Canon MP530 not printing right colors...

[tonyimp]

My Canon MP530 is not printing greens as greens, or reds as reds.

All the print cartridges are full, and I am not printing in grayscale.

The colors show on plain paper (I am not printing a photo) as a washed-out, banded kind of overall yellow.

Any ideas?? This driving me nuts... thanks!!


Tony

 

[SpideRMaN]

are you refilling the carts ?

 

[qwertydude]

Can you scan a printout or take a picture of one? Also see if you can print out a solid blocks of cyan magenta and yellow colors to determine if any of them are acting up.

 

[tonyimp]

I am not refilling the cartridges myself. I purchase them refilled from Cartridge World. The chips on the cartridges are reset on the cartridges as sold: the printer does not complain about them.

 

[tonyimp]

As a resply to qwertydude...

When I do the nozzle check, what should be a solid block of color (like a magenta, etc.) is not... it is pretty pale and washed out. None of the blocks really print in a vibrant color.

 

[qwertydude]

Sounds like watered down ink to me, if it prints solid but pale sounds like the ink is not up to snuff. A profile may help but besides that I don't know.

 

[SpideRMaN]

I agree with the above post.

Could also be a bad profile. Maybe can try uninstalling printer drivers, restart PC, install latest Drivers of the printer.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Do all the colors show up pale in the nozzle check, including black?

 

[leo8088]

The print head may be clogged. I have seen clogged print head that printed pale colors. That happened to my old i950 when I bought cheap BCI-6 ready filled cartridges in a flea market.

 

[tonyimp]

Thanks to all who replied!!

While researching through the Internet, I found a post regarding printer memory corruption, with a suggestion (no more than that, mind you! ) to reset the printer's memory. The inference was that, over time, the printer had become confused. Indeed, the printer has not been reset since being purchased, rarely being powered off for more than a few seconds at a time.

For those folks who may have an interest, here is what I did:

1) Turned the printer off (using the on/off switch).
2) Unplugged the printer power cord.
3) Removed the USB connection cord.
4) Unplugged all (2) telephone lines (the unit is used for FAXing).

The post I read suggested leaving everything powered down and unplugged for at least 5 minutes. In the meantime I did this:

5)Pulled the print cartridges from the print head.
6) Used dry, clean Qtips to clean the chips on the ink cartridges, the contacts for the cartridge chips on the print head, and the ink ports on the ink cartridges. I guess a better way to say what I did was just generally clean things up in and around the print head and the ink cartridges.
7) Reinstalled the ink cartridges.

I rehooked up all the power, USB and telephone cables and lines, and powered up the printer.

When I printed a document with color on the "fast" (draft) setting, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the appropriate colors had returned to the document as printed. The intensity of the colors improved when I switched to print in "high", although the color red, although recognizable as red, was not as brilliant as I would have preferred.

I assume that the reason for the not-brilliant-red color is a lousy batch of ink... does anyone have an opinion on another possible root cause??

At any rate... I thank everyone for their helpful opinions. Have a blessed day!!