canon 4300 ink cartridge contamination

[keastman]

This might be wordy so appologies in advance. I've got a canon 4300 that just started having muted color prints. I checked the inks and the magenta and cyan seem a lot darker like they have blended or black has been added. the yellow is fine though. The BK ink is from Ink Grabber with the chip transfererd all the rest are fairly new Canon inks. The printer is about a year and a half old and not heavily used. Maybe a couple pages a day at most. My last printer also did this (Cannon 4200) seemed to have discolored ink in all tanks. I tried replacing inks and it happened again in short order. I figured it was the print head and ended up with the new 4300 as a result. So, considering the canon chiped inks cost so much, I'm very hesitant to just try replacing cartriges and have the problem occur again. I was hoping to refil all of these but am stumped at this point on how to proceed. I'm tempted to try to find a print head for my 4200 and put it back in service with inexpensive inks. That was a nice inexpensive rig to use with decent quality photos. Thanks for any insight you folks can give me on what I might try to fix this problem. Kevin

 

[KnightCrawler]

I always just refill the Canon made carts. People don't realize how important cart quality is until something goes wrong.


The Ink Grabber cart maybe leaking ink and it's getting into the other tanks. Is it the large text black or the photo black that is from Ink Grabber.

 

[keastman]

Thanks, I thought about that, but I don't think it is so because the ink grabber cart is the small black (photo blk) and the yellow is between the two contaminated carts and that black so I'm thinking the black didn't do it and it's the magenta and cyan that have mixed. The yellow has no discoloration. I'd expect the yellow to have problems if it were the ink grabber black causing the problem since it would have to pass the yellow cart to make it to the cyan and magenta. Any one else with some ideas?

 

[Grandad35]

Any one else with some ideas?

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1883