Canon MG 5550 problems with printing text.

[CapoKees]

Goodevening members, may I ask you if you can help me with a very strange behaviour of the MG 5550 which my granddoughters use for schoolwork when printing text on just normal paper.
Most of the lines are affected with letters which are a bit shifted in horizontal position for about half a millimeter, in such away that the same letter is printed two times next to each other shifted at about half a millimeter which makes it very hard to read also because the letters are very vague .
But also some lines are printed correctly in such a way that ie two lines are wrong, than one line is correct and again some two or three lines are wrong and so on.
This happens when I selected plain paper in the Canon program, but when I selected photopaper in the Canon program but feeded the printer with plain paper everything went fine, in the photopapersetting the big cartridge with pigmentink is not used.
Therefore I think that the printer does something quite wrong when using the pigmentink cartridge.
I tried to finepositioning the printhead, cleaning and deepcleaning the head, cleaning the transportrolls but all without result.
Maybe there is a simple tric to solve this problem or maybe the printer reaches end of life and there is no cure at all.
Thanks in advance,

Kees.

 

[stratman]

Sorry to hear about your granddaughter's printer.

You provided some good information that seems pretty spot on in your diagnosis that only the Pigment Black Cartridge is affected, however, a picture is worth a thousand words. Please scan the paper that shows this problem and post in this thread. You may need to crop the image so that we can get an up close view of the issue. Also, please do a Nozzle Check, scan it and then post it here as well.

Are you using Canon OEM cartridges or aftermarket cartridges?

Did this issue occur suddenly or gradually over time? Is it getting worse or staying the same?

Is the print head "new", meaning not the original, and if so, where did you get it from. There are reports of "new" print heads out of China are refurbished ones made to appear new and they have a high failure rate.

Make sure the Pigment Black cartridge is clean, including the electrical contacts on the cartridge and print head, not leaking, and that it is seated properly in the print head. Next, make sure the print head is properly seated and that the locking lever is securely fixed in locked position. Look around inside the printer for leaked ink or paper bits or significant dust that you can clean out. When cleaning inside the printer make sure not to touch the plastic Timing Strip - see below for explanation and link - or you can cause more issues.

I do not know what you mean by "fine positioning" of the print head. Do you mean a Print Head Alignment? If you have not tries this yet then perform an Automatic Print Head Alignment. If that is unsatisfactory then you can try a Manual Print Head Alignment.

It is possible the plastic Timing Strip inside the printer is dirty. The following link discusses the issue for a different model printer but should apply to your model printer as well: https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/index?page=content&id=ART147867

 

[CapoKees]

Hello Stratman,

Thanks very much for your quick answer.

Indeed I ment Head Alignment and I used both manners.

The printhead is the original Canon which came with the printer when I bought it.

The cartridges are refillable ones made in China filled with Inktec ink.

Till last week the printer worked fine with this equipment, although for precise colourbalance with this ink you have to correct for a small green/cyan cast but for the girls this is not of great importance ( but for me it is)!

I gave the printer to them when I bought an Epson.

I cleaned as much as possible everything inside and outside of the printer and will perform the cleaning of the timing strip.

Today I don`t have time for working at this problem, maybe tomorrow, in any case I will put an example of a text of the girls ( in Dutch ) and will put the result of the Timing Belt cleaning in this thread.

Thanks again and I wish you all Happy Printing and a nice day.

Kees.

PS: I like this forum very much.

 

[PeterBJ]

From your description of the error, it is warped pigment black nozzles, probably caused by overheating due to the use of an unsuitable refill ink. I think this error seems to affect mostly printers that are newer than the PGI-x25/CLI-x26 cartridge generation, like the MG5550 that is of the PGI-x50/CLI-x51 cartridge generation. I think this error was first described in the druckerchannel.de Canon forum, see this and this.

If the error is caused by warped nozzles only a new print head can cure the printer, but maybe buying a new printer would be better economy?

 

[CapoKees]

Hello PeterBJ and Stratman,

I was working tonight at the problem, cleaning the Timing Strip, dismounting the printhead and cleaning it with water with a bit of ammonium and remounting it.
Nothing helped but I still can use the printer by always setting the paper falsely at photopaper glossy although using plain paper as I mentioned already yesterday, then the texts look fine.

I think that you are right PeterBJ because I remember that the girls about a week ago told me that they were printing and saw this strange output, I was not there at that moment but lateron I discovered that the pigmentchannel was glogged partly and performed a cleaning cycle.

So I will instruct them how to use the photopaper mode till the printer dies forever which maybe will happen soon, then it will be time for a new one, the economic problem is that they have two sets of refillable cartridges and plenty of Inktec ink.

Thank you both printermasters very much, for now I stop with trying and searching and tomorrow I hand the printer over to the twin, I can`t blame them because they are only twelf years old and I have to blame myself because I did not instruct them for glogged printheads etc. and how to solve that.

Again thanks,

Kees.

 

[stratman]

You are most welcome, Capo. Sounds like you have a good workaround for the Pigment Black nozzles issue. Selecting a photo paper type instead of plain paper type will bypass the Pigment Black ink and nozzles and use only the dye-based ink cartridges. Text may not appear as sharp and will not have water resistance with the dye-based inks, so use of a highlighter pen will not work well. But, if the text is sufficient for your needs using dye-based inks then you can still use the printer happily. Even if you do not like the text output with dye-based inks, the printer still functions as an All-In-One otherwise.

Note - your granddaughters may not have done anything to cause the warped pigment black nozzles. This can happen from substandard pigment black ink that does not cool the nozzles properly during printing. Also, the issue can happen spontaneously for no apparent reason.