Trigger 37
Printer Guru
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- Dec 23, 2006
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I've just finished servicing 5 different Canon printers. A i550, i850,i860, Ip5000, and an MP730. All of them are back in excellent condition. Each time after fixing a unit, I would clean it, clean the ink pads, clean the Purge unit, and then test it all as much as I could while I had it disassembled. Each time I did a power ON, the unit would go through a complete purge cycle and dump ink out on my work space. I soon learned to set that section of the main Carriage assembly on paper towels to catch the ink. I calculate that each purge cycle dumped about 3/4 of a teaspoon. In reading the Service Manuals it lists all the amount of ink that are purged in the many different types of cleaning cycles and when it decides to clean. Most are based on time, i.e., how many hours since the last cleaning. Some are after either or both of replacing a printhead or ink cart.
The Manual cleaning dumps 0.14 ml of blk and 0.5 ml of each color (that seems like a lot). The Deep cleaning dumps 1.58 ml Black and 1.0 ml of each color. If you think about it, most of the ink carts only hold 14 ml of ink. The manual does not say one word about how much ink is dumped at each power on cycle. It also counts both black and color dots, and after some unspecified amount does a dump equal to manual cleaning.
Now in all of these printers I worked on, not one was because of a "Waste Ink Error" condition. All of them had ink pads that were saturated directly below the Purge unit, but most of the time very little ink had "Wicked" into the other pads. They were all white and new on the left side.
Here are the key questions for this post. Is it better to leave the power ON all the time or turn it On and Off each day. It seems to me that it is best to leave the power on as I believe this will minimize the cleaning cycles. Also, being a Computer Engineer and working in Design and Development for 33 years, I know the failure rate of electronic components is much higher due to power ON/Off cycles. The most destructive thing that can be done to a silicon IC, is to power it on/off. Each cycle heats up the chip and then it cools as the power goes off. The causes expansion and contraction of all the connections and they eventually fracture and become open. When the life of Integrated Circuits is specified by Designers, it is stated in the total number of power ON/Off cycles. This is not to say that if you leave the power on forever that the chip will not fail. Each time a chip does what it has to do, the circuits inside are turned on and off millions of times. These are very small changes in power,...but they are changes, and they add up,... but no where near as much as the basic substrate heating and cooling.
The Canon cleaning cycles have a very strange working on the cleaning cycles that are based on time. For example, for Timing cleaning cycle #1, is says, "If 12 to 60 hours has elapsed since the previous black cleaning till the start of the next printing". So this says, if you've had your printer turned off for 2 days and then you turn it on and execute a print, it will do a cleaning first and will use 0.14ml of black and 0.5 ml of each color. There are 10 timing periods that measure the time from the last cleaning up until as much as one year (8,640 hours)
Last major question,.. Does any one think that an External Waste ink CUP would work for Canon printers. In all the Canon printers I have repaired. all of the Purge units were 98% identical. There is a purge tube out of the bottom for black and another one for all colors. The purge unit has a valve inside that cycles from sucking ink out of the black cap and then over to the color cap. To make an effective external waste ink cup, these two tubes would have to either run to an external cup and be combined into one tube and run out the back. The problem is these current tubes exit out of the bottom of the Purge unit which is within 1/4 inch of the bottom of the printer. It would be very difficult to get this out the back of a printer without elevating the tubes. This could cause a lot of clogs as when I have seen the purge unit work, the ink comes out more like a dog drooling than being pumped.
So the question is, has anyone ever made an external waste ink cup for a Canon printer?
The Manual cleaning dumps 0.14 ml of blk and 0.5 ml of each color (that seems like a lot). The Deep cleaning dumps 1.58 ml Black and 1.0 ml of each color. If you think about it, most of the ink carts only hold 14 ml of ink. The manual does not say one word about how much ink is dumped at each power on cycle. It also counts both black and color dots, and after some unspecified amount does a dump equal to manual cleaning.
Now in all of these printers I worked on, not one was because of a "Waste Ink Error" condition. All of them had ink pads that were saturated directly below the Purge unit, but most of the time very little ink had "Wicked" into the other pads. They were all white and new on the left side.
Here are the key questions for this post. Is it better to leave the power ON all the time or turn it On and Off each day. It seems to me that it is best to leave the power on as I believe this will minimize the cleaning cycles. Also, being a Computer Engineer and working in Design and Development for 33 years, I know the failure rate of electronic components is much higher due to power ON/Off cycles. The most destructive thing that can be done to a silicon IC, is to power it on/off. Each cycle heats up the chip and then it cools as the power goes off. The causes expansion and contraction of all the connections and they eventually fracture and become open. When the life of Integrated Circuits is specified by Designers, it is stated in the total number of power ON/Off cycles. This is not to say that if you leave the power on forever that the chip will not fail. Each time a chip does what it has to do, the circuits inside are turned on and off millions of times. These are very small changes in power,...but they are changes, and they add up,... but no where near as much as the basic substrate heating and cooling.
The Canon cleaning cycles have a very strange working on the cleaning cycles that are based on time. For example, for Timing cleaning cycle #1, is says, "If 12 to 60 hours has elapsed since the previous black cleaning till the start of the next printing". So this says, if you've had your printer turned off for 2 days and then you turn it on and execute a print, it will do a cleaning first and will use 0.14ml of black and 0.5 ml of each color. There are 10 timing periods that measure the time from the last cleaning up until as much as one year (8,640 hours)
Last major question,.. Does any one think that an External Waste ink CUP would work for Canon printers. In all the Canon printers I have repaired. all of the Purge units were 98% identical. There is a purge tube out of the bottom for black and another one for all colors. The purge unit has a valve inside that cycles from sucking ink out of the black cap and then over to the color cap. To make an effective external waste ink cup, these two tubes would have to either run to an external cup and be combined into one tube and run out the back. The problem is these current tubes exit out of the bottom of the Purge unit which is within 1/4 inch of the bottom of the printer. It would be very difficult to get this out the back of a printer without elevating the tubes. This could cause a lot of clogs as when I have seen the purge unit work, the ink comes out more like a dog drooling than being pumped.
So the question is, has anyone ever made an external waste ink cup for a Canon printer?