Canon Pixma ip8500 - Photo Magnetta issue

[gwrentch03]

Hi.. I have searched everywhere and cannot find a answer to this issue I have been having with my old printer. I have done cleanings, deep cleanings multiple of times and when I do a nozzle check everything checks but the photo magnetta. I contacted canon and they said to power off the printer, take all the cartriges out and remove the print head for about 30 seconds and then put it all back and run the check. I did and the PM worked for about one check and then stopped again. I thought I had a bad print head so I purchased another one and went through the same thing and again every color printed but the PM. My pictures were very blue and green since the PM wasn't working. So I thought maybe my old printer was bad so I purchased another printer and received it yesterday, I put the new print head in with my non OEM replacement ink and tried it on the new printer, the nozzle check resulted in the same thing, but with the new printer there was a hint of PM. I tried replacing the PM ink with another and had the same issue so I just took it out and put the original canon ink in and ran my nozzle check and it worked. All colors printed fine, took a test picture and it was awsome with the new printer... Anyway if someone has had this issue please let me know what you did to fix it. At this point the only thing I can think of is to use OEM canon PM and the rest I can get away with non OEM brands on my new printer. One more monkey in the wrentch with my old printer is if I take out all the cartridges and do a printer status it shows that according to the ink levels I still have my cartridges in when I don't.. kinda weird.. wonder if the printer is just bad or the sensors are bad. Anyway please let me know if you have any idea what I should do.. Also I did uninstall and re-install the drivers... Thanks.. Vince

 

[panos]

Hey Vince, it is possible that your non OEM magenta ink was the culprit all the time.

You can find many cleaning ideas in this forum. But once your printer is cleaned up and the PM problem continues with the non-OEM ink, the best solution is to throw away the PM ink and either use OEM (as you have figured) or try another non-OEM manufacturer.

 

[gwrentch03]

Thank you so much for your response. yea I was thinking it could be from the start.. I tried several non pm and had the same result and the only one that worked was OEM PM... Oh well atleast I can still use some of the non OEM's just have to use OEM for one... Now I need to do some searching and see what is the best for the printer I have. Thanks again.. Vince

 

[hpnetserver]

You seem to have a bad PM cartridge. When you used an OEM PM cartridge it worked fine but when you used the off brand PM it did not. The answer to your problem is clearly that the off brand PM is bad. Stop using it immediately before it damages your printhead. Find a good quality supply for 3rd party cartridges now. Before that use only your OEM carts. Think about refilling with good 3rd party ink suggested by many people in this forum. MIS, Formulabs and Hobbicolors are a few brand names. Canon ip8500 is a fabulous high end printer. Don't spoil it with low quality cheap 3rd party ink cartridges. It deseves much better ink to print fabulous photos for you. I have had my ip8500 for about a year now. I have always used refill kits from Hobbicolors. I don't remember ever needed to run cleaning cycles. Each time nozzle check showed perfect solid colors. Many people used MIS and Formulabs will probably tell you the same thing too.

Ip8500 does not detect absence of ink cartridges. But it will detect empty ones. It is is strange but it is normal. Good luck.

 

[panos]

I think there was a posting from Grandad35 in which he said that it is usually the photo magenta cartridge that fails, when a cartridge does.

 

[Grandad35]

panos, gwrentch03,

The first set of bulk inks that I used in my Canon i9900 had a problem with PM that didn't present itself at first, but got progressively worse as I refilled multiple times. The problem was that the sponges and filters got progressively more plugged with "glop" like that shown in the photos in this post (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=1676#p1676) and would starve the print head for ink. Bad nozzle checks were one of the symptoms. This problem was why I developed a technique to clean my carts with hot water (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=311).

Since I cleaned my carts as described above and switched to Formulabs bulk ink (done at the same time), I have not had any problems with ink delivery or nozzle clogs on any color. Since July 2 (when I started keeping detailed records), I have replaced 65 total carts, 21 of them PM. Note that others have reported similar positive experiences with other quality inks.

 

[gwrentch03]

Panos, hpnetserver, Grandad35.. Thank you for your responses and I appreciate you taking time to help me with my printer issues. This forum is awsome with a wealth of information and I am glad I came across it. Thanks again.. Gwrentch03

 

[gwrentch03]

Hi. Just wanted to provide an update on what I did to fix my PM problem. I tried using a OEM PM cartridge but the print head was still clogged so I read and read and read and I first tried to soak my print head in Windex overnight and hoped that would work, what ended up happening is my print head was totally clogged and nothing would print. I thought I ruined it and then purchased another print head for my ip8500. It worked for a few prints and I noticed the color wasnt that great and did the nozzle check and the PM was clogged and no matter how many cleanings I did it wouldnt unclog again. Since I was not successful with the Windex procedure I did a search on the forum and found Grandad35s procedure on how to take the print head apart and unclog the print head. I didnt want to try this on my newer print head and figured I would see if I could bring my bad print head back to life. I followed the procedures and took it apart and used 70 percent alcohol that I bought at CVS and used the syringe that came with my alotofthings 3rd party ink purchase and shot the alcohol through the ceramic holes and used a straw to unclog the print head that the tank sits on, sorry dont remember the proper name for them. After a few seconds of flushing the alcohol through the flow started to get stronger and the clogs were gone, same with the ceramic holes. So I made sure I put the rubber seal back on and to make sure it was I put the needle through the hole to make sure it wasnt blocked and made sure it was dry from the alcohol and put it back together and back in my printer. I then refilled all my ink tanks and put them back in my print head and ran a nozzle check. All colors printed (I was blown away since I thought I killed my print head) but there was some banding, so I ran the automatic nozzle alignment and the banding went away. After some test prints I did notice that the color didnt seem to look right so I ran another nozzle check and found 3 colors were blank. I didnt think it could clog up so fast so I replaced the 3 colors with newly filled ink and ran the nozzle check again and all colors printed out great. Printed some pictures and they were great. I was able to bring a dead print head back to life I think I will have to clean my 3 bad cartridges and am in the process of getting what I need to do that through Grandad35s hot water method, but glad I had extra cartridges that got me through this. Still have a few questions if anyone can advise I would appreciate it.

1. My low ink level sensor or whatever is used in my printer will not show the correct ink level, its as if it doesnt know. I thought maybe since my print head was originally clogged that it couldnt tell but since its no longer that way I would have thought it could see it. I have tried putting in blank cartridges, no cartridges at all and it still shows ink. Wouldnt think it would if there were no cartridges in the printer at all. I guess this is no big deal, and I will try and keep my cartridges filled but it kind of just bugs me.. LOL..

2. I have some empty canon original canon cartridges. They dont appear to be totally dried out, but was wondering should I try and clean them before filling them up or do you think they will work ok even if I dont clean them first?

Hope my experience helps someone; any info on my questions would be appreciated.

 

[fotofreek]

Cleaning the cartridges is so easy that you might as well clean the old OEM carts as they usually work like new after cleaning. If the i9900 ink level sensor works like other i series printers (I assume it does since it uses the same carts) it really only senses when the ink reservoir (the chamber without the sponge) is empty and then does a crude countdown to guess when the ink level is down to the point in the sponge where you should replace it. Printing beyond the empty warning can damage the print head. The ink level indicator will only show full after a cart that gets the low ink or empty ink warning is replaced by another cart. Since most people refill before the reservoir becomes empty (keeps the sponge from loading up with dried ink and permits more refills) the ink level indicator never resets to full. Except for the low and empty warnings, the ink level indicator has no way to monitor the real ink levels in any of the Canon printers prior to the new chipped carts. It remains to be seen if the chipped carts are any more accurate!

 

[Grandad35]

Gwrentch03,

I'm glad that you were able to clean your old printhead - I suspect that partially blocked sponges and filters in your previous carts may have been the root cause of your initial clogged head (as it was for me).

Here is a post showing photos of the single sensor used to sense the presence of ink in every cart (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=3542#p3542). AFAIK, the presence of ink is only sensed as part of an initialization procedure that is run at the start of each print, so installing empty carts doesn't do anything unless you try to print with them - definitely not a recommended procedure. If you replace/refill a cart before the sensor detects that the ink chamber is empty, the level monitor will be incorrect. I never look at the ink levels on this report for this reason, as well as the fact that I don't find the predicted ink levels to be accurate even in the best of circumstances. As long as the sensor is working, it will properly detect an empty ink chamber, even if the ink level was wrong previously.

I don't know what inks you are using to refill, but some inks are more prone to clogging than others (in my case, PM was also the problem ink). This is why the hot water purge method was developed - to remove the residue that was clogging the carts. I also switched ink suppliers to one with ink from a known supplier at the same time, and have not had a similar problem since. As was previously reported, I have never had to discard a cartridge because of clogging (including Canon, Old Inkgrabber, G&G and Wired Beans), but be sure to pay attention to the section on tapping the sponges into place. I wouldn't try your old Canon carts until after they are purged and refilled to avoid problems with a shift in color and potential clogging.