ip4000 printer colour drop off

[on30trainman]

jflan,
The Hobbicolor UW8 inks are their latest Ultra Wide Gamut inks - that are mainly aimed at the newer Canon (chipped) printers. Their first inks were designated BCI-6 compatible I think. Those were the first inks I bought from Hobbicolors. I initially had some greenish tinge to my prints using the built in printer profiles in my printers - the profiles were for Canon ink/ Canon paper. I use Costco Kirkland paper - it worked OK with Canon OEM inks but had the greenish tinge with the first Hobbicolor inks. Actually went and bought Profile Prism and made profiles for my ink/paper combo, which worked great. Talked to Dave (Hobbicolors) about the newer UW8 inks and he told me they should work fine in my ip4000/ip6000D printers. Bought a set and have been very happy. Still make custom profiles for each paper/ink combo, but just using the supplied Canon profiles gives satisfactory results. The UW8 ink bottles say UW8-(C, M, Y, etc). You must have the BCI-6 compatible inks, especially if you ordered the inks and cartridges specifically for the ip3000. The UW8 ink sets come without cartridges, but Dave will sell the carts as separate items - just email him. I don't have any of the earlier bottles to know what they say. Hope this answers your question.

Steve W.

 

[jflan]

Thanks, Steve.
Maybe I'll try UW-8 next time round.

 

[avolanche]

I just started using Hobbicolors ink after several years with Abacus cartridges.The ink is the CLI-8(UW-8) version,which Hobbicolors says is backward compatible with the Canon BCi-6 inks(my printer is an MP780-same head as ip4000).There is no question that the ink is more colorful than the Abacus ink.My prints show far more color saturation.I think it is probably better than canon OEM BCI-6 ink in that respect.
For long-term use,I have no idea.And I'm refilling CLI-8 empty OEM cartridges.The Hobbicolor cartridges are nice,but not as "exotic" in construction as the OEM's.

 

[batchie123]

hi over the last couple of days i have soaked, cleaned and even purchased cleaning cartridges to try and cure my original problem with the print head not printing grey scale colours. trigger mentioned that cyan's giving me this problem which it is. i am still having issues with slight banding in cyan when printing test patterns and purging using the templates i have found on this wonderful website.
I believe that i might have let the cyan cartridge run out during printing in the past. the level monitor on my printer stopped working since i've used third party inks. would this have damaged my print head and would it be advisable to go for a new printhead? also could anybody point me in the direction of a diagram of how to remove and clean my ip4000 waste sponge/tray as the amount of cleaning i've done so far must have surely topped it up to near full point?
many thanks batchie

 

[Trigger 37]

batchie 123,... I think you missed the point of my post. I don't think your problem is 100% in cleaning of the printhead, because it could be that you just have dried up ink cartridges. I would first try some new ink cartridges and do a deep cleaning cycle with them. If you are printing all of the bands in the nozzle check, then there is no way that vendor ink could have damaged your printhead. It may be clogged or you may have bad ink flow from one or more of your ink cartridges.

Did you buy head cleaning solution or cleaning cartridges? If you bought the solution, did you make your own cleaning carts? If you bought cleaning carts, do they have any color in them at all or are they just blue cleaning fluid? The problem with this is that when you do a cleaning, you don't know if you've got it clean.

What I do is make my own cleaning carts with 95% cleaning solution and 5% color dye ink. Then I can print out a half page of one color at a time, like pure Cyan, or Magenta, or Yellow, or Black. After half a page of solid color, I print the nozzle check. If you use a 5x or 10x magnifier you can see each and every nozzle that is printing or not printing. This tells you if you have to do more cleaning.

At any point, I don't think you need a new printhead just because you are getting some banding in Cyan. To check this real close, go into Service Mode and print the Service Test pattern and check each color very close, especially the Photo Cyan nozzles and the photo magenta nozzles.

 

[batchie123]

thanks trigger i have never filled my own carts yet and have always bought pre-filled. the cleaning carts were coloured and yes i did all of the above. by the end, all the colours, bar cyan, were perfect. i did the deep cleans and used the purged templates to print whole sheets with the five cleaning carts and left the cleaning carts for 12 hours in the print head. then did another round of cleans and there was still banding from the cyan and the 2 orange boxes as originally stated. it seems that i have gone as far as i can go with cleaning and yes i have tried 3 brand new cyan carts just to make sure it wasn't the one playing up.
i have ordered a new print head on ebay for 30 english pounds and some hobbicolor ink and am going to try filling my own but if there is something else i could try to get my other print head working, i'm willing to try....anything

 

[Trigger 37]

batchie 123,... This is very strange. If you did all the cleaning and have new ink carts and your nozzle check was perfect, I don't think there should ever be any banding. It may be something all together different. The nozzle test is each and every nozzle firing for a specific period of time. If each one is working as you said, and you looked close at them with a 10x magnifier, then there is something else wrong,... not the printhead.

For example, if you see banding, then you need to do a printhead alignment. This is the action of printing timing when it is printing moving right to left and then on the back movement, printing again in the correct spot. If there is any ink or grease on the Timing strip this can screw up the two print directions. Also, I said to print out the Service Test print in Service Mode and look at all the color bars for Cyan and Magenta and the Photo Cyan and Photo Magenta. These printers have a completely separate row of nozzles for regular ink drops and for micro drops. That is how they produce the colors of Photo Cyan and Photo Magenta. These are very faint bars since they are printed with micro drops of ink. You need to look at them very close.

You could also get some kind of banding if there is a small piece of paper or even fibers from paper below the carriage that is dragging over the paper will the ink is wet. However this would show up when you did a nozzle test.

I think it would help all of us if you could scan you latest nozzle test pattern and load it to this web site and add it to one of your notes. Then we could see what you are describing. Again, something else is going on if you can see that the nozzle test and all the crosshatch bars are printing correctly and you still get banding. It has to be alignment.

 

[Tin Ho]

if you see banding, then you need to do a printhead alignment.

Not so. Banding is usually a result of a clog in the print head. Alignment has nothing to do with banding. If you keep going with a banding you will eventually destroy the print head.

 

[batchie123]

pictures of my print test page and cyan

 

[Trigger 37]

batchie 123,... First off I think your Cyan test is coming out more Green than Cyan. This tells me you're getting some yellow mixed in there. Where did you get your color test? I suggest you search on the internet for a "Purge File" which should have all 6 colors in it. Then take any picture editor like Microsoft Photo editor and open the file and "Crop" the image down so you only have the Cyan color and save it as a jpg file or tiff file. Then print the image from inside the picture editor and print it as large as you would like.

Secondly,.. I don't see any banding in your image,.. and if it is there it is not very visible. Lastly, in looking at your nozzle check pattern, the tiny little bars around the "6C", and the "6M" character are supposed to be "Gray". They are more magenta than anything else. If you have a "Subtractive Color Wheel", if you get Magenta when you should have gray, this means your Cyan and Yellow are both week. The solid bars of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow look good because they are nothing but one set of nozzles firing,... there is no mixture of colors. The little bars should be gray which is made up of equal parts of Cyan, Magenta, and yellow, but only in a very lite or small microdrops of ink. So if it looks magenta, it is not getting enough Cyan and Yellow ink dots mixed in.

All in all I think your nozzle test is not that bad,.. I have had much worse and clean it up with new ink carts and several cleaning cycles. On your original post you said you cleaned and cleaned and soaked and soaked. Try something for me. Put the printhead in your garage sink such that the water stream hits each filter screen one at a time and let the water run for 10 minutes at the hottest temp. After that, turn the printhead over and hold it under the water such that the stream hits each pattern of nozzles for several minutes. You won't be able to use the max hot water and still hold it but you can set it at medium hot. Turn the printhead back over quickly and look at the screens. Each screen should be wet with ink which demonstrates there is still ink in the printhead and it is still being dissolved. Repeat this process as many times as necessary until you don't see any color ink being washed out. Then set the printhead on a dish with 1/4" of water or Windex and let it soak over night. Repeat the high pressure stream the next morning, then dry the printhead complelely with an air compressor and install it in the printer and do a couple of deep cleaning cycles. Print your nozzle test again and see if you get "Gray" bars instead of magenta ones. If you are still getting things you call "Banding" please describe them for me. I want someone to explain to me how anyone can get banding if they can see that each and every print nozzle is firing for the correct duration, the correct amount, and at the correct time. I don't believe it.

Go into Service Mode and print the Service Test pattern and examine the pattern that every nozzle in the printhead is making. This will tell you a lot. To me, Banding is overlapping printing where some areas get double the ink and to me this is alignment. If a printhead is clogged, you don't get any ink from a nozzle and this is "Streaks", not banding.

If someone has a more educated definition of banding, let us know, as we are all learning about these printers, everyday.