Maybe my IP6600 gem still needs some polishing

[Hogwild]

Okay, before I did anything, I did another nozzle test, and the yellow is coming out more yellow again. I wasn't thinking right (and kind of misinterpreted what you said) and I did one cleaning cycle. The results are basically the same as the first pages you saw in my earlier thread.

I didn't take the printer apart, but I looked with a flashlight inside the printer. I looked inside the printer for leaks, but could not find any. I'm not exactly sure what a leak would look like. Would it be bold, like the colour of the ink, or black-ish, if it were on that foamy thing underneath the print head?
I do see some ink residue on what I'm guesssing is the waste ink reservoir, but it's not all that heavy, and I can see some of the original foam colour around that. There are some very small bits of yellow and cyan on the plastic near that, but not a lot.

Is it possible to get your hand in through the front of the printer to remove the waste ink pad to clean it, or do you have to take the printer apart?

I will do that next, if necessary, but need to be pointed to a HOWTO or similar to learn how.

 

[stratman]

I didn't take the printer apart,

Is there a problem taking the cartridges out of the print head and then taking the print head out of the printer? I know you've installed a cartridge so you can take one out. Removing the print head is simple, just raise the locking lever that secures the print head in the carriage. You might want to unplug the printer from the wall outlet after the print head moves to cent before removing so as to prevent the carriage from returning to its parked position directly over the purge pad(s) where it resides when the printer is not printing. Instructions should be in the User Manual or the iP6600D Easy Setup Instructions, which can be found either at Canon, or searching this forum, or searching Google. You will find both the Service Manual on Google, too.

Once you take the print head out, you probably should do a Print Head Alignment after re-installing it.

The Hat is probably sleeping at this time. He is often active early in the morning US EST time. If you want to alert him to a request or a comment in your post, such as suggestion about the purge unit, then type the "@" sign (without the quotes) and begin typing his name. Once you have typed at least the first three alphanumerics of the user's name you are trying to alert, a list of all members matching those characters you have typed in will pop up. The more characters of the user's name you type the smaller the list of matching users will become. In this fashion, the user you want to communicate with will receive an alert to know someone is posting to them specifically and can easily go to that post.

 

[Hogwild]

stratman:

I am listening, believe me. I DID inspect all the cartridges. I can't see anything that stands out, but I'm a newbie, so I don't know just what to look for.

I removed the printhead, that's easy. But now I can't find that stupid HOWTO telling you in which order to install the ink cartridges, so I just stuck 'em all back in in random order. Can you point me to photo of a clean or dirty ink reservoir for this printer?

I was referring earlier to the need to disassemble the printer. Do I have to do that on this model to clean out the ink reservoir? And again, how likely is it that it's got a lot of ink in it, when the printer claims it's only printed 160 pages or so.

Okay, looking at druckerchannel's article on maintaining the IP6600, it reads:


For printers, the sponges are likely to reach their limits in about 10,000-20,000 printed pages. However, precise data can not be made here since many factors have an influence on this. In normal cases, however, the sponges hold a few years.

So why are we concerned with checking the reservoir sponge now, is it because there might have been a leak?

 

[PeterBJ]

This post has an image of cross contaminated cartridges. A dirty purge unit was most likely the cause of the problem.

From the nozzle check it looks to me like cyan or photo cyan mixed into yellow and photo magenta. From the spreadsheets it looks to me like both cyan and magenta leaked into yellow producing the "dirty" green colour. The cyan column turning blue indicates that magenta or photo magenta leaked into cyan. Compare stratman's colour mixing figure.

The cause of the cross contamination could be leaking cartridges, a dirty purge unit with clogged purge pads or worse and probably most likely a print head internal leak. You would then need a new print head, which I think is nowhere to be found.

Don't disassemble the printer to inspect the ink absorbers at this moment. It is much more important to diagnose the cross contamination.

The 160 printed pages might or might not be true, doesn't it look strange that the seller was able to do an EEPROM info print but not the test print from service mode? Maybe the seller suspected the test print would reveal the problem with cross contamination?

 

[stratman]

which order to install the ink cartridges

The ink cartridges must be in their corresponding color coordinated slots in the print head. Otherwise, it does not matter which cartridge is installed versus any other cartridge.

Can you point me to photo of a clean or dirty ink reservoir for this printer?

Not sure what you are referring to here with "reservoir".

If you mean where purged ink goes inside the printer - to the diaper or ink waste pads, here is an example seen in post #2 in this link. These pads are deep inside the printer and very time consuming to get at and clean. These pads are not your priority at this time, although, not knowing precisely how much printing has been done with the printer IF someone has reset the EEPROM and wiped out the absorber pad full counter. Overflow of ink from thes pads will leak from the base of the printer and will not thrill you when it stains furniture or flooring. A tray underneath the printer will catch leaking.

If you mean the purge pads that sit underneath the print head when the print head is at rest then that The Hat brought up then ask The Hat.

 

[The Hat]

If you want to alert him to a request or a comment in your post, such as suggestion about the purge unit, then type the "@" sign (without the quotes) and begin typing his name.

Sorry @stratman that alert doesn’t work on me, I’ve turned it off because I got to many alerts to the point of ridiculous.

If you mean the purge pads that sit underneath the print head when the print head is at rest then that The Hat brought up then ask The Hat.

@Hogwild, the purge unit on your printer is where the cartridges sit when the printer is not being used, (Right side) and you can view them only when the print head has been moved to the left side of the printer when Powered off.

Here is a Pic of a purge unit when the top cover has been removed, its unnecessary to remove the top cover from your printer, use a flashlight to get a better look at it.

To clean the purge unit, lift the top cover to move the print head to the centre of the carriageway and remover the power plug, then remover the carts and print head out of the printer and push the print head carrier over to the left side out of the way.

Next using a syringe, pour or squirt some common window cleaner onto the pads, be generous don’t be afraid to splash the whole area with the liquid, leave it sit for a couple of minutes to see if the liquid drains off both pads, if so flood them again and power on the printer and run a head clean.

While you have the head out of the printer give it a clean with a paper towel and re-installed it with the carts and close the top lid and allow the printer to do its own cleaning, and that’s it you’re done...

 

[Hogwild]

PeterBJ:

The printer is the last one in that thread. Notable because the first one had everything reset to zero. This printer did NOT. And I met the people who sold it to me, and my MA in psych tells me they're not the deceptive kind, so I tend to believe most of what they said, which is the printer was barely used-they said they couldn't afford to keep paying for ink, which makes sense in their situation.

You wrote:
"The 160 printed pages might or might not be true, doesn't it look strange that the seller was able to do an EEPROM info print but not the test print from service mode? Maybe the seller suspected the test print would reveal the problem with cross contamination?"

I'ts not that the sellers were truly unable. I was on the phone with them- a busy low-budget non-profit, stepping them through everything. Eventually, they drew the line and said they didn't have any more time to spend talking to me. So I pulled the trigger and took a chance.

Based on the link you gave me...
It's very hard for me to tell just by looking at the cartridges whether there is cross-contamination. They yellow definitely looks very very dark. I think it might be.

The other cartridges look like maybe the ink is just slighly darker at the bottom half of that "pad" thingy in the cartrdige than at the top half. I could post photos, if you think it would help, but it seems to be hard for me to get good photos of this. Any suggestions for getting good photos (I'm not good with cameras, I just experiment to try to get decent lighting and that's about all I know).

Speaking of photos, here's a really bad one of the business side of the print head. How good/bad is this?

As for your other statements, let's be optimistic before we decide this thing needs a new print head, is toast, etc. Also, I know a printer tech. nearby who services a lot of Canon inkjets, so if it's worst case scenario in terms of damage, I might be able to get a print head. Cheap.

Stratman: thanks for the warning. I had already anticipated that, and put newspaper inside a washtub-type thing and put the printer in that.

BTW, on the right side of the inside, I can only see what appears to be one purge pad/reservoir/whatever we're calling it.

 

[stratman]

Sorry @stratman that alert doesn’t work on me, I’ve turned it off because I got to many alerts to the point of ridiculous.

Ahh, the old "your Jedi mind tricks won't work on me" trick.

OK. I'll let people know to personal message you in your Inbox.

 

[Hogwild]

Okay, I did as you said and removed the cartridges, then the print head. I unplugged the printer and moved carriage to left. I soaked the only waste reservoir pad I could find a few times with Windex. This worked surprisingly well, I think. The pad is now pretty much bright white. I also wiped away some small blots of ink on plastic areas near the pad. I did not see a second waste ink pad anywhere. Is there one to the right of that, far enough into the printer that I can't see it?

Attached, see print sample after head alignment you recommended.

 

[stratman]

Attached, see print sample after head alignment you recommended.

Looks like all the appropriate bits were printed out compared to that seen on this link. The colors are less saturated that in the link but that does not necessarily mean anything at this point.

Now print a nozzle check and post. If there is any doubling or ghosting of letters, bars, etc then either do another automatic print head alignment or a manual one and try another nozzle check, your choice.