Canon i850 - cross contamination of colors

[RoyThomas]

I know this has been covered before in various ways but just wondered if I could have some views on the viability of purchasing a new print head.

The colors tend to get mixed up yellow has particularly been a problem. Ive done the following:-
dismantled the printer, cleaned the waste ink area and tested that the ink suction pipes and little suction tray are all in order and they seem fine the pump easily removes distilled water I squirt in the tray
Ive dismantled the print head and nothing seems blocked or broken I did wonder if the small grey seal between the head and bottom of the tank outlets was letting ink feed across but couldnt see that it was.
Ive replaced all the ink tanks with new twice.

Despite all this ink still migrates from one tank to another after a few days actually into the tanks themselves.

I originally thought that a new print head would solve this but was hoping that the ink waste suction pipes were blocked as I could easily clean them

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards, Roy

 

[ghwellsjr]

If you remove your cartridges from the printer and set them on the edge of a sink or some other place where you can tolerate a mess, does any ink leak out of the cartridges, say, within an hour? Make sure nothing is touching the filters at the outlet ports when you do this.

Or does ink leak out when you first remove the tape from the air inlet port?

If this is the case, then ink will also leak out of your cartridges when you put them in your printer.

 

[ocular]

What brand of cartridges are you using? I have seen degrees of contamination especially with yellow. I think that if there is a leaky cartridge that ink will wick back up when the print head has been parked for a significant period of time. Have a look under the printhead abd see if there is obvious ink on the flat surface. Leaking of one cartridge can produce some bizarre nozzle check patterns. The pattern would suggest that the ink is not flowing but the layer of ink smears across the printhead surface and produces a such a pattern and really there is too much ink. Changed the brand of cartridges you are using.

Some of these non oem cartridges have poor performance characteristics.

 

[Grandad35]

In addition to the other comments, I have seen cross contamination caused by the sponges in the "head park" position becoming saturated with ink.
1. Open the cover to move the head to the "change cartridge" position, then pull the plug - this will prevent the head from moving while you are working on the printer. Push the print head to the far side of the printer (away from home) to gain maximum access to the "head park" sponges.
2. Put a plastic bag over your hand (or use rubber gloves), and use paper towels to blot the sponges until they don't give up much ink.
3. Close the cover, plug the printer back in, and turn the power on. It will do a cleaning cycle because the power was disrupted with the head off.

There is a low probability that this is a print head problem.

 

[AlienSteve]

As Grandad says, clean the park pad first. I strongly suggest -not- using paper towels, because most shed bits of paper. See the link in my sig for more detailed Canon cleaning instructions. I get the printer to flush the park pads by eyedroppering cleaning solution (see my website) into it until it is very wet but not overflowing, then turn it back on and run a cleaning cycle.

I have had 2 out of around 2 dozen Canon print heads that did fail internally. The Yellow turned green due to Cyan leaking inside the head. Even after complete cleaning of the park station, flushed print head, new cartridges, those two heads still contaminated the yellow. Different head in the same printer was fine.

I suspect the cyan was also being contaminated, but it was less obvious over the short term.