Economy with Canon OEM carts PG72

Bruce Kowal

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Spent some time viewing the Joe Rodriguez videos on Youtube concerning use of Canon Printers, in particular the Pixma Pro-100. https://www.youtube.com/user/cheo1949. He mentioned the Canon self-cleaning cycle of 60 hours, and the amount of ink that is flushed with every cleaning, approx 2 ml. So, the problem is how to keep the self-cleaning function alive, as it prevents clogging, yet not have inks depleted during periods when the printer is idle. One suggestion was to use Q-image software to automatically print something every two days. I wonder if another work around would be to simply keep the depleted carts in the print head, and replace them with new ones when needed. Keep the newer carts in a plastic sandwich bags in refrigerator. Just thought I'd throw that out. Or keep 3rd party carts loaded which cost less, and then replace with OEM carts for printing. I don't print all the time, and when I do it's like going to the Dentist in terms of cost and frustration. Any workarounds out there?
 

mikling

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You would not be pleased with the printhead drying out and not printing properly thereafter if you use depleted carts in the printer. The workaround is to use good aftermarket inks and refill. Canon printhead rely on having a source of ink to keep the existing inside the printhead hydrated at all times. Try and dry out OEM pigment ink in the nozzles and try to clear it thereafter and report back to us with tears. Canon Lucia pigment ink is extremely tough when it dries, more than Epson actually.

If you put in some aftermarket ink inside the printhead not matching the OEM, to get back to pure OEM would require that you ...guess what...FLUSH out the aftermarket by performing a cleaning/s. To get it back to 100% OEM you actually need more than one flush/cleaning. If the aftermarket match was poor you'd definitely need more than one head cleaning to get back to 99% OEM.
After performing hundreds of ink swaps for testing. I KNOW about that. One is not enough and guess what, you'd actually waste MORE ink with what you're proposing.
 

Bruce Kowal

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Thank you Printer Master for the advice from one who has been through all this frustration. I appreciate it. And the analogy to those old carburetors. :). Another stupid question: if I don't print every day, and print in spurts, but with absences, does it make any sense to remove the printhead and the carts during the periods of non-use? Put in sandwich bags in refrigerator?
 

stratman

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does it make any sense to remove the printhead and the carts during the periods of non-use? Put in sandwich bags in refrigerator?
No. Refrigerators cause desiccation. Barring that, removing the print head will require a print head alignment and also a new print head purge maintenance which uses a good amount of ink itself.

Canon printers have a maintenance schedule based on hours since last purging. In general, you cannot defeat this scheduling.

The previous reply in this thread was by Mikling, a seller of ink and refilling supplies. He does sell high quality third party inks for your printer, as well as other refill supplies. Significant savings can be achieved regardless of the maintenance purges. Unless you are selling your prints, or looking for best longevity of the printed image, then consider Precision Colors inks.

FYI - if you use anything other than Canon OEM Yellow ink for your specific printer, then make sure to use a thoroughly flushed OEM cartridge, a flushed CLI-8 Yellow cartridge with a chip swap from the OEM cartridge, or an aftermarket cartridge. The Pro-100 OEM Yellow ink can precipitate into what we call "Yello Jello" inside the cartridge and then the print head, gumming up the works causing ink starvation, potentially resulting in nozzle(s) burnout and, ultimately, irreversible print head damage with missing ink in prints. This is discussed on Precision Colors when looking at the supplies for the Pro-100.

Otherwise, stick with OEM inks and know that maintenance purges are there to keep the print head free of malfunctions for as long as possible. To help with this, the forum consensus is to print something that uses all the cartridges every week or so. This can be accomplished with a nozzle check.
 

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