ip4600 printhead problem?

[FryingSaucer]

Sorry, I included the wrong nozzlecheck printout in the previous post. It should have been this.

 

[ghwellsjr]

There's a good chance you can get your top set of magenta nozzles unclogged but the two sets below that appear not to have any nozzles working. Since the last test did not get any of them to work, there is a good chance that they have an electrical problem.

So now it is time to try to clean your print head out of your printer. Let me caution you that you need to be patient and resist the temptation to return your print head back to your printer. You need to wait two days with your print head sitting in a warm spot to make sure it is internally dry before putting it back in your printer when you're done with this process.

Take your print head and run warm, not hot, water over the ink inlets and over the nozzles. Do this until no more ink comes out of the print head. Then submerge the print head in a bowl of window cleaner for a day or so and repeat the water wash. Do the blotting process and see if you can detect any ink coming out of the two sets of magenta nozzles that haven't shown any ink so far. You will be amazed how much ink can come out of the print head. When you get to the point that you can tell that window cleaner or water is going into the magenta inlet port, you can give it a thorough drying with a paper towel and then set it aside for two days in a warm spot.

Unless you can get some printout from those other two sets of nozzles, the print head will have to be replaced. You are going to spend a lot of time on this (maybe weeks) and you might just want to go ahead and get another print head now, depending on how much your time is worth.

 

[FryingSaucer]

I've decided I've spent enough time trying to repair this ip4600. I really appreciate the help I've had from everyone here, and particularly ghwellsjr. This is a great web site.

Now I have to decide what to do next, and I've asked for suggestions in a new post.

 

[ghwellsjr]

As you mentioned earlier, you can continue to use the printer for greyscale printing on plain paper. If you select high quality, it will make decent black and white photos (at least if it works like the older Canon printers).

And remember, if you really like this printer, a new print head will most likely get it running again.

 

[FryingSaucer]

Alternatively, if I really want to learn more about inkjet technology, I could take it to pieces

 

[ghwellsjr]

Someday, you'll have a broken printer. That's the time to take it apart. Now you just have a broken print head. You could take it apart to learn something.

 

[DomtheMon]

Its a shame you didn't try the wash in water method. I have had several Canon's which I use every month (2 printers at any one time) to do a print run of 250 double sided full colour photo sheets. Last month the ip4500 and 4600 encountered problems, one with the magenta and the other with cyan. I was pulling my hair out after numerous cleaning cycles.

I took the plunge.... literally... with the ip4600 and did the under tap method and then dried it out for 2 days. When I returned it to the printer and put the same cartridges in it worked a treat, I was delighted.

I finished the job off on the ip4600 and repeated the process with the ip4500. The result was disappointing as there was still banding and poor printing on the one colour. I had finished the print job 3 weeks ago so left both printers on and just used the ip4600 for everyday stuff.

Yesterday, with trepidation, I did a test print on the ip4500..... and it was perfect!! I have since got stuck into this months print run and both printers are performing well.

I am thinking back and kicking myself as I chucked away several printers and printheads in the past after merely carrying out cleaning and deep cleaning and sometimes trying a bit of printhead cleaner without success, but wish I had tried the tap method now.

I have two new boxed sealed ip4500's I managed to find cheaply in a shop last year (I was so excited to find them, I wish I had bought more now though) but am so pleased I resisted the urge to just crac k one of these open and mothball the old one.

Incidentally I use the original cartridges and refill them many times. I use a plastic disposable glove and refill from the top of the clear tank with syringe, plugging the hole with rubber bung. I hold my finger (in plastic glove) over the outlet hole as I refill. I have refilled the cartridges about 6-7 times a month, must have refilled them over 100 times now without flushing. I simply refill after a limited number of passes (35 on ip4600 and 40 on ip4500) which ensures the ink never empties from the tank so I am always just topping up and never allowing air to get sucked into the sponge.

 

[FryingSaucer]

There's a good chance you can get your top set of magenta nozzles unclogged but the two sets below that appear not to have any nozzles working. Since the last test did not get any of them to work, there is a good chance that they have an electrical problem.

So now it is time to try to clean your print head out of your printer. Let me caution you that you need to be patient and resist the temptation to return your print head back to your printer. You need to wait two days with your print head sitting in a warm spot to make sure it is internally dry before putting it back in your printer when you're done with this process.

Take your print head and run warm, not hot, water over the ink inlets and over the nozzles. Do this until no more ink comes out of the print head. Then submerge the print head in a bowl of window cleaner for a day or so and repeat the water wash. Do the blotting process and see if you can detect any ink coming out of the two sets of magenta nozzles that haven't shown any ink so far. You will be amazed how much ink can come out of the print head. When you get to the point that you can tell that window cleaner or water is going into the magenta inlet port, you can give it a thorough drying with a paper towel and then set it aside for two days in a warm spot.

Unless you can get some printout from those other two sets of nozzles, the print head will have to be replaced. You are going to spend a lot of time on this (maybe weeks) and you might just want to go ahead and get another print head now, depending on how much your time is worth.

Eventually I attempted this procedure. The magenta nozzles appear to be OK now . The nozzle check was done with an empty yellow cartridge with some window cleaning fluid, and the other cartridges are still compatibles. It looks a great improvement to me, but what do the lines on the vertical bars and across the BK bar mean? These lines were not present before. I did one additional clean, which didn't make any difference.

I now need to decide whether to buy a complete set of OEM cartridges on the assumption that the print head is OK - I don't want to do this unless it's fairly certain I can get the printer working. Or should I first re-clean the print head again out of the printer (I thought all the nozzles appeared clean after the above procedure, so I'm not sure what this would achieve)?

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[ghwellsjr]

It looks like you cleared up the clogged magenta nozzles but now you have a clog in the black (BK) dye ink nozzles. I hope it is not an electrical problem because it looks quite regular. You can try cleaning with the procedure you followed in the previous post and hope for the best.

Even if you can't fix this problem, you can still use this printer for perfect color prints on plain paper since the black dye ink is only used on photo papers.

 

[FryingSaucer]

Even if you can't fix this problem, you can still use this printer for perfect color prints on plain paper since the black dye ink is only used on photo papers.

ghwellsjr, thanks for the quick response.

I don't intend to use this printer with photo paper. I will only use it for B&W text on plain paper and for some color printing, again on plain paper. From what you say, the printer should work perfectly well if used in this mode.

So I propose to declare the printer fixed for my purposes and buy a set of Canon cartridges which I will then plan on refilling using the German method.

Am I correct that if I never use photo paper, I can ignore the BK ink problem without any danger of compromising the future operation of the printer?

Also, what should I do about the BK cartridge? Should I replace the existing half full compatible cartridge with an OEM one? Even though I'm not using the BK cartridge directly, will cleaning cycles still deplete it? Will the continued use of a BK compatible cartridge with possibly sub-standard ink maybe cause more frequent cleaning of the printer than would otherwise be necessary? Following on from this line of thought, when I buy a set of ink refills, would it be best to include BK also?