Canon Pixma Pro 9500 MarkII Clogged

[martin0reg]

My son has a Canon with pigment black for text (BCI-3bk). He let it sit unused for a year and wondered why the black wouldn't print (surprisingly, the BCI-6 C/M/Y dye based inks all printed perfectly with just a cleaning cycle or two).

We pulled the carts and print head, then folded a paper towel 3 times (to make it 8 times thicker). With the towel in a container in the sink, we poured a little straight ammonia onto the towel (just enough to saturate the towel), then repeatedly pressed the print head straight down onto the towel until we could see ink push up from the inlet screens as we pressed down, then keep going about that long again. We fitted a syringe with a short piece of plastic tubing that slid over the inlet filter and pushed distilled water through each port on the print head to flush out the ammonia. We then used an empty syringe to push air through each port to blow any residual liquid from the head.

Every nozzle but one was opened up in a single cleaning.

Good method, you have to be careful not to push the water too hard from inlet port to the nozzles.

You can do the cleaning also on paper towels: put the printhead on the folded towels, fill up the chambers round the inlet ports to overflow the inlet ports with warm water / ammonia dilution. The paper towel should soak up the fluids, you have to refill and overflow the inlet ports whenever the dilution sinks beneath the inlet filter (the small silver screens). Do it at least several hours.

And regarding a single clogged nozzle:
I once had one irregular point in the pgk nozzle pattern. I did a quick-and-dirty cleaning: take out the pgk cartridge, put a drop of water/ammonia dilution on the pgk inlet port/filter, put the cart back in and do a pbk cleaning.
The irregular point in the nozzle test pattern had moved to another place. After repeating the cleaning, it had disappeared.
This is a method for the impatient. The single clogged nozzle came back and I had to do the extern cleaning

 

[The Hat]

pipes55
Its most unusual to get a clog on that type of printer, are you using OEM inks.

What I was referring to was the 9500 doesnt suffer from the usual head clogs
that dog their other printers when left unused without printing a single sheet.

The 9500 has an extra tab in maintenance called Ink Quality Maintenance
it is used to keep the ink and print head in good condition and always ready to print.

As far as I know no other Canon printer has this installed.
I have experience no head clogs with mine using OEM cartridges and Image Specialists inks..

 

[Grandad35]

Good story, GD. How did you know it was just one nozzle?

The nozzle check for the pigment black nozzles looks like a series of rectangular boxes, where every 32nd (or is it 16th?) nozzle (1,33,65....) is printed for 1/32 of the width, then nozzles 2,34,66.... are printed, and so on. With this pattern, it is easy to see the output of every nozzle.

 

[stratman]

Thank you for the explanation Grandad35. I wondered if you took out your trusty pocket electron microscope or something.

 

[Herman]

Today I encountered the same problem with my Pro9500 after not using it for 6 months. After cleaning and deep cleaning the problem remained, indicating that I had to renew the cartridges, ultimately all of them, but the problem still remained indicating still cloggs. I removed the printer head, just to look at it and put it back again after doing nothing. The problem was reduced, the print check for cloggs showed already improvement. So I took out th head again, just vigorously but carefully shaked it ... and replaced it, And suddenly all went well, I could align the head well, and everything works perfectly again. My conclusion was: just tak it out and shake or may be the advise of cleaning it with water is not too bad also! Good luck! Herman

 

[marceltho]

I do the same as Grandad35. I have unclogged MANY printheads from Canon printers bought on Kijiji and Craigslist, of which the carts were empty, and then people realized how expensive new carts were, so the bought a cheap Lexmark or so. ( and I bought their Canon for $ 10.00 )

I take the cover of a plastic butter-cup, fold kitchentowel 6 times, and poor some warm purge liquid, recipe from pharmacist with some extra real windex. Push the printhead softly up and down the wet towel in the cover, you can see while you are doing that, the purge liquid coming through where the cart outlet rests on the printhead. There is only 1 mm of liquid on the towel, and I repeat this several times with new warm liquid.

VERY effective, was able to unclog all printheads that were clogged.