Is the printhead the most failed part on these printers?

[wilko]

My worst experience of a failed printhead was when, one day, I turned on my MP610 and found that my printhead had failed. The printer and PH were nearly new (I'd printed about a 100 pages) but I hadn't used the printer for a while. No reason for the failure unless it was a kind of power surge. Foolishly I tried it with another spare old printhead and I lost that one too.

Other printhead failures have happened gradually, invariably after suffering a major blockage. I've managed to clear the blockages but they seem to occur again after a while. At the moment everything is good and apart from the MP610 experience and I've managed to refill many many times before a failure.

All my printers are at the low/medium end of the market so can't speak for the pro versions. Hopefully these machines have more robust printheads.

I suppose we have to take into account the relatively low cost of mainstream Canon printers and the superb printing they give and the generally low cost of non OEM carts and refilling, in many cases
However, even though a failed printhead can be expected, I still feel a sense of shock and loss when one goes.

Against that, it would seem we should expect higher printhead failures than Epson for example.

Currys/PC World are selling the IP7250 for £49.95 and the MG5650 for £59.95. Where can you get an equivelant Epson or Brother at this cost? At these prices you would just throw the printer away if the printhead goes

I'm holding onto my Canons but I've now picked up a Brother printer and it will be interesting to compare them over time.

 

[martin0reg]

..
The much older print head had never gotten a fatal error message so in effect it was ok to reuse it in the same printer, because I knew it wouldn’t cause any damage to the logic board.

The effect was that it cleared the error message and reset the EPROM chip again, like inserting a new print head would have done, I also did the same trick on one of my 9500's.
...

The real problem is that you don't know wether the printer board is damaged by a damaged head or not - until it burns another printhead. This happened to me with pixma's from ebay, rarely used like new, "only the print head maybe dry"... after some cleaning with no success, you finally will try another (used or new) head. Which may literally "vaporize" with a quiet fizzle (the sound I won't forget..)
I'm no electrician but this seems to be a short circuit. And I think this is not only written in the eeprom, it's damaged hardware, first on the printhead, second on the board, and third etc... on every other head in contact. Why should Canon Service Center in this case change also the board with a new head - if this error could be "resetted" ..??

My explanation is that your error, caused by mechanical malfunction not by a electrical damage of the head, simply did not affect the hardware. i.e. the printer board.

If you check your eeprom print (service mode) you can read in the second line, what is called "printed item 6. Operator call/service call error record ..."
I have two recorded errors on all eeprom prints of my canons (ER 0 ER 1), so I think this use to show the latest two errors.

http://www.druckerchannel.de/cache_bilder/std/fs_bild_34318_1_la8e57.jpg
Here somebody got "ER(ER0=1403", temperature issue, no short circit, he could not repair the printhead, but the printer board remained functioning:
http://www.druckerchannel.de/forum.php?seite=beitrag&ID=287450&s=2