Canon printers and CIS kits - Enough!

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Thanks very much for your answers.

You answered a detail that has puzzled me, concering the air balance reset for this dual-row form of external tanks. I wonder if any other seller has ever furnished the correct information. There are several styles of air balance tanks being sold but I have not seen many sellers who know just what they are selling and how they should be set up. Obviously the tank designers knew exactly what they were doing and why. The designers and the sellers seem rather disconnected.

That's one of the reasons I'd rather use Sam... I'd say the percentage of sellers who have any understanding of the basic physics involved, much less a detailed knowledge is about 5% if that. Sam definitely falls into the high end of the spectrum with a detailed understanding although I suspect he doesn't communicate those details because most folks would be left looking a mite blank (My wife knows all about that! )

My experiments with ink elevations have shown that it is not highly critical on my iP4200's, but keeping it about 1/2 inch below the printhead bottom performs well. With the ink level about 1/2 inch above the printhead bottom, the risk of ink leakage and cross contamination is very real.

Yeah... I've not had too many problems. Having looked a bit longer at things though I've realised that each ink has different properties including surface tension, etc... all of which obviously contribute.

The first issue that seems to show up with the ink level more than 1/2 inch below the printhead bottom is that my pigment black will fail a nozzle check when it has been idle for a few days. The nozzle check will have random missing lines. It seems always successful to do a heavy cleaning cycle. I don't think this has anything to do with clogging. I believe that there might be a tiny air leak, and the head loses its "prime" just enough to need the ink input of the heavy cleaning. This does not happen with the ink level a bit higher. I have never observed the pigment black ink back up in the tube. Perhaps I would see that if I waited enough days.

Interestingly enough I opted to sidestep the new reservoirs for the pigment black. Instead I use a standard 250ml container with dip tube to feed that ink. Black seems to be the most resilient to higher pressure so I abuse that.

 

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My only criticism of the rihac tank is that to reset the airchamber ink level so that you can precisely control the ink pressure is cumbersome as the tanks are not in parallel and thus the tipping technique describe in the last part of

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2591

can't be used. Rihac advises a more cumbersome technique of withdrawing ink from the airchamber side to reset the level. It is difficult to see the level of ink in the centre airchamber compartment becasue of the radial arrangement of the bicompartment tanks. Fortunately once the the ink level is set then it shouldn't change if the proper tank refill procedure is used. But I have real trouble knowing precisely where the true ink level is in the tanks so as to accurately position the external tanks.

canonfodder is right it is absolutley imperative to work out the correct height of the tanks for each individual model. Just sitting it on the desk is not adequate.

Another Rihac feature is that they advocate non pigment black ink for the CISS where OEM is pigment.

 

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I must admit I hadn't considered that aspect of things...

 

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Having had a chance to realise the whole pressure balance thing is a whole lot simpler than I'd first imagined it to be
(ref: feel free to laugh)
... I'm now understanding the whole issue of Canon printers considerably better than before...

I need to go away and think about stuff a bit more now but it seems that the whole springs and pulleys system that I think pharmacist put together at one point was overly dramatic as a simple enough solution is to create something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mariotte_bottle.svg

Anyhoo... I'm going to reconsider a few ideas I've had for a while and start afresh soon.