Is this a Clogged Printhead? from an i950

[mikling]

Nozzle check pattern from an i950.

 

[mikling]

Well it is not. It is a printhead that has come to end of life. One day it is printing fine, then starts to band.
Banding goes away when printer rests. Then it starts to get progressivlely worse then it doesn't print at all, then prints, and after a couple of pages, starts to band, doing this erratically.

Then it gets worse, no amount of flushing or soaking nor changing of cartridges clear this up. Dead head...............due to electronic failure of some type, I'd say the multiplexing circuit behind the contact plate. Finally, within 12 hours, the 7 orange flashes of death.... to the printhead.

Moral of the story, sometimes when the God of printheads come calling, there's nothing you can do. Fed with good inks, good condition carts.....well maintained but worked hard with continuous duty at times.

Well Canon made the heads user replaceable for a reason........

Time to go looking for a new letter size dye based printer or should I get a new head???????

 

[hpnetserver]

Why is it not a clogged print head? From your words it is a typical clogged print head that is mistreated.

 

[Trigger 37]

mikling,... I posted a reply to your same question on the thread "Refill and Epson". I didn't know you have added the same post to a new thread. Anyway, in looking at your nozzle test pattern, I would say it is an ink flow problem or what I call "Starvation". It still could be in several places. Read my post on that thread. It has things your can try.

The nozzle test above also tells you more. If you do a couple of Deep cleaning cycles and print the test pattern again, and if you see some of the nozzles that print now and did not before,... that tells you it is not the printhead, but you are not always getting ink to where it should be.

I do 2-3 different printers a week. Some of them have been so clogged that there was no print at all. It may take a couple of days to clean the printhead, soak it, clean it, and really clean the purge unit to get things working again, but it usually does work.

IF your printhead is really "Worn Out", and those missing lines in the crosshatch pattern, which are just individual ink jet nozzles, are the result of a burned out resistor in each bad nozzle, then you are correct and that printhead is dead. But if you clean it as I suggested, get new ink carts to test it, check the purge unit, and you get different results on the next test, then I say the printhead is good and only needs total cleaning, or the purge unit is not sucking very well. The purge unit has to suck the ink and fill the printhead before you can have a successful print,.. and then only if each and every nozzle is clean. WOW,... that's a lot of cleaning.

Give it a try before you trash it.

 

[hpnetserver]

Again it is bad ink and bad cartridges that have ink flow problems. Reduced ink flow is the primary cause of print head clogging. If treated immediately and correctly the clogs can be completely cleared.

The nozzle check print is a solid proof of clogging and mistreatment. Bad ink and bad cartridges. I have seen a print head in much worse clogging. It printed nothing at all. But 3 days of patience it fully recovered. The cleaning method is all in the Q/A in this forum. Blame the electronic? That's easy to say.

 

[mikling]

Boys, this print head is dead.

Don't think for a minute it is otherwise. Some do die, it is an electrical problem on this head and nothing else. You don't get starvation and perfect nozzle patterns to something like this amongst progressively more colors in minutes.

Thinking it was starvation, it was cleaned, soaked, flushed etc. worked well for one day then odd things started happening. 7 orange flashes is not an ink starvation problem.

Keep an open mind.

Printheads can die and they do and this one has.

If you think otherwise, that is your belief.

And for those disbelievers it IS MY PRINTER.

 

[hpnetserver]

It was an ink starvation to begin with. Then got killed by improper soaking indicated by blinking light. You can't say it's an electrical problem because it died with an indication of blink light. When a cancer patient dies you will say death by the illness but not say death by stop breathing.

Let's look at your nozzle check print again. The black was nearly perfect. That tells you already the electronics is good. When other colors are randomly clogged, hint hint random, it says I need more ink I need more ink. When it was cleaned, soaked and flushed it worked again. That tells you that there is nothing wrong with the electronics again. By that time you continued to use the bad ink and cartridges which was reluctant to give ink to the print head and eventually caused its death indicated by the blinking light. As Trigger said which I agree if the electronics was the problem to begin with it would have died without giving you a nozzle check print like that.

It is as simple as that. As your own words said "if you think otherwise it is your own belief". It is the worst flawed information about Canon print head that you are trying to pass to the members of this forum. And this is not the first time you posted flawed information to the forum.

 

[mikling]

No it's not bad ink, the same carts transferred to my i9900 work perfectly well. The 9900 was taken out of storage and put back in service. I find it takes up too much deskspace for the few times that I use it for an 11x17 or larger. I found the 950 was good enough for my needs.

Keep an open mind. Things do fail naturally, no product has 100% perfection. You don't know the background of this printer. I acquired it from a fellow who used it extensively on a CIS for a period of time. It has served me well for many months and hundreds of pages of photographs but there is such a thing as life expectancy and perhaps I reached it.

I am very careful about flushing and ink starvation issues. I wanted to just bring this information up for your benefit. I didn't post this to be told that I was a fool and accused of other things. That is very very impolite and not appreciated.

Thanks for the lambasting. It was very kind of you.


And just for interest, this was a nozzle print output less than 3 pages of output before it decided to pack it in.

The LM color is perfect but my 10 year old scanner is not that good. With this I was satisfied to proceed to print.

Then problems started as was said before, after less than three pages of printing it went downhill FAST very fast.

How can multiple cartridges suddenly have feed problems within three pages of output? The chances of ink feed affecting other colors all within that timeframe is a mystery. Why is the black OK? I don't know but it was a strange one. That's why I decided to share my experience not come here for a lashing.

All the cartridges had been refilled and the Cyan in particular was a first time refill after a flushed and dried blank. All Canon OEM blanks.