Maybe my IP6600 gem still needs some polishing

Stratman:

I don't remember your asking ink tank order. But anyways, the ink tanks are definitely installed in the correct slots. Why do they call it "order" if they mean which slot it's in? Until you all straightened me out, I thought that meant you had to install them in a certain sequence, and not just in the right slots.

I Googled a picture of Canon print head and got this pic:
https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/clogged-canon-print-head.227/page-9

I'm assuming the bad left "slot", as I call it, is worst case scenario, but my printhead looks like all the other good slots, unless there's something I'm missing.

Would it help to post photos?

The ceramic body is glued to the nozzle plate
The caverns on the end is a reason why you should not completely dry out a printhead. It helps to ensure that the channel of ink is placed across all the nozzles They remain as attachment points to allow the ink to remain across the nozzles to the end. Think of how drops of liquid bond together and can s...stretch across. This printhead is from an i860 or i960 if I recall, a predecessor to the 6600D.

Hogwild said:

I don't remember your asking ink tank order.

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See post #7:

stratman said:

You can see how cross contamination of Cyan will cause the color changes to Yellow and PM in your nozzle check and is why I recommended you inspect the cartridge and print head for leaked ink. If the Cyan, Yellow and PM are next to one another in the print head then it makes the possibility greater for cross contamination.

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Hogwild said:

I Googled a picture of Canon print head and got this pic:
https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/clogged-canon-print-head.227/page-9

Click to expand...

Excellent find! If the seals all appear present and proper then it is unlikely that an external leak is occurring, so long as no cartridge malfunction/malformation or leaked ink (external to the print head) is seen as well.

Most likely scenario at this point is print head failure. A new print head should remedy EXCEPT the presence of evenly spaced dark horizontal lines which may or may not involve the logic assay board as well. In that case, a new print head will not remedy the aberrant lines. Cannot give you odds on a successful fix by print head replacement alone. Also, odds of sourcing a new print head are slim. The "new" ones out of China are more likely to be cleaned up and in counterfeit packing to appear new. There is a possibility of getting a working one but there is a high rate of failure with these print heads.

Hogwild said:

Would it help to post photos?

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It might. The more data we have the more likely our analysis is correct. Unfortunately, there is point where no further data will likely change our hypothesis once you have provided sufficient information. We may be nearing that point.

Okay, here's a photo of the print head openings on the print head. Can you tell anything from this?

Hogwild said:

Okay, here's a photo of the print head openings on the print head. Can you tell anything from this?

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Good photo.

If the dark rims around the seals are just liquid, and not a gross separation of the seal between gasket and print head, then it looks good.

Based on the information you have provided, my thought this is an internal print head malfunction (*/- logic board assay malfunction) remains.

AFAICT, the rims are just liquid. Is there any way to test the logic board through diagnostic routines, or does one have to open up the printer and replace it or ??

Hogwild said:

Is there any way to test the logic board through diagnostic routines, or does one have to open up the printer and replace it or ??

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Probably can bench test the board out of the printer, manufacturing must do quality control of some sort, but I do not know how. Have not heard if one can test with the printer not disassembled. Canon techs replace the board if certain symptoms occur without testing AFAIK.

Wow, and I was hoping this project would be fun. Heh. Trying to decide what to do next. I'm kind of swamped for a while, I don't know if it would be wise for me to start disassembling that thing.

Thanks for all this help so far, though. You folks are just amazing.

WAIT a minute. If the print head is defective, why did the yellow band on the nozzle tests come out fine, but the yellow patches in Excel come out as green? If the print head or control board are bad, all (similar) yellow should come out bad, right?

Here's another purge page. Scanned at 400dpi on the Canon copier again. Notice that I got rid of the black lines, but you can still see a tiny faint area where the lines were. Ignore the wavy nature of the yellow/green-I used cheap paper and didn't let it dry long before scanning.

I noticed that some flexible soft plastic tabs near the waste reservoir had black ink on them. (Are those a second cleaning device for the print head or something?) As soon as I cleaned off that black, the lines (almost) disappeared. Would this be a real fix, or only temporary?

Thanks

Hogwild said:

why did the yellow band on the nozzle tests come out fine, but the yellow patches in Excel come out as green?

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The nozzle check probably bypasses all color management, that from Windows and Canon, and just fires the nozzles to dispense pure swaths of cartridge ink. Printing something from a Windows application uses color management and may result in poor color output for a variety of reasons we have gone over.

If there is ink leakage that seeps into another cartridge or within the channels inside the print head, then continued printing may exhaust enough of the contaminant eventually during a print job to return to "normal" color.

The timing of the print job may result in a better or worse color output depending on how much ink contaminant accumulates up to that point.

The image you provide is an unknown for me in that I have no idea what color you are printing. You may think you are printing pure Yellow but in fact are not. Better to go with an image that is known and reliable to be compared. However, you obviously have a problem(s) regardless of what you are printing.

Hogwild said:

I noticed that some flexible soft plastic tabs near the waste reservoir had black ink on them. (Are those a second cleaning device for the print head or something?) As soon as I cleaned off that black, the lines (almost) disappeared.

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Those sound like the wiper blades used for cleaning maintenance of the print head. If cleaning them caused the horizontal lines to go away then maybe that issue will be over. However, if there is excess ink being cleaned such as from a leak, then ink will accumulate over time and the issue will occur again. You will know.

See Figure 8 in this link for an example of wiper blades.

Have you reread the thread and tried the recommendations you previously did not?