve (Cyan) with several cleaning cycles and nozzle checks, then sadly the print head quite possibility has electrical failure in the Cyan and no amount of cleaning or soaking will recover that.

The best solution to soak the print head is with ordinary warm water with a little Washing up liquid in it, you can exchange the solution after an hour or so.. Then thoroughly dry the head in a heated area to be sure all the moisture is removed, then install the head and try one normal cleaning cycle followed by a nozzle print, if no improvement the head is lost..

One other thing you can do is to move the print head carriage over to the right side of the printer and give the purge unit a good spray with window cleaner and mop up using paper towels (Be generous) while spraying it won’t do any harm, finish off by flooding the ink pads with window cleaner, then try another nozzle check..

Your Pro 100 can and will last many, many years, and a new head would be a good investment, so don’t throw the baby out with the bath water..