Canon MP600 will not turn on.

[rehardwick]

I have the following printers, MP 600, 610, and 830. I got them used from craigslist. Although they initially worked fine, when I was changing printer heads, all the printers died. They will not start with the start button. When I unplug and plug back in, I noticed a small spark, which indicates to me that the enabling circuit works. Any ideas?

 

[PeterBJ]

A Canon printer refusing to turn on could be caused by a defective power supply, or a defective printhead causing the power supply to shut down because of too high load current or even a short circuit. Water left on printheads after cleaning them outside the printer is a typical cause of this kind of failure.

So why did you change the printheads if the printers were working well? Could you have installed wrong printheads in the printers?

Sadly I think that your printers/printheads now are defective

The spark when plugging in a switch mode power supply, as used in the Canon printers is a normal behaviour and is caused by the charging of the reservoir capacitor(s). It doesn't indicate whether the power supply is OK or not.

 

[rehardwick]

I switched print heads to determine if my spares worked as I support some friend's printers and if they have printing problems, I switch print heads rather than going though an elaborate field cleaning and sometimes futile cleaning process. I developed a cleaning process that does not damage the print head. The printers will not turn on even without a print head installed. The failures seemed to occur at random.

 

[Ron350]

Seen this before one bad print head killing several good printers.

 

[PeterBJ]

It has not always been known, that a defective printhead can damage the logic board in the printer, and that a damaged logic board can damage a printhead. So swapping printheads between printers can quickly ruin many printers and printheads. Before this sad fact was known, it was considered good practice to test a printhead in another printer. Also some tough cleaning methods were used as last resort attempts to clean printheads. It was wrongly assumed that you only risked damaging the printhead, which was to be replaced anyway if you didn't get it working again. Nobody knew the risk of loosing the printer as well.

I think that this is one of the first reports on the forum that a bad printhead can damage a logic board: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3975

The fact, that the printers stopped working after a printhead swapping, makes me think this is the most likely cause of the damage. Printers and their power supplies can also fail for other reasons, but with three printers defective after a printhead swap, I think other causes of failure can be ruled out