MIS Autoprint and BCI-3eBK

[mmcmusnret]

Having just corrected a cross-contamination problem by manually cleaning a clogged printhead on my MP780, I'd like to minimize the possibility of the head becoming clogged again by following the wisdom of the masters who post here. It is my understanding that the "fat black" is only used in printing text (please correct me if I'm wrong). How does the printer software decide if a black object is text or a picture? By file extension (i.e., "doc" vs. "jpg")? How can I be sure my "fat black" (the most prone to clogging, it seems) is being exercised by the file I directed MIS Autoprint to utilize? I tried creating a word document inserting Neil's croquet balls .jpg and typing in some large-font text, but MSWord won't let me save it in a form that Autoprint recognizes. That got me to thinking...I could do a .bmp with a converted picture and text but would the printer know it was text if it is part of a .bmp or .jpg? Any thoughts...or solutions?

 

[canonfodder]

The "fat black", which is your pigment black cartridge is used for text.

If you add text to a photo, it is still a photo and the printer doesn't know that the added text is anything but part of the photo.

Try creating a text file in Word and put in a bunch of text in bold print and then insert a photo with all colors into the Word document on the same page. This file should exercise all inks.

 

[Tin Ho]

As long as you set medium to Plain Paper all the black (text or not) will be printed with ink from the fat ink cartridge. To prove it just wash the print with water and see all colors washed out but the black. The ink from the fat cartridge is pigmented ink so it should withstand the washing without smudging. I did this long time ago and made this conclusion. Please correct me if I am wrong. But you can do the same experiment too to make your own conclusion too.

 

[pharmacist]

Tin Ho,

You're right: the medium chosen will affect whether the CLI-8 dye black or the PGI-5 pigment black is used. The reason which black is used is cause by the fact that pigmented black does not adhere well on photopaper. 4-colour printers like the MP510/IP3300 lack the CLI-8 dye black which leads the use of composite black (black = cyan + magenta + yellow). This "black" is not as black as real CLI-8 black. Therefore the contrast is less compared to 5 or more colour printers on photopaper.

And if you use cheap quality refill ink the composite black is anything than black: something purplish or brownish dark muddy teint is obtained !

 

[Tin Ho]

Thanks for the confirmation. So the printer does not know a black spot is a part of a text or an image. If the medium type is set to plain paper all black is printed with the pigmented ink from the fat ink cartridge. If the medium is any photo paper all black is printed with composite CMYK ink (if there is a photo black ink K). The printer will slow down significantly because of smaller number of nozzles from the CMYK.

On a multifunction if you make a copy of a black text document by pressing "Copy Color", instead of "Copy Black" the printer will print black with CMYK composite ink too.

 

[mmcmusnret]

You guys are a veritable fountain of knowledge! As soon as I saw the entry about the printing medium controlling which black is used I remembered reading it somewhere else (probably on this forum!).

So here's the deal...for many reasons, among them my disgust with a throwaway society and corporate greed ($3+/ml for OEM ink and chipped carts!!!), I'm determined to do everything I can to keep my printers operational as long as possible. I had a problem with cross-contamination in my MP780 that was eventually resolved with fairly aggressive application of pressurized Windex to clear clogs in both black ink channels/nozzles. The printer is working perfectly now and I want to keep it that way. It doesn't get used much during the good weather months as I'm usually outside working on something or other...or fishing! The lack of use is probably a big contributor to the clogging. Following the wisdom of so many of the masters here I have set up MIS Autoprint to print Neil's croquet ball picture daily on each of my printers rather than let them load up the waste ink pads doing their timed purges. Since both of the blacks clogged up (and there seems to be some history of that amongst members of the forum) I'm searching for a way to ensure my purge prints exercise all carts to minimize recurrence of the clogging.

Contributing to my confusion is what I found while curing my cross-contamination problem. I did the soaking the head overnight in Windex followed by hot water rinse and compressed air (canned and compressed). I then installed soda straws as standpipes on the ink inlets and filled them with Windex to see if I had a similar flow rate thru the nozzles. CMY flowed freely, but the straw for the 6BK was still completely full even after an overnight test. At the time I didn't have the right stuff around to apply meaningful pressure and vacuum to the ink inklets so I re-installed the head to see if I still had the cross contamination issue (I originally had reason to believe cyan was the problem, and now that I had a free-flowing cyan port I thought I'd give it a shot). If cross-contamination occurred again I wanted to know whick color was migrating so I only wanted one color added at a time. I installed a freshly filled BCI-3ebk cart along with four of the previously-contaminated BCI-6 carts refilled with Windex/alcohol mix after a rudimentary flush (filling cart with Windex/alcohol mix then blowing it out by mouth, repeated a couple of times to get most of the ink out). I ran a deep clean or two until I got a good 3eBK nozzle check then waited 24 hours to see if cross-contamination occurred. Next cart added was the 6BK. Got a good nozzle check...and cross-contamination into the cart in the yellow slot within 12 hours. What struck me as odd was that I got good nozzle checks on the 6BK even though the soda straw standpipe test indicated it was clogged.

That's when I ordered a backup printhead off eBay just in case I blew up the original, went to town and got the appropriate sizes of clear plastic tubing (we called it Tygon tubing in the Navy) and used a refilling hypo and the tubing to work Windex back and forth to work the channels open in the clogged head. Got to the point where I had a good spray pattern with moderate pressure on the hypo out of the CMYK nozzles. I didn't have the right stuff to apply pressure to the 3eBK inlet, but since it printed OK and didn't cause cross-contamination I figured I'd wait until my next trip to the hardware store to get the right fittings so I'd have them the next time I'm cleaning the head.

During the course of adding carts every 24 hours after the second head cleaning I was puzzled when, with only the two blacks installed along with three cleaning carts, I printed a purge print that consisted of a solid black bar on a web page...and it came out pink (the only cleaning cart that had any color left in it at this point was a previously-contaminated magenta...now full of pink Windex). Bottom line...I printed a black bar and neither of the black carts fired! Instead, it appears the software was trying to make black out of the three primary colors!

I noticed a somewhat similar phenomena when I was printing nozzle checks after the addition of each cart. The 3eBK gave what I expected...just black on the 3eBK portion of the nozzle check print. Adding the 6BK cart added the appropriate nozzle check bar, but oddly enough the numbers and letters in the column identifying the color in the adjacent nozzle check bar were all blank (except for the 3eBK). When I added the cyan, all the numbers and letters showed up in blue (except for the 3eBK, of course...it was obviously being printed by the fat black). I added the magenta and the identifiers turned purple, and adding the yellow cart made them all turn...you guessed it...black! There's also a pattern to the color progression of the little vertical bars on either side of the identifiers as the carts were added...it's different, but I think the point has been made so I won't explain it. I kept each nozzle check for my records, though.

All this was done on plain paper, of course. In the case of the black purge print on the web, if it's true that selecting plain paper for the printing medium makes the fat black do all the black printing why did it come out pink? Obviously neither black was being used. The only thing I didn't make absolutely sure of was that plain paper was selected as the printing medium when I printed that web page. My excuse for that is I've never printed on photo paper on this printer (I use the 8500 for that) so I've never selected any other medium than plain paper. I know what happens when one assumes something, but I'll go out on a limb here and assume it knew it was being fed plain paper.

Since cleaning the head I've printed two fairly large PDF files (the MP780 service manual and the iP8500 Users Manual), over a hundred sheets printed double-sided. The 3eBK ink level is going down as I would expect.

I'm a newbie to the intracies of printers and the software that makes 'em work their magic. Maybe someday I'll run Neil's test print as I add each cart and see what happens. Meanwhile, I'm open to any method that will periodically exercise every nozzle automatically, unattended. Or is that a futile quest? Those of you who routinely print for a living are probably less prone to encountering clogging, nor are your (newer model) machines idle long enough to trigger the self-cleaning cycle. Is the best answer to leave the printer on and let it run it's self-cleaning regimen, load up the waste ink pad and put run time on the purge unit? Now that I'm a dedicated refiller the concern for ink usage takes a back seat to minimizing wear and tear on the machines. It's very difficult to get to the waste ink pad and purge unit on the MP780 (I tried, just out of curiosity). I just disassembled and replaced the waste ink pads on my S900 pursuant to storing it long-term as my emergency backup printer (I figure any Canon printer that uses the BCI6 tanks is worth keeping and maintaining), and it was a piece of cake compared to the MP780. I purchased the Service Manuals for the 780 and the 8500...the 8500 manual came with a 3 page disassembly procedure, but no such luck on the 780. I'd rather minimize loading up the waste ink pad and using the purge unit than be faced with a difficult piece of maintenance sometime down the road...putting the ink on paper then disposing of it in the recycling box seems to make more sense, although one could argue the wear and tear simply shifts to the carriage mechanism, electronics, and printhead.

Another solution, of course, is to leave the machines turned off (no ink usage at all!), but it sure is handy to hit the print button from my laptop in the living room or my wife's machine in her office upstairs and pick up the prints in my office at our convenience...and not have to make a trip in to turn the printer on first! And from what I've read here over the last couple of years there's no clear consensus that letting a machine sit turned off is better or worse for the machine than exercising it regularly.



canonfodder....your idea of inserting a photo into a text document----tried it (see my original post), but MIS Autoprint only recognizes files with the following extensions: .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp, .ico, .emf, .wmf. Is there another way to schedule automatic printing of other types of files, like .doc?


Tin Ho....Your water wash method is interesting. I think I'll try it on the Autoprint prints that spit out tomorrow morning.



Thank you all for your input.

 

[Trigger 37]

mmcmusnret, Wow,... that was so much information and testing I finally fell asleep reading it,... that was earlier tonight,.. I finally woke up and decided to add my 4cents. First of all I have worked on a lot of Canon printers and and I've only had one case of "Contamination", and that was with a G&G ink carts that leaked so bad it flooed the printhead such that the ink from the Cyan ran into the next filer screen in the printhead. If you are using good ink carts, like Canon OEM, even if you refill them yourself, you should never---ever----see any cross contamination between ink carts. if you do then the rubber seals around the filter screens must be bad, or your ink carts have an air leak in them and the ink is flowing out too easily. If you refill and ink cart yourself and hold it over the sink, at maximum it would drop one drop of ink ever 4-5 seconds. Sitting in the printhead it would never leak. Therefore there should never be any contamination.

It seems to me that what you are describing as "contaimation" is just really poor printing of one or more ink nozzles. If you are missing good ink flow from magenta your prints will come out with a "Green" tint to them. This is because Yellow and Cyan together make green. If all of your nozzles are not clean, or if one or more of your ink carts is not supplying sufficieint ink, your colors will come out all wrong. If prints come out with a Magenta tint it is because you are missing yellow or cyan.
If you are saying that magenta ink flows back inside of the yellow or magenta ink cart, then you have other serious problems. There is no path for this to happen unless the printhead is being flooded with excess ink. If this is happening you have bad ink carts and they are leaking. Throw them away quick.

On your other question about Cleaning cycles,... I believe it is best to leave the printer powered on. My reasoning for this is that the printer will always do a purge of ink each time you power it on,... so if you turn the power on every morning, you will purge each color. You have the Service manual for the MP780 and the back of that is a listing of how much ink is purged for each type of action. The logic card keeps track of how many hours it has been since you last printed anything. If it has been over 12 hours, it will do a cleaning cycle of all colors even if you are only going to print black. I agree with you about the difficulty of taking apart any Canon MP unit as I have done several myself. So my suggestion is to print something at least every 3 days, and print a nozzle check. This tells you if things are getting bad so you can take more action if necessary. I also use a color test pattern I got from Neil and print it such that is uses 1/4 of a page of paper. This also shows me how the ink carts can sustain the flow of ink. If an ink cart is going bad or getting dried up I can see the "starvation" beginning to happen. This image is included below.



Hope this provides some help

 

[mmcmusnret]

Trigger 37----Thanks for your input. Sorry I put you to sleep! I saw that post growing but I just couldn't stop myself! I worked on that problem for a week and learned something new every day. I've only been refilling for a year and don't print a lot...I only have to refill once a year and that's only because I have just 3 BCI-3eBK carts, so when I load my last one of those I refill everything that's empty. I just finished my second refill cycle, so none of my carts had been refilled more than once when the cross-contamination occurred...

and it was true cross-contamination. I had three sets of the the ugliest looking magenta and yellow carts to prove it. I don't use the printer that much...it's there mostly so my wife can handily copy sewing patterns , recipes, etc. out of magazines, and for the fax. When I realized the chipless cart printers were gone I bought it refurbed and in a hurry to replace a Lexmark MF machine that came bundled with one of my computers and which I sincerely hated. When my wife showed me some really ugly copies I investigated and found the yellow cart was solid black and the magenta was hard to tell...but it wasn't magenta! The cyan was pretty much empty (in fact, I originally thought my cyan had emptied itself inside the printer somewhere until I ran nozzle checks after replacing the empty cart and saw the yellow and magenta output!). So I ended up replacing all three, purging until good nozzle checks, and proudly proclaiming I had fixed the problem. A week later she copies something...same thing. "Fixed" it again (I was in the middle of building a deck so I was just throwing carts at it until winter came and I had more time), then it happened a third time. I caught it at the 24-hour-after-replacing-carts point and could see the plume of black with a green leading edge in the yellow carts' sponge. Each time the cyan level had dropped significantly or was empty.

This exercise also reinforced the perceived superiority of OEM sponges. I only have two brands of carts...35 OEM and 18 ProColor from alotofthings. Of the six carts that were cross-contaminated 3 were OEM and 3 were ProColor. The OEM backflushed to pristine white with just hot water. I was moved to fill the ProColor Windex/alcohol and let them soak before backflushing...after several cycles the sponges are extremely discolored. I deemed one magenta OK and demoted the other two to cleaning cart duty.

When refilling I let my carts rest to confirm no drippage before storage. When readying one for use I gently blow into the vent to confirm flow then let it rest again for a couple of minutes to make sure it's not leaking.

Despite the hours and hours of reading on this forum I don't know enough about the interactions of all the chambers, channels, holes, sponges, filters, channels, gaskets and nozzles involved in a moving (and keeping separate) ink from 5 tanks to paper to explain why the ink was migrating from the cyan to the magenta and yellow. All I know is that by cleaning the heck out of the head it's fixed, even though the satisfactory nozzle checks I could achieve indicated the nozzles weren't clogged to begin with. Go figure.

Thanks again for suggestions as to how I can maintain the head clean. I'm still looking for an automatic solution, but it's slowly taking a back seat to my quest for color management!

 

[Trigger 37]

mmcmusnret,.. Not sure if you are stil watching this forum. I've had a few more experiences with cross containination. One of the function of the Purge unit is to dump any excess ink after any cleaning cycle such that when the printhead parks, it is not setting on a wet puddle of ink. You can see this could cause immediate contamination of all ink carts. The purge unit moves the head over to the side and does a suction/dump cycle to collect any excess ink that may still be on the pads. If the purge unit cycle is not complete and there is some wet ink left, this will cause the contamination.

Another source of contamination is if any ink cart is leaking. As they sit on the park pads, any ink that leaks will contaminate all other colors.

On your mystery of majic black ink, all images you print suck as .jpg color bars are graphics and the printer will never use pigment black on images. To make black it uses 33 1/3% of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. That is subractive black. The only time you can use the "Large Pigment Black" is when you print a "TEXT" file or your force the printer to print in "Fast Black" or in Grayscale. The Dye black is used to expand the gamut of photographic prints on photo paper. Canon would not use Dye black to make real black when they can use 3 times the ink to make black.

I have one question for you. I have the MP780 Service manual and Parts Catalog, and as you say they are no help in removing the outer covers. If you have taken the mP780 apart, I would appreciate a couple of suggestions. The parts Catalog show screws that hold the side cover and back covers on, but of course there has to be some "TABs" or "Catches" somewhere. Any suggestion would greatly help.

 

[Grandad35]

The Dye black is used to expand the gamut of photographic prints on photo paper. Canon would not use Dye black to make real black when they can use 3 times the ink to make black.

Two comments:
1. Pigmented ink on nanoporous photo paper works well, but pigmented ink on swellable photo paper (the printer can't tell which is being used) is slow to be absorbed and can cause smearing.
2. Pigment inks (especially black and cyan) are prone to bronzing on glossy paper. Dye inks don't have this problem and don't require a gloss optimizer to eliminate the bronzing.