Black ink in BCI-6 yellow tank, what happened ???

[ghostbear]

Well, I've been feeling good about getting started with refilling and all but a couple of things have gone well. After refilling the carts in my new Hobbicolors 5 color kit for my ip4000 I somehow cracked the BCI-6 yel cart and since then Hobbicolors has replaced it with a filled yellow cart. I had continued to use the old yel cart while waiting as it was not yet empty, however , when I went to install the new yellow cart I found that the yel tank had blk ink in it and the sponge was blk also. The other colors looked ok,so I guess the yellow cart with blk ink in it is a loss. I'm thinking that I must have over-filled the large BCI-3 cart even though I thought I followed the Hobbicolors inst fairly close. After Installing the new yel cart I did a nozzle check that was ok and continued to print about 20 pages of mixed photo and print and at this point all seems ok .

If anyone can help me understand how that blk ink got up inside the yellow tank I would really appreciate it.

Have I messed anything up ?

Is there anything I should do ?

Noob has a lot to learn....

Thanks , ghostbear

 

[hpnetserver]

It is probably black ink leaked out of the printhead. Then it got sucked in by the yellow tank. If you run a few cleaning cycles you may be able to suck the black ink back out. I would not call it a total loss. If you get other colors into it it may be a total loss. But it maybe OK if it is black. There are two blacks for ip4000. Which one is leaking? If it is the black from BCI-6bk you may be fine. If it is the other black use a paper tissue to suck the black out of the yellow as much as you can. I would use it still. By the time you refill it again it will be clean.

 

[drc023]

Since the original yellow cartridge was cracked, it's no good anyway and should be discarded. One of the black ink tanks must have had a slight air leak caused by an improper fill port seal. Excess ink leaking out of a black tank can get wicked back to another tank. Due to it's position in the printhead, yellow seems to be the one most often affected. There have been other reports of exactly what you describe and I've personally experienced the problem, but it wasn't caused by a refilled or third party tank. It was caused by a brand new OEM Canon ink cartridge. If you are unsure as to which black tank is the culprit, take a cotton swab and hold it to the outlet port of the contaminated tank. Rub the sample on a scrap piece of glossy photo paper. If the ink is BCI-3ebk pigment black, the sample will have a bronze cast, but if the ink is from the dye based BCI-6bk the sample will be glossy.

 

[ghostbear]

hpnetserver ,
Thanks for the tissue tip, I'll try to dry it out and use it again as it was a new cart.



drc023 ,
I don't have any gloss photo paper to check this on. I guess I could rinse it out with rubbing alcohol and let dry then refill with yel ink for another test run. If the blk ink that got into the yel tank was pigment type is there any reason not to re-use
this tank.



Thanks , ghostbear

 

[drc023]

I'm puzzled as to your concern over reusing the damaged yellow tank. If it's cracked you run the risk of all the ink leaking out and causing more of a mess than you want to think about. As to the dye vs. pigment determination, you can do the swab test on plain paper by tanking a sample from the contaminated tank and also samples from both black tanks. You should be able to see a difference between the inks. You can also run a swab which is slightly dampened with water over the samples and observe the smearing to see which ones match the sample from the contaminated tank.

 

[ghostbear]

drc023 ,
Hobbicolors replaced the cracked yel cart with a filled one and this is the one I want to refill or toss.
If it was pigmented ink that got into the yel cart should I through it away or clean and re-use ?

Thanks for the how to check method.

ghostbear

 

[hpnetserver]

The way I see this is if the yellow is slightly contaminated by black it is not going to cause a color shift. So if you can somehow get the most of the black ink out of the yellow cart you should be able to use the yellow still. If I were you I would be more worried about why black ink showed up in the yellow tank. It may do it again if it is not addressed first. There are two blacks. So it will be a little tricky to figure out which one is leaking. I had a similar incident before that my black ink somehow found its way into yellow (maybe a different color I don't recall exactly). I believe I squeezed the ink cartridge and the black ink was forced out very quickly.

 

[ghostbear]

hpnetserver ,
You are correct, I am worried about how the blk ink got into the yel cart the first time.
This is what I think:
When I got my Hobbicolors kit for the ip4000 I filled all the new carts,next I installed the newly filled carts and in the process of removing the outlet cap from the yel cart the corner next to the outlet cracked from the force of removing the cap. My next step was to put the old yel cart back that I had removed to use untill I could get a replacement from Hobbicolors as the yel cart was not completely empty.

Ok , at this point remember this is my first attempt at refilling so I think that I may have been just a tad too full on some carts. I did a nozzle test and a light cleaning and all seemed ok until a couple of days later whe I used the printer again and found some banding and the colors were off.

I think the problem was caused by the fill screw not being tight enough on the BCI 6 blk cart and the old yel cart being pulled near empty from cleaning and then pulling the blk ink into the yel tank. This is only a guess on my part as now the BCI 6 blk is very low without much use .

I'm going to top off the BCI 6 blk and see if any more problems occur.

Thanks for your help ,
ghostbear

 

[hpnetserver]

Ghostbear, ah... I think the problem is you got a leak from the BCI-6BK cartridge, if it is near empty now without much use. I'd suggest to just top off maybe half full then watch it for a day or two a bit closer to make sure it doesn't leak any more. If black can get into yellow that's a lot of ink on the loose. It has got to be a leak. Was the screw reasonably tight? That's most likely why it leaked if it was not tight enough. Fortunately it wasn't the pigmented ink from BCI-3ebk tank.

 

[fotofreek]

The HC empty carts really fill easily and the sponge saturates quickly. Don't overfill. you don't want ink over the top of the sponge as it can come out of the vent hole. I've also read that over filled carts sometimes don't feed properly. Leave a bit of headroom in the reservoir area.