Canon ip6000d printing is very light

[jbclem]

I just acquired a used ip6000d. All ink cartridges are full. When I run a test print, color or grayscale, it is printing so light that it's barely readable. I ran a nozzle check and all nozzles seem to be working and the results print showed all nozzles working but the black and white and color samples printed way too light. The black sample is almost invisible.

I did 2 clean cycles, no change. I did a deep clean cycle, very slight improvement but the test print is still way too light.

What are the possible causes for this problem?

John

 

[ghwellsjr]

Are you using the same cartridges that came with it? Maybe they are using diluted inks. I would recommend that you put some new Canon cartridges in it but that will probably cost you way more than you paid for the printer, almost a hundred dollars.

As a compromise, if you print a page of black text and it comes out very faint, you could buy just a black cartridge and see if that fixes the problem. Don't forget to do a cleaning after switching cartridges to get the new ink to flow through the print head.

Another problem could be that half the nozzles are not working, like maybe every other one, or maybe only the nozzles for one direction of printing work. These would not show up on the nozzle check. You really need to do an extended nozzle check but I don't know how to do that on this printer. Maybe someone else will.

 

[jbclem]

Thanks for the suggestions. To buy Canon OEM inks would defeat the purpose of buying this model printer, and as you say would cost way more than I paid for it. And that wouldn't necessarily solve the problem. I've also read on this forum that there are some good inexpensive brands for refill ink(ie Hoppicolor) that seem to work very well for others.

My first tests were done on regular (plain) paper, and the printer was set for "plain paper". I just tried a test page again and the results were ever worse, lighter and unreadable. I set the printer to "high resolution paper" and tried again. This time the test page was almost ok, still on the light side but legible and usable, just not what it should be. But it took a long time to print the test page. I also tried another nozzle check, this time on regular ink jet paper (24lb) and the color samples were still too light and with no signs of nozzle problems. But the black sample was showing nozzle problems, white lines and even gaps in the black lines. Does this help with the diagnosis? Is there a separate black printhead? It seems there are two problems, black nozzle problems and overall light printing.

I googled extended nozzle check for this printer but didn't find anything. If half of the nozzles are working, is that an electrical (circuit) problem? Any more ideas about this...

John

John

 

[pharmacist]

Please execute one ore two cleaning cycles to purge the nozzles and print a standard nozzle check. There is no separate printhead for black but only one printhead to cover all the 6 colours on your IP6000D printer. The light printing is most likely caused by cheap ink. Try Hobbicolors UW-8 ink (ask also for original empty Canon cartridges, because these are the best for refilling and use the German Durchstich refill method for ease of refilling) and you will be astonished by its quality.

 

[ghwellsjr]

You still didn't answer my first question: Are you using the same cartridges that came with the used printer? In other words, do you have any reason to believe the cartridges are good? If they are the ones that came with the printer, how do you know the previous owner didn't just dilute the ink to make it look like the cartridges were full?

Do the cartridges have any extra holes in them, with or without plugs, like on the top or on any edges? Is the top of the sponges white, in other words, not saturated with ink?

I realize it will cost a lot to replace all the cartridges, but one black cartridge isn't going to cost too much and we're going to take a lot of time trying to eliminate different potential problems. Please make sure you have a known good working black cartridge, put it in, do a cleaning cycle and print a page of black text with greyscale selected. This is to let us know if your unknown ink is the problem.

Even if you decide to refill with a known good ink, you don't want to do this with an unknown cartridge.

When you respond to this post, please answer ALL my questions or it will just take longer to get to the bottom of your problem.

 

[pharmacist]

ghwellsjr,

There are a lot of newbies asking rather obscure and hardly understandable questions, so be patient. I usually answer back with statements which can be explained in multiple ways like greek oracles, so I will never do wrong.

 

[ghwellsjr]

OK, but in this case, I'm the one asking questions and until I get answers, I cannot help as much as I'd like to.

 

[jbclem]

Er, sorry if this is a case of rather obscure and hardly understandable questions, and my apologies for missing a question also...but it was 3am when I answered and we do live in a culture where most questions are ignored (at least on the internet) so you could say I was just living in the moment!

The printer came with 6 "new" ink cartridges on the side, and of the ink cartridges installed 3 were empty and I checked one other and it was definitely not full. So I'm sorry Sherlock but I don't think this is a case of diluted ink cartridges. I replaced the empty cartridges with 3 of the "new" ones.

The ink cartridges in the printer look identical to the "new" ones, I couldn't spot any differences at all in labels or position of numbers on the side of the cartridges. All but one of the new cartridges/boxes had no brand name or any kind of id on them anywhere. Fortunately there was one box with something, what could be a brand name: "Handsome", and also Shanghai Angel Printer Supplies Co., LTD, and also "made in China".

It will take a week or two to order some ink through eBay, but in the meanwhile I also posed a question that didn't get answered...what about the nozzle check that showed the black sample with white lines, is this a sign of a printhead problem? Should I be wasting my time with new ink if there is a bad printhead?

pharmacist, I mentioned in my first post that I had run two regular cleaning cycles and one heavy cleaning cycle. But when I said light printing, I meant really light printing...as in almost illegible/invisible. Could bad ink cause that much of a difference? And what about the fact that printing on plain paper and in "plain paper" mode gave the worse results, while printing in "high resolution" mode gave a result that could be explained by cheap ink. Does this mean that I have to print in high resolution mode from now on...it's very slow printing, that mode. Shouldn't I be able to get usable results with plain paper, if not a good as with ink jet paper.

Finally, although the answer is obvious from what I've already said, the original ink cartridges don't have any visible extra holes or plugs.

 

[ghwellsjr]

You need some known good cartridges. Please email me your address and I will send you a set of Canon refilled cartridges, but you have to promise me that you will recycle all of your non-OEM Canon cartridges at Staples for $3 each.

In the meantime, you can do an extended nozzle check by following the instructions in this manual. Look on page 1-14 for how to get into service mode and execute the service test print which will print a grid pattern for each color as shown on page 1-17. This will give you a clear indication of any random clogged nozzles or if there is a regular pattern of non-working nozzles which would be due to an unfixable electrical problem (assuming that your ink is dark enough to see the grid lines).

 

[pharmacist]

ghwellsjr is right about good (original) Canon cartridges, but I think it is both the ink and the cartridges (which determines the ink flow quality). With badly made cartridges even good refill ink will not be supplied towards the printhead effectively and will give poor results.