FLUSHING....WHY?

[CakeHole]

I think it would probably be best if he could photo or video his exact issue at this point as there appears to be more than one problem happening here. I can not understand still why he can not get any ink at all in the ink reservoir, the only thing i think would cause that is a needle too short to reach it when using the German method.

 

[martin0reg]

Have you tried a simple forced breath of air through the top vent of these troublesome cartridges? This should force air through the sponges and out the ink exit port, possibly breaking up recalcitrant 'air voids'.

I have tried that with another cart, it did help once but not every time, will try it with the new flushed bci's too

@CakeHole: mostly there will be a little ink in the reservoir before I have to stop because the sponge side will overflow.
When ALL ink goes straight to the sponge side (happens only with few carts) this is because of
(1) air blocking in the sponge side and therefore over-pressure in the reservoir (while injecting ink "german" i.e. through the sponge side)
(2) strong sucking of both sponges (although the upper sponge should NOT be totally saturated)
AND (3): you can push the needle only 2-3mm into the reservoire beause of the prism, which is much nearer to the passage in BCI's than in CLI's (see the picture of the carts from PeterBJ above)...so with one or two carts this extreme case happened: the ink flows along the tip of the needle straigth back to the passage into the sponge..there was no chance to avoid this ..

..but (1) and (2) are the main problems!

PS: a possible reason for some carts making problems some not (although all flushed) may be the manufacturing process of the sponges...probably they are cut out of big pieces...and the micro structure of the fiber / capillary action may change slightly in different pieces and different cuts...but that's only speculation..

 

[MP640]

The videos take HOURS to load.
Here are the first ones loaded. More and more interesting ones will follow. These first two are the fundamentals of what to know.

http://www.precisioncolors.com/Maintenance_Canon.html

Hi Mikling, in the second video, you use your thumb to block the air vent to control the amount of ink that is sucked into the sponge.

Is there a particular reason that you do not saturate the sponges? What I mean is not block the air vent but keep injecting ink in the ink reservoir until no more is sucked into the sponge area?

The reason I'm asking is that I have Canon 521 cartridges that have an opaque sponge area so I cannot see the sponges.

As I cannot see the sponge and foam building up, at every refill I let the cartridge drip ink. When the interval between consecutive drops is more than like three quarters of a second I flush the cartridge.

You now got me curious about whether or not to saturate the sponge...

 

[CakeHole]

It really would be handy if you could video yourself having these problems. Though obviously i realise that may not be possible. A flushed cart should not have the ink clog/air issues. and a flushed cart with a sponge overly or underly happy to take ink can normally be solved just by applying a small amount of ink to the sponge using the german method half way through the filling.

I do not want to say it is just technique which is why i think there may be more than one thing going on here, its hard to say without seeing in person, perhaps top filing will as suggested be better for you, though if the ink/air issues are due to clogged/old ink in the sponge you will still probably have to flush first.

 

[martin0reg]

Finally a german refill of flushed BCI's was getting better..

- I flushed with destilled water and pharmacist's solution only (before I used different glass cleaners..perhaps no good regarding foam building..)
- Thanks to mikling's instructions for german refilling..
http://www.precisioncolors.com/Canon german Method.pdf
..I decided for the first time to seal the air vent before injecting ink. Never had thought of this as I believed the vent has to stay open for air exchange - but it seems to work with sealed air vent also, probably better.
- I was injecting very slowly with the reservoir down, though some ink was sucked into the sponge while the drops were flowing slowly into the reservoir, the ink was much less sucked into the upper sponge. Nice and solid saturation of the lower sponge, no ink up to the vent and

I am not sure what was more important: the flushing with destilled water / conditioner only or the sealing of the air vent ...

I will flush and refill other BCI's later (awaiting a printhead for my old ip4000) and then report if this was really the solution..

 

[CakeHole]

More than likely the sponge was just clogged up with old dried ink and air as milkings vids point out. You should not have that issue if you refill when the printer throws its first warning about low ink at you or top up before it gets to that stage. Running the printer till i tells you it is OUT of ink is normally what causes the issue, even more so if you then remove the cart and leave it to sit around for a considerable time before refilling it.

A sponge can not absorb properly if its already full of old dried ink crud and air pockets.

 

[mikling]

If some have not realized, for the cartridges with integrated printheads, it is gospel that you refill these before the sponge empties to have a higher success rate of refilling these.

It is also well known that after a few refills of these integrated printhead cartridges that they somehow "lose" capacity.

Since these cartridges do not have "reservoirs" it is now plainly obvious I think why the above is happening to these type of cartridges. Air pockets in the sponge just like I showed in the video. When I refilled these sponge type cartridges like HP, in a vacuum chamber I often got a lot of foaming at the top as the vacuum was being set up in the chamber. This is proof of small air voids being created in the sponge as it was being emptied.

Also when refilling these, we must always saturate the sponge from the bottom up very very slowly.

Surprising when I think back about it and connect the dots....the reservoir tank type cartridges like the CLI-8 are more refillable, YES; but not immune to the same problems as the integrated printhead cartridges.

And similarly, is the known limited printhead life of these integrated printhead type cartridges the victim of ink starvation or is it because the printhead is made more flimsily. I don't know but I am now leaning towards starvation issues now that light has been shed on the issue of reduced sponge capacity.

Finally, remanufacturers have to "flush" the sponges of these integrated head cartridges if they want them to regain the capacity. The same is required for the CLI-8 types as well.

 

[PeterBJ]

If some have not realized, for the cartridges with integrated printheads, it is gospel that you refill these before the sponge empties to have a higher success rate of refilling these.

It is also well known that after a few refills of these integrated printhead cartridges that they somehow "lose" capacity....

Druckerchannel.de made some measurements in an instruction for refilling the Canon combined cartridges. Especially the pigment black cartridge lost capacity quickly. Link here, or a Google translation here. In the translation read "print heads" instead of "Drucköpfe". The missing translation is caused by a typo, a missing "k".

I thought that the problems encountered by druckerchannel.de was caused by not covering the vent maze by the label or a piece of tape, so evaporation caused the ink to dry in the sponge. But air causing the problems now sounds very plausible to me.

The air problems also makes the advice to refill the Canon single ink tanks at the low ink warning instead of waiting until the cartridge is declared empty a very good one IMO.

 

[The Hat]

If you’re refilling your cartridges you save nothing by waiting till the cartridge is declared empty or by over filling them, some say you have to refill less often using this method, but do you really ?

It doesn’t take very long to run into ink flow problems when your cartridges are void (Empty) of all ink before attempting to refill them, then the once taught saving is all wasted by unnecessary head cleaning and purging of the effected cartridges, usually because of ink starvation.

So if your refill, then the best practice is to replace the cartridge at low ink, don’t wait, and if you’re really smart like uncle @jtoolman you’ll replace all the carts at the same time, which in turn saves even more time and ink..

 

[martin0reg]

The advice of refilling low carts instead of empty is important - as I have learned from mikling's videos that printing to empty might build up foam..

..but this actuallly would have not solved my special problem as I wanted to reanimate an old ip4000 and I only have empty BCI's not used for quite a while. Some were flushed some not...trouble began as nearly all of these would not take ink into the reservoir - while the sponge side would easily overflow (see my postings from #31 to #53).

For now I think if you want to flush and then refill an empty BCI cartridge you have to take care of the following (beside other well known points)
- flush without any cleaning solutions which are prone to foam building .. use only water, at least for the last flush use distilled water (for cleaning or conditioning you might try pharmacist's solution)
- if refilling "german": seal the air vent - to avoid sucking the ink too fast and too much into the upper sponge. (what might be the most important advice as I never heard of it before...)
- inject very slowly and be aware of the sponge side sucking too fast and/or too much...in this case you can try blowing into the vent to get rid of faom in the sponge. If nothing helps start again with flushing...