Canon i560 Stopped working

[Trigger 37]

Hope someone out there knows how to clear this problem.

1. I560 Priner has clogged Magenta printhead. Nozzle test shows all other colors are just fine.
2. Remove printhead, clean, soak in Windex, dry, reinstall.
Same print problem,.. not one drop of Magenta.
3. Disassemble Printhead per instruction of Niffy-Stuff forum.
Found that Magenta head totally clogged. Cleaned, rinsed, dried, and re-assembled.
4. Installed in printer with good ink carts. Printer light blinks orange 5 times (which according to Canon web site= Printhead not installed properly.)
5. REmoved and reinstalled all ink carts and printhead. cleaned contacts on printhead.
6. Green Power light will not come on. (has not come on since it gave me the 5 orange blinks. But the PC can still see the printer and I was able to command the printer to do a deap cleaning and it did it. I did a couple more deep cleanings since when I cleaned the printhead, all ink was removed.
7. Tried to print a nozzle check. Printer moved the paper and sounded like it was standard print routine. However,.. not one drop of ink on the paper.
8.. REpeat cleaning,.. check printer monitor status= Printer online, paper position OK, INK levels up in all inks, try one more nozzle test print,... printer responds with blank white page.
9. Tried to use Resume/Power function enter "Service MOde". Would not go to service mode since no Green lite under any mode. Attempt to enter service mode gave me one Blink of orange light. At least this tells me the power led is still working.
10. Pulled power plug, re-incerted, re-installed printer to PC,.. now it will not respond to any function from PC.
11. Since these printers can be serviced without a PC, how do I force it into Service MOde if there is no green light. It does power on (but no power light). The carriage will move to the center of the printer when you open the cover.
12. I have backup i560's but I'm not sure I want to install that printhead in any other printer, and since I have a backup printhead, I'm not sure I want to try it in this printer.

ANY SUGGESTIONS WILL BE APPRECIATED.

B.

 

[Lilla]

This post is an attempt to consolidate what is known about this problem.

Trigger 37 in Post #17 in this link tells us more about his problem...

Lillia, First let me thank you for all your posts. They have helped me alot. I have an i560 that has a completely clogged Magenta head. I've made a new thread with all the details in the inkjet General forum. One of the things I did was to perform the cleaning that you just mentioned above in one of your post. The one that covers the ip3000, 4000, etc. It is basically identical to the i560 for printhead cleaning. The process was rather simple and I found the clog not where he had found his but in the ceramic part of the head. I was albe to clean it out and see daylight through the nozzles.

Here is the bad part. I put the head back together as instructed. While the flex was tight it came up without too much struggle. The bottom line is the printhead didn't work once I put it back in the printer. It immediately came up with 5 orange blinks and the Green ready light would never come on again. Canon says this is a Printhead not installed correctly code. I tried the suggestion at the Canon Support site, and I tried your suggestion on removing the printhead and then turn off the printer. When I turned it back on, it did nothing, especially didn't ask for a new Printhead. The first time I had installed it, I was able to access the print driver from the PC and select a deep cleaning cycle and actually printed a nozzle check. It was totally blank. After several tries at getting into Service Mode, which also failed, the printer still will not come "Ready", and won't communicate to the PC.

If I were you, I would continue with the slow but steady drip, drip, drip, cleaning process you are doing. I tried the drip method first but gave up when I could not get one drop of water past the Magenta nozzle. I think what is happening to my printhead is that it is very difficult to re-seal the ceramic printhead to the rubber gasket that is between the ink tanks and the Ceramic printhead. The screws that clamp these to parts together are very small and have very little torque, and so is the gasket and the tiny holes in the ceramic printhead. IF there is any leak anywhere in there, I suspect that the cleaning cycle that pulls ink can't get a vacuum to pull. Somehow it senses this and knows the printhead or something is not seated. I don't think it is anykind of electrical problem because I know I did not stress flex cable. I'm and Electrical Engineer with over 30 years experience in computer technology, and especially in Flex cables. The way this cable is attached to the printhead housing and to the 1000's of print nozzles on the Ceramic, it would be very difficult to break any connection. There is an epoxy strain relief half way between the two electrical connections so the cable can not be stressed at that point. If I am wrong about the printhead, and the only way it can detect a bad printhead is through the electrical connections at the carriage,... then some wire is broken somewhere. If I put in a new printhead, one that I know is good,.. I should be able to get the old printer to at least come ready,...i.e., a good Green light. If I don't print there should be no risk to the good printhead. Does everyone agree with that theory? I don't want to ruin a second one.

I'm looking for a lot of guidance at this point. Thanks for your help.

Trigger, you are welcome. It's good to know that you find my posts helpful.

I don't think I would do it. For one thing, I've read that when it senses the print head has been removed/replaced, it will run a deep cleaning, assuming there are cartridges in it. And, you don't want to leave the print head without a cartridge in any slot for more than a few minutes as it can/will suck in air and this can cause a problem -- see http://216.219.159.185/clean.html

Inkjet inks are formulated to dry quickly to prevent smearing on paper. When you remove an "ink tank" for replacement and/or refill, air enters the channel between the ink tank and the print head and ink begins to dry. Dried ink forms "chunks" of ink which will block the flow of liquid ink to the print head. Never, Never, Never keep a cartridge out of one of these printers for more than a few minutes.

 

[Lilla]

Intuitively, I would disconnect the interface (parallel or USB) cable from the back of the printer while troubleshooting this problem. These printers are designed to be serviced without being connected to a printer. I read that with these printers it sometimes helps to disconnect the power cord and leave it for a few minute to let the printers memory reset/clear. If the printer is set to auto power on/off I would disable this feature while troubleshooting, if possible.

You mentioned Service Mode, is there any chance you could have entered a code you didn't intend? There are some bad reset code instructions out there; by unknowingly using a wrong code you can easily change something you did not intend to change.

Read Jackson's post #30 (same link as post #32 below) where he tell us he entered a wrong code and the resulting problem. Also read Post #11 this link for a post by an S600 owner that used a wrong code -- he tells us "So I reset the waste counter, re initialized the EPROM, and reset the market code. Now the printer works like new."

Consider, Jackson's post in this forum which should be correct as his info is from Service Manuals. Now, compare the codes posted by Jackson to the codes I found posted on fixyourprinter.com forum. Notice the differences.

Jackson, in Post #32 this link writes... Read also related posts #30 and #31.

I just got a hold of the i550.i850 Service Manual, and here is the info.

0 Green Power off When there is no head, the carriage returns to the home position and locks
1 Orange Service test print [Extended Nozzle Check / Lilla]
2 Green EEPROM information print
3 Orange EEPROM initialization Destination is set to overseas during EEPROM initialization
4 Green Clear waste ink counter Clear waste ink counter
5 Orange Destination setting After selecting a function, press the Resume button
(1: Overseas, 2: Domestic)
Not sure what this next one actually does
6 Green Head refreshing Clear both BX/CL ink
7 Orange Not used for service
8 Green Not used for service
9 Orange Not used for service
10 Green Return to selection menu

The i950 is different from 6 on down EXCEPT 5 Destination Setting is now (0: Domestic, 1: Overseas)

FixYourPrinter.com Inkjet Forum

Re: Canon i850 light flashing orange by hpwizard (11/8/05 3:44 AM) Probably your waste ink counter. Should be cleaned or replaced before resetting but usually you can get away with resetting once.
1. Start with printer OFF
2. Hold down RESUME and then hold down POWER
3. Release RESUME
4. press RESUME twice, then release POWER
5. let green light blink until printhead has finished moving.
6. Select functions below with RESUME, execute with POWER
0 presses - green light - Test Print (exit service for i960)
1 press - orange light - EEPROM info print
2 presses - green light - EEPROM initialize
3 presses - orange light - reset waste ink counter.
This also applies to the i550, i560, i950, i960
Good Luck, I hope this helps?!
Dazz UK

Re: Canon i850 light flashing orange by collin8900 (4/25/06 6:47 PM)
i850 blinking 7 times i waste ink full.. but clear the reset the waste ink counter is 4 times not 3..=.= i know some manual is say 3 times but actually is 4..

 

[Trigger 37]

Lillia,

The Service codes from "FixyourownPrinter" post are wrong. The problem is that "Dazz" got it wrong.

Re: Canon i850 light flashing orange by hpwizard (11/8/05 3:44 AM) Probably your waste ink counter. Should be cleaned or replaced before resetting but usually you can get away with resetting once.
1. Start with printer OFF
2. Hold down RESUME and then hold down POWER
3. Release RESUME
4. press RESUME twice, then release POWER
5. let green light blink until printhead has finished moving.
6. Select functions below with RESUME, execute with POWER
0 presses - green light - Test Print (exit service for i960)
1 press - orange light - EEPROM info print
2 presses - green light - EEPROM initialize
3 presses - orange light - reset waste ink counter.
This also applies to the i550, i560, i950, i960
Good Luck, I hope this helps?!
Dazz UK

He indicated that you will get a test print with "0" presses of the Resume button and that is wrong,.. Test print works after "1" press,.. then the others below him go up by one each.

As far as what I did,... I tried all kinds of ways to get into Service mode, but since I could never get any green light, it will not respond to any amount of buttons pushes. I know now it is not in service mode, as I can access it via the PC Printer Maint. mode. It says it is online and ready and that the paper lever is in the left position. It will also print anything I send to it, and it all comes out blank.

From the PC I can perform all functions from the Maintenience Tab, such as "Turn the Printer Off", enable/disable Auto Power, and I can verify that the power button on the printer turns it on and brings it ready as far as the PC Maint. Tab is concerned. It other words, it act as if there is nothing wrong,... except there is no green light and no ink will print.

I believe that putting in a new printhead will not bring the unit ready, nor will it reset the error code that is logged into the EEProm. I sent Grandad35 an email asking for his help. Since this potentially affect many people that would like to disassemble and clean their printheads, we should try to find out what went wrong and how to fix it,.. or avoid it.

 

[Grandad35]

snap. I sent Grandad35 an email asking for his help. Since this potentially affect many people that would like to disassemble and clean their printheads, we should try to find out what went wrong and how to fix it,.. or avoid it.

This post also addresses this thread on the same subject. (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=10743#p10743)

In my original post (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=241), I wasn't clear as to how little I flexed the flat cable. While these types of cables are usually capable of a large bend angle, I was concerned that the connections of the ribbon to the ceramic print head might not be so forgiving. For this reason, I never bent this cable more than about 10 degrees, preferring instead to remove the circuit board along with the head to minimize any risk of physical damage. I saw another link (I don't remember where) where someone was more aggressive in flexing the flat cable, but that would worry me.

All of the electrical connections seem to be well "potted" to seal them from water, etc., except for the gold contacts on the back of the board (the top image in the original post) and the 8 pin IC that is soldered on the inside of the circuit board (the bottom image in the original post). These areas must be washed with distilled water, then thoroughly dried before the head is reinstalled. I obviously have no direct knowledge of what happened in your case, but the simplest (Occam's razor) and most logical explanation is that the flex cable may have been stressed too far, and that one or more connections at the ceramic print head was compromised.

A few points to note in the photos:
1. This printer (an i9900) uses 8 colors and has 768 nozzles for each color, for a total of 6144 nozzles.
2. There are only 69 gold contacts on the back of the circuit board, so this is the maximum number of connections between the print head and the mother board.
3. The IC has 8 leads.

Perhaps someone else can comment on this, but I don't see how this hardware can control all of the nozzles unless there are additional electronics in the ceramic head itself. At best, 69 lines connected as a 34x35 matrix will only address 1190 independent nozzles. If there ARE electronic components in the ceramic part of the print head, this brings in another complete set of possibilities for damaging a print head. For example, excessive air pressure could force water into areas where it should not be, shorting out components. Since my clog was in the plastic part of the print head, I never used compressed air on the ceramic components - they were just set aside and then reassembled.

If things were shorted in the print head, it is certainly possible that your printer's mother board could have been damaged (even if it is poor design practice to design a mother board that won't tolerate a print head problem). If these printers were still available, I would just throw it away and buy a new one, since the cost of a new print head is almost the same as the cost of a new printer rather than buying a new print head that might be damaged. Is there anyone out there with an old printer like yours and who has a spare print head that functions but was retired because of a clog and who would be willing to donate it to see if your printer is damaged or functioning normally?

 

[Trigger 37]

Grandad35,..Thanks a lot for updating this post. I still have more testing to do but I think your conclusions and mine have come to the same point. When I cleaned the printhead and took apart the ceramic housing,.. I was not aware that there was a chip behind the contact board on the printhead. I did some very agressive riinsing of all of the mechanizm and that includes high air pressure to blow out the nozzles on the ceramic head, and to clear all water on any part of the printhead. Since I didn't take the circuit board off of the printhead, there could have been water in behind it. This could have created some low resistance paths on any of the printhead signal lines. I think we should clearly update the procedure so that everyone knows what and what not to do in cleaning the head. I am not worried about the flex cable that connects the printhead and the ceramic nozzles. One of the Technolgy plants that I worked with in IBM developed the "Flex Technology" and I am very familiar with it. The welds that bond the flex cable to the circuit board pads and the Ceramic print nozzles are done with high tech thermal welds. You could hang a 10 pound weight on both ends and not break one of them loose. This technology is use around the world on just about every kind of electronics that requires flexible cable connections. Also, there is an epoxy strain relief half way between the circuit board and the ceramic head. This prevents either end from putting stress on any electrical connection when either end is hanging loose.

I also don't thing the IC on the backof the circuit board can be damaged by water. These are hermetically sealed circuits. I talked to a local Canon Service rep and he helped me with some local testing. What we concluded is that something on the PC circuit board is also blown, since no matter what I do the printer will not come ready. When I first put the cleaned head in the printer, I immediately got 5 orange flashes. This is an error message that the printhead is not installed correctly. The main PC detected this via the wiring from the printhead. Clearly some lines were crossed or shorted,.. or something. What I didn't know at that time was what the 5 flaslhing ment. I should have stopped right there and taken the printhead out to see what was wrong. I did open the cover and check the ink tanks and then proceeded to try and get it to work. The bad news was that the PC printer maintenience tab was still working (then and now). I was able to do a cleaning cycle since I new there was no ink in the nozzles, and then I forced it to do a nozzle print test. What ever is wrong with the PC board the system still tells me that the printer is ready, even though the Green light is out. It would (and will right now) let me do any normal function from the printer driver. When the nozzle test print started, it fed the paper and acted as if it had successfully printed,.. but the paper was blank. I felt that some kind of error message was stored in the printer EEProm, so I wanted to get into service mode and reset the EEProm. Because the printer won't come ready, there is no way to get into Service Mode. The service tech said that he felt nothing could be done short of replacing the main circuit board and a new printhead.,... so that is the end of this printer.

What still puzzles me is that the printer will respond to every function you can ask it to do, online, offline, check ink levels, position the carriage in the center to change ink or printhead, cleaning or deep clean, power on/off, Auto power controls, and by the way, print anything you ask it. There will just be no ink. So there can not be much wrong with the processor board and the rest of the mechanism. There is probably a simple power on test of the printhead connection each time the cover is opened and closed. If the printhead does not respond with the correct signals,... Error. Once the error is "Flashed" and stored in the EEPRom, it won't repeat it. The tech told me to remove all the ink and the printhead and close the cover. He felt the Green ready light would come on for a second and then flash some orange lights for a new error code. This does not work. The printer parks the empty carriage on the right and goes dormant. This is the same symptom all the time.

I am going to take the printhead appart one more time and this time remove the contact circuit board to get at the back of it and clean that very good, and then try it one more time. In no way am I going to put a new printhead back in this printer. I think by now some of the input signal pins on the Main PC board, coming from the print head were damaged and are now bad. This is why it won't come ready and this is why the firing signals to the printhead are not executing. The Main PC board "Thinks it is Printing",.. and can't see there is no ink on the paper. This sounds kind of dumb,..i.e., if it sees thr printhead is not working, why would it even try to do a cleaning or print anything.???????

Hope I haven't wasted anyone's time on this, but I think it should be added to the cleaning instructions to remove the contact circuit board and clean it if you choose to take apart the printhead. I just hope that someone else learns from my mistakes.

 

[Grandad35]

Trigger 37,

I discussed this situation with a few electrical engineers, and none of us know of a way for 69 signals to drive 6144 nozzles unless there are additional active electronics (decoders, drivers, etc.) buried inside the ceramic portion of the print head. One very experienced engineer reminded me that these types of components are very sensitive, and that they can easily be damaged by a static discharge during disassembly (yet another possible failure mode). If you want to donate your print head, I know of someone who is willing to disassemble the ceramic portion to verify that there are active components inside.

I am NOT an expert in flex cables, but mine was much stiffer than most flex cables that I have worked with (I assume that it is multi-layered), so I prefer to err on the conservative side and to not stress the cable, especially since there is such an easy way to avoid it.

 

[Trigger 37]

Grandad35,... Thanks for your note.

I've gone back and looked at many posts that people have made who have used the disassembly process to clean their printheads. I've also looked much closer to the pictures. I am more convinced than ever that no amount of water can damage anything on the printhead,..."With the exception that the IC on the back of the circuit card could be damaged if it was not totally sealed in the MFG. process". Everything else on the entire assembly is already sealed against any kind of liquid. The etched circuit lines are all on internal layers of the circuit board and no water or windex could ever get at them. The Via holes are also sealed by the epoxy covering on all surfaces of the circuit board. The Thermal bonded connections to the Flex cable are covered by layers of epoxy cement and that seals all those connections from any contact with water. They are also protected against stress from the moveable parts with things are disassembled. The last point is the solder connections of the 8 IC tabs to the circuit board. These are spaced so far apart (1/32") that no water solution could bridge the gap and cause a short.

There is quite a few people that have had good success in the disassembly process for cleaning. A couple of heads have failed. I believe mine has failed,... but I still don't know why. There is always the possibility that this head was a marginal product to begin with and could have been "Near Death" to start with,.. and it failed. It could still have been a problem with water at the IC,.. but again,... IMHO, the voltage to the IC is so low, water can't provide a good conduction path to bridge 3.3 volts.

All of this is ,....IMHO. I will continue to investigate as time permits,.. hopefully I can add some facts to this post. This cleaning process is going to continue to be need for a long time,.. as even the new Canon printers use the same printhead technology,.. and clogs are going to continue to happen. We have to get this cleaning process down so we have good confidence it it.

 

[Trigger 37]

Grandad35, To further add to the education on this Printhead,... I've looked deep into the Service Manual for the i560 (which is very similar to the i850) and checked the circuit diagram and the connector pin description. The diagram shows that the only IC on the Printhead is the EEProm. The wiring description shows all the clocks, data and signal assignments to the printhead. There are 44 signals for the i560 printhead and 4 of those are not used. So, as your post asks,... How does all that decoding get done,... if not by more IC chips. The answer is,... the Printhead Nozzle array is an IC in itself. The Ceramic housing is basically a temperature stable ink funnel which acts also as a heat sink for the nozzle array. I'm sure the decoding takes place with diode logic arrays right at the nozzle level. The nozzles are built into the heart of a silicon chip. The heaters in the nozzles are basically high resistance diodes that when pulsed heat the ink to produce the bubble which pushes out the required ink drop. If you look very close at the bottom of the nozzles, you can see how the very fine connections of the flex cable attaches to the nozzle array. You won't see any space anywhere under the flex cable for any IC. Think about it a differnent way,... Suppose you are correct, and their is some kind of IC underthere,...it has to be some very sophisticated chip with 44 input wires and 1024 output wires to connect to those 1024++ individual nozzles.

We could go on talking about this for a long time,.. but in the end it doesn't really make any difference. Whatever is there does the job,.. and it doesn't get bothered by being soaked for days at a time in water, windex, or just about any other reasonable cleaning solution.

I think I've seen some pictures on this web site of a printhead that one person took apart,.. at least I saw where he tore off the stainless steel filter screen off the Black inlet from the BCI-3e BK ink tank. I'll will look again and see if I can find it and we can ask him to cut the flex apart from the Ceramic housing and see what is really there.