Is there any shimmer of hope about the excessive cleaning problem?

ludens

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Hi all,
has anybody found any way to stop this irritating and stupid endlessly repeated cleaning done by Canon printers?

My iX6510 is now four years old. In this time I have printed barely 1142 sheets with it. 29 were photos, most of them in postcard size. The rest was text, almost all of it black. But I have gone through 12 to 14 refills of each cartridge, and I'm sick and tired of that. It's not that I wouldn't want to print more, but since this stupid thing takes about an hour of my time every single time I want to print something, I end up using my 20 year old HP printer instead, despite the fact that it has a lower print quality and of course no color.

My iX6510 will repeatedly and extendedly clean every time I switch it on, even if there was no power interruption, and if I last printed just a day or two ago. It will also clean every time I switch it off, every time I start a print job, also a while after any print job finishes, and very often it will clean between pages of one job. It will very often clean and then clean again, without having printed anything nor having been switched off. It sucks dry all tanks roughly at the same rate, even if I print just black text, because at least 95% of the ink gets used in cleaning and not in printing.

More details: I'm using non-original tanks with autoreset chips, but I remember that the original tanks that came with the printer were empty very soon, because it would also clean all the time when using them. I don't remember with certainty whether or not the cleaning frequency increased when switching to non-original tanks. But I do remember for certain that it cleaned unreasonably often with the original tanks, and sucked them dry very fast.

Some threads say that autoreset chips register as a new ink tank every time the printer starts. This is obviously not correct, as the EEPROM in my printer registers between 7 and 12 tank changes per color, but 239 power cycles. It seems that the printer registers tank changes only when I actually change a tank (I have two sets), and not when I refill and reinstall the same tank, let alone on each power-up.

One time I disabled ink monitoring: When the original cyan tank was reported empty, after printing just black text... I had nothing at hand to refill or replace it at that time, because I never expected them to be drained so fast. Since then ink monitoring has always been on, but that one event of shutting it off for that one tank is recorded in the EEPROM. Does that mean that my printer will forever waste additional ink, because one time I switched off monitoring? Not that it wasted much less when new, though...

The printer is almost unuseable due to this problem. It takes an extreme amount of patience to get anything printed at all, with all that waiting while it throws away ink, and then refilling, then again watching how it throws away the new load.

Needless to say, buying original ink is totally out of the question, with this amount of wasting going on!

The print quality is fine, though... It's just a pity that with this problem it gets to print so little. Finally I ended up using it only when I absolutely need color, or large sheets. The old HP-520, which works fine without any cleaning at all, prints some 1000 sheets a year, and needs barely one refill every second year, of its single cartridge...

Out of frustration, I set up this web page, which contains some more details:

http//:ludens.cl/philo/dontbuycanonprinters.html

I'm very tempted to defeat the vacuum pump. That would save a lot of ink, and thus a lot of work and time refilling tanks. But of course it wouldn't save the time the printer wastes cleaning, and it would rule out ALL cleaning, even manually initiated. That doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Any good advice is welcome. Except "buy original ink tanks and put up with the cost", which I don't consider good advice!
 

palombian

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I own the IX6550 (the European model) but I reset and refill the original (525/526) cartridges.
The cleaning behaviour doesn't seem excessive to me, nor the ink consumption.

Even with original ink tanks these printers have the reputation to consume a lot.
The ink tanks have a total capacity of 9 ml, and since only 5 ml is in the ink reservoir, you already receive a warning to prepare a new tank just over half way.

I have 5 comparable Canon dye printers in use in my family, every printer has a set of refilled carts at hand, so this is no concern.
Top quality refill ink costs 1/10 of the original.
The ink consumption is needed to preserve the print head, fiddling with it (if possible wich I doubt) will cost much more.

Never used autoreset chips so I can't compare.
Don't know if there is a resetter for the South America region's chips.

To conclude:

- why would you campaign against the use of Canon printers when you already switched to refilling ? (the printers are fine, only you are a cheapskate)
- accept the disadvantages of refilling, they are compensated by the lower running costs
- don't get agitated by the humming and wiggling of your printer, live with it, refill, print and be happy
- read an article or two on this forum if you can't fall asleep, there is a lot of wisdom to be found
 

The Hat

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Hi Manfred

There are several thing you can do to stop the excessive waste of your inks, and reading your very long post it is clear that you’re at your wits end with this carry on and you’re looking for some reasonable answers.

Using ARC chips will and does cause more cleaning cycles so you could try leaving your printer switched on 24/7 even when you’re not using it, also change and refill all of the cartridges at the same time, to insure continuality of ink supply.

If at any time you disable the ink monitoring, that action will cause huge amounts of ink to be wasted, you cannot defeat or get round this issue, so try and learn how to lessen the amount of times it happens, brake their rules and they will punish you, that is simply how a Canon printer works.

The use of OEM cartridges in connection with a resetter and a good refilling procedure will help to reduce the amount of ink you are wasting down to normal levels, simply because the printer can’t tell the difference between a chip that has been reset and a new one, but it always can when you use ARC chips.


This is probably not what you wanted to hear but until you learn how to work with your printer instead of trying to beat the chip system you will continue to suffer, no one to date has ever defeated the cartridge chip yet, except the CHIP RESETTER, so that’s the best answer to your problem.
 

PeterBJ

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For a Canon printer of the PGI-5/CLI-8 generation, leaving the printer constantly connected to the mains and only turning the printer on and off using its on/off button reduces print head cleaning at power on and off very much. This also extends the life of the ink absorbers.

I don't know if this also applies to the PGI-x25/CLI-x26 generation of printers, but I think so.
 

palombian

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When ink monitor is turned off for a particular cartridge, it is grey on the status screen.
Once you place a new OEM or resetted one this turns to normal again.

BTW there seem to be resetters for Latin America chips (no experience)

http://www.benl.ebay.be/itm/CANON-I...782823?hash=item19fc762227:g:OpcAAOSwEetV~8~y

Chances are it will reset also compatible chips, but you have the best results with original Canons (never throw them away ;)).
 

martin0reg

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Every time I hear the sound of maintenance from a canon I don't think:
"what a waste of expensive ink" ... instead I think:
"okay keep your nozzles clean and wet, this refill ink is much cheaper than a dried and burnt printhead"
Your old HP probably use a cartridge with nozzle plate, so this type of printhead will be thrown away and renewed with every new cart. But the canon head should last longer, so it has to prevent clogging and air bubbles, and the simplest way is flushing with ink..
Besides this method is to the benefit of canon's cartridge sales - if you would buy these... ;)
 

Ink stained Fingers

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Just watch the printhead movements during these 'cleaning' cycles - the pump is runnning, and the nozzle plate is wiped off, the printhead moves somewhere and the pump still is running, the time the printhead sits firmly on the cleaning unit actually is pretty short, and the pump is pulling ink from the cartridges only during this time
 

ludens

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Thanks for all the answers!

Palombian, I'm indeed a cheapskate in those cases where I think that someone is trying to rip me off. I mean, the equivalent of 1500 Euros for one liter of ink is a little bit stiff... And that's roughly what original ink tanks cost here. Instead I'm not a cheapskate at all when I'm getting good value for my money.

Indeed my plan was to use inexpensive ink and just ignore the wasting going on. What I didn't expect is that the printer would waste so much ink that about every third or fourth time I use it, I need to refill it! At this point it's the spent time that I dislike, rather than the additional cost in ink, which is small when buying the ink in large enough bottles.

"- don't get agitated by the humming and wiggling of your printer, live with it, refill, print and be happy"

I have to agree that this is good advice! I have trying to tell myself the same, but sometimes I just tend to blow some steam off, anyway! :)

The reason why I'm using non-original tanks with autoreset chips is simply that when I got the printer, and even a few years later, no resetter was available for these 125/126 tanks. But when I checked again a few days ago, I found that now there is one, so I ordered it right away. When it arrives (that takes 6 to 8 weeks, due to dismally long delays in customs....), and if it works, I intend to use the original tanks again.I will pay close attention to how much the cleaning rate drops - if it really does!

But I have just one set of original tanks, the set that came with the printer, so that means having to refill the tanks right away when the printer complains, rather than just popping in refilled spares. And YES, I'm too much of a cheapskate to spend 80 euros on another set of original tanks! Maybe some day I find someone who actually buys original ink, and will give me some empty tanks, but such people are VERY rare here.

Currently none of the tanks in my ink level display are gray. All report the ink level. So I would assume that after I switched off ink monitoring for cyan when the original cyan tank was running out, the printer reset this to normal when I put it the non-original tanks with autoreset chips. Because I have never put in any original tanks except the ones that came with the printer.

Anyway, it means my printer should NOT be wasting extra ink because of disabled monitoring, unless it will waste extra ink forever, after monitoring has been turned off once.

Leaving the printer on isn't such a good idea, even if it consumes very little power. Because every time I start the computer, the printer will initialize, which means it runs a cleaning cycle! And I do have to switch the computer off when I don't use it, because that one uses a significant amount of energy, and I'm on a tight energy budget here, specially in austral summer.

Sometimes two weeks pass without any need to print anything.

And sometimes I need to cut the power for a while. When that happens, indeed the printer will do an extra long cleaning the next time I switch it on.

I fully realize that the print head needs to be well filled with fresh ink, rather than half dry or with crusty dried ink in it, whenever any printing is started. Otherwise it would fail very fast. So I do see the sense in sucking some ink through it when the printer hasn't been used for several days. But I definitely don't accept any need to run repeated cleaning cycles at intervals of just a few minutes, when nothing has been printed, nor do I accept any need of running a new cleaning cycle after printing just one page since the last cleaning!

Ink Stained Fingers, I haven't ever watchedwhat you say, because if I open the printer cover, it won't do its usual business. But I can _hear_ the effect of what you say: The pump runs for a long time, but only for a short while it makes that slapping, sucking noise that indicates that there is some vacuum. From the noise, the vacuum created must be pretty strong, and so a lot of ink is sucked out even if the time isn't long.

I judge the amount of wasted ink from the duration of a fill: In my low home usage, I get maybe 50 pages of text from a fill of all cartridges. That's around 40ml of multicolor ink for 50 pages of almost exclusively black text. No way can that be normal! My old HP's tank takes 40ml too, and prints a huge lot of pages with that, certainly more than 1000. At the same black density. That's why I say that the Canon is wasting 95% of the ink.

Martin, the old HP indeed has the print head integral to the tank. But in all of my life I only bought 2 new tanks for it. I cut up one to see how it was made, and the other got used and refilled for many years, until eventually one nozzle failed. At that point I switched to the next tank, which is still going strong after several refills and many thousand pages. So those heads are indeed disposable, but still last a very long time without any cleaning/sucking/flushing.
 

turbguy

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You might do better with a laser printer for documents....
 

ludens

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Turbguy, can you recommend a laser printer that will print in large format (A3+), print good color photos, start up quickly, and be cost-effective when printing, say, 1000 sheets per year?

I'm not aware of any such laser printer, unfortunately... but that's my actual need. Roughly 1000 sheets a year, most of them black text on A4 paper, which is fine with a laser of course, but some of them are A3, a few are on transparency (for making printed circuit boards), and there are also some photos, ranging from postcard size to the largest possible, 13x19 inch in this case. So I'm obviously better served by inkjet printers, unless there are any new developments I'm not aware of.

And just to preempt the next well-intended suggestion someone will make: No, I cannot use a laser printer for my A4 black text jobs and send everything else to a print shop. I live in the woods, and it's a 4 hour trip by 4x4 vehicle to the nearest town that has any print shops!


The Hat: I tried again to just leave the printer on. I made a mistake in my last post: The printer does NOT start a cleaning cycle when booting the computer. It did this with my old computer, but not with the current one - don't ask me why.

But leaving it on doesn't seem to make any difference. Before posting this, I ran a small test: I send a page of black text to the printer, after it having been on continuously since yesterday. This is the sequence that resulted:

- The printer performs a 150 second cleaning cycle, that includes some obvious ink sucking.
- Then the printer complains that the cyan tank is empty, and intermittently flashes the yellow light. In fact it isn't empty, of course... It still has the back chamber one third full, and the sponge is soaked.
- I press the button to continue printing. The printer actually prints the page.
- About a minute after printing, the printer starts a 30 second cleaning, without me having done anything.

Then I sent the page of text to the printer again, just to see what it would do. It did this:

- The yellow light came on flashing continuously, and a message was displayed that one ink tank couldn't be recognized.
- Then the printer started a 15 second clean.
- A while later, I opened the printer. To my suprise, the yellow tank was flashing, not the cyan (supposedly empty) one!
- I closed the printer, without having touched any of the ink tanks.
- The yellow light went out, and the printer ran a 150 second clean.
- Then it printed the page.
- Then there was a slight ticking noise with a rhythm, like tick-tick-tick-titick, that went on for about a minute.
- Then the printer ran a 25 second clean.

I would suspect that the slight ticking and the following short clean is the printer firing all nozzles repeated times to create a pool of ink on the head, to dissolve any dried residue, and then sucking off that pool from the pad, but I'm just suspecting this.

When I checked the ink levels after that, the cyan tank had self-reset to full, while the yellow one was showing low (not empty).

It's obvious that the autoreset chips are causing some of the trouble, so I hope it will all be much better once the resetter arrives and I can use the original tanks.

The autoreset chips are intended to refill each tank exactly when the counter gets to the empty status, no earlier and no later. That makes it impossible to refill all tanks at the same time and still get a valid ink level indication from them. They will not reset before they are "empty", even if taken out and re-installed. So, using autoreset chips forces one to accept the additional ink waste happening when the printer primes ALL heads because ONE tank was changed.

If instead one does refill all tanks at the same time, like I do, then the ink levels reported by the autoreset chips are out of step with reality. It requires opening and closing the printer every time one of the chips reports "empty", accepting the additional ink wasting, and on top of that one has to visually check the actual ink levels to keep the head safe.

Most of you probably know what I just wrote, but I wrote it anyway, for the benefit of any newcomers!
 

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