Canon Cyan inks differnt than all other colors?

[dparadowski]

I have any interesting, to me anyways, question. I have has 3 canon printers, a i960, IP5200, and now an IP6700D. On each printer I have noticed that the Cyan ink is the first and only ink to give me problems. After refilling a few times pictures develop streaks in the beginning. After seeing this happen, I noticed it was the cyan that was missing. I Printed the detailed nozzle check via the button sequence and low and behold the cyan is missing a bunch of lines. I let the printer sit a few minutes (20-30) and try again. This time a perfect pattern. I try a few pictures, and after about 2 I get the streaks again. I print the detailed nozzle check and the cyan is missing lines again. The first time this happened (on the i960) I bought the IP5200. After a few refills the same thing happened. I decided to buy new ink from we-ink thinking it was old, about 6mos., and the problem seemed to go away. Then about a month later the same thing happened. I read the forums and decided to purge the cartridges. This seemed to work for about 2 more refills. Now I have the 6700D and I'm getting the same problem, again with only the Cyan. If I put in and OEM the problem goes away, so I know it's not the printer/printhead, and I can't believe I got 3 different printers with defective cyan nozzles.

Has anybody else had anything similar happen to them. If so how did you solve it. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I am leary about diluting the ink, because I don't know how far is too much and have read that it's hard to tell if the viscosity to too much or too little.

 

[fotofreek]

I have used MIS ink in my i960 for over two years. I have had intermittent cyan problems which cleared with a cleaning. Recently I had some "clotting" in the container of cyan ink I had purchased about a year ago. Since it wasonly about an ounce I discarded it. For some reason I don't understand, the cyan ink creates the most problems.

 

[lolopr1]

The same happened to me last week with a brand new ip6600d using oem canon ink after 3 printheads and 2 printers canon decide to send me a new printer. The problem was the cyan even that I was using an oem cartridge.I try to clean the printheads with no luck they were damage with only 2 nozzle check now I have 3 printheads with the same problem. I try to clean them using the cleaning solution that I got from Alotofthings and windex with no luck I guess they are dead, but luckily for me the printer was under warranty and now I have a brand new printer and 3 dead printheads I apologize for my grammar my spelling ck dosen't work here

 

[WhiteDog]

Defective Cyan ink was reported to have been widely dispensed into the American market around the end of 2005. There is a viscosity difference between Canon inks and refill inks. I solved my problem with this advice:

"The USA generic Canon Cyan ink and the USA generic Canon Magenta ink is a little too low in viscosity to work correctly in the off-shore cartridges. It tends to run out of the cartridges and flood the printer. It does not matter if you are using the cartridges as stand-alone cartridges that you are manually re-filling... or if you are using the cartridges in a CFS system. The cyan & magenta viscosity is simply too low to work correctly. Once the printer gets "flooded", the Canon nozzle assembly has a strange quirk in it.... the flooding seems to change the internal pressures and causes some of the other colors.... black & yellow.... to not print at all!! Or to print poorly as though there was not enough ink to support those colors."

From experience I can confirm that this interpretation can be true.

See the whole page:
http://colorbat.com/specialcomments.htm

In the canon system, ink volume requested from the various cartridges has to be resolved correctly as a reflection of the color balance of the original print job. If there is any difference in hydraulic tension, even very small, among the cartridges there will be problems, which will become worse with differences in ink viscosity among the colors.

 

[Grandad35]

When I first got my i9900 almost 2 years ago, I tried some 3rd party prefilled carts and had a similar problem with cyan. The OEM carts worked fine, as did my refilled carts; I have not seen this problem since. It may be "bad ink", not the printer. You might want to try ink from another supplier, but I would purge the cyan carts before refilling them with the new ink.

 

[dparadowski]

I don't think it is the ink. I have purchased the ink first for my IP5200 from we-ink before they closed, then from MIS this past month for my IP6700D. From what I can see, it seems to me that the cyan is too 'thick'. It is like the cartridge is starved for the first few passes of the pinthead then seems to work for the rest of the print. Again if you print the detailed nozzle check first time you print, it's good. next time you miss a few nozzles, and next even more. If you wait a few minutes before trying again, they are good again. I am currently using new ink from MIS , supposedly Image Specialists) which I just purchased last month, so I'm not to sure that it's the old ink that I've heard about before.