Canon MG3650s issues with Black ink printing

[kuteguy]

When printing B&W (or any printing needing Black ink) I am getting quality issues.

I was previously using the OEM cartridge that came with the printer (never fiddled with it) and this started happening. So, replaced it with an after market Color and Black cartridge (The color had become quite low, but the Black in the OEM was almost 70% full).

Problem did not resolve. Have tried re-installing the cartridges many times and cleaning the head of the black cartridge (rubbing it on tissue paper) - no change at all.

Have deep cleaned the printer head using the printer's button almost 5 times. Don't think there is any way to remove the head to do a manual clean for this model.

Would hate to throw this into landfill - working brilliantly in every other way. Any hints/tips on how to fix this?

 

[The Hat]

Any hints/tips on how to fix this?

There are two things you can do..

Change to using only the photo paper media setting and stop using the plain paper setting, that will allow you to print in B&W without having poor output..

The second is to buy a new Black cartridge and that will solve the problem immediately, and when you get back to normal printing stop using the deep clean option continually..

 

[kuteguy]

WOW! thanks - that did the job. I printed using 'Photo printing' and Microsoft Word and it came out perfectly. I was blown away, so I went to Standard Printing and of course the problem came back.

can I ask, for my benefit and learning:

1. why does it come out ok for Photo Printing but not Standard Printing - is it just that photo printing is higher quality and so tricks the printer cartridge to print in better DPI?
2. is there any harm in continuing to print in 'Photo Printing' till this brand new black cartridge that I installed. I suppose more of the colored ink will get used for situations when there is color in the printing

 

[PeterBJ]

The printer is a two cartridge printer, using a cartridge with pigment black ink and a three-colour cartridge with 3 dye ink colours, cyan, magenta and yellow.

The pigment black ink is specially suited for plain paper documents. It is more waterproof and the print is more sharp than if using a dye black ink or a mixed black from the 3 colours.

The pigment black ink does not adhere well to photo paper, so when photo paper is specified as the printing medium then black is mixed from the 3 dye colour inks.

The cartridges are combined sponge and printhead cartridges, so when buying a new cartridge you get a new printhead.