i960 print head dead?

[duecekd]

I never really thought about my printer much, until it QUIT Working! I guess my "Your out of warranty" chip must have kicked in!!

I have a Canon i960 that I use OA100 ink in from Print Pal. I have printed pics b4, and they came out great as far as I was concerned, but the printer mainly gets used for printing color invoices and B&W docs for the most part for my business.

The problem started when the PM quit printing, and would'nt show up on a test page. That's how I found this wonerful site, and started reading. I found several threads w/similar problems, so I started the trouble shooting process. I first put in a new cart, no good. I removed print head and set on warm tissue, no PM trace. Now I'm getting somewhere. I set the head in 50/50 solution of alcohol and warm water, then rinsed thoroughly in warm water to rinse, and gently blew dry with air. I put it all back together, and all looked OK until I decided to run an alignment page. During the process the PC told me there was an error, and the power lite started flashing with a 5 code, which according to the manual, was a print head error. I reset as instructed and tried again, same thing.

I then decided it may still be clogged, so I rigged up a syringe setup, and pumped warm/hot water thru each tube several times and got water thru each row on the head in equal amounts. Again, put it all back and same 5 flash error. Took head out 1 more time and set on wet towel, and had 6 nice colored lines on footprint. When I pushed down gently, each tube bubbled with ink where the carts go. So in my mind, the head is no longer clogged, but put in unit, my favorite 5 flash error was back.

Now I realize the print head must be defective and will probably need to be replaced,(which I will probably do, because this has been a good printer, and by reading, most of you all like it too)!

I guess what it boils down to is:

Is there anything else for me to check or do to resurrect this head?

Does anyone have a cheap place to get a new one?

Is there a new printer that is going to be as good as this one, since a new head is going to be 1/2 or more of what I paid in the 1st place?

Am I taking a chance on buying a new head and having the same problem immediately, and be out the cost of the head, and need to buy a new printer to boot?

Any thoughts on this subject will be greatly appreciated. I need to act right away cause I CAN'T BILL ANYBODY! Thanks-KD

 

[Tin Ho]

Soaking the print head aggressively probably has caused damage to the electronics on the PCB in the back of the print head assembly. Look from the front side of the print head you will see some rectangular openings. Through some of them near the center you can see the back side of the PCB behind the print head assembly. You may find some of your soaking fluid trapped in there still. It may be causing the electronics to fail the initial selftest during the power up. Try to hold the print head on your hand and swing your arm to throw the fluid out from there. Use a blower to blow dry it. You may be able to revover it.

 

[ghwellsjr]

The place to get printheads is:

http://www.inkcessories.com

Sometimes they offer them on eBay for a slightly lower price.

 

[duecekd]

Thank you guys for responding. Tin Ho, I'll check that out right away, and let you know the outcome.

 

[duecekd]

OK, here is the latest in my attempts. I removed head and checked it out for residual water on circuit board, and gently blew it out through the slots Tin Ho suggested. I did not notice any water, as I think it might have dried out over nite. I put the head back, and put in all new carts. It accepted this, as the printer is no longer flashing the error code. I tried a nozzle check, and only get yellow and mag. I tried a head alignment, and got faint pink rows. Th upper left column is square but dotted, the upper right column has more solid squares in the middle, and the lower column looks identical to the upper left. I tried a regular cleaning, twice, but no change. Also, if I go to the monitor status, it shows PC, yellow, and PM as full, and the rest are at varying levels, but they should all show as full. Any more thoughts before I order the new head?

 

[Tin Ho]

Wow, that's some progress there. At least it is back to a state you can work on it again. Don't worry about the ink levels shown on the computer screen. They are all out of sync with the actual levels in the cartridges. Don't do any more alignment if not all colors are in good printing order. The problem you are in now is how to get all colors going again. Have you tried to do a cleaning cycle before a nozzle check? Just do light cleaning cycle to get ink sucked into the print head. If the nozzle check still shows some missing colors or banding on some colors you are kind of back to where you started. This time you should make a cleaning cartridge filled with Windex instead of soaking the print head. This is much safer for the print head. If you have a set of empty cartridges you can make a set of cleaning cartridges. Using cleaning cartridge is really the safest and very effective too.