MP610 clogged AND out of ink - how to proceed?

[RFarmer]

Thank you so much, George H. Wells, Jr., for your analysis of my situation and suggestions about it. I really appreciate you taking the time to do so.

I see now that part of the information that I have reported so far appears to me to be self-contradictory. George said:
In your first post, you stated that the magenta ink had clogged. You did not indicate that at that time it was out of ink--you imply that it ran out of magenta later after your wife used up your pigment black ink. Is this correct? If so, then based on your further statements, you believe that the magenta ink nozzles are still clogged and the pigment black and cyan are merely out of ink, correct?
I did in fact say that the magenta ink jet had clogged, but now I dont remember why I said magenta only, or how I knew that. What happened several weeks ago was that my wifes printer stopped printing color correctly. There were bands of white in the color parts of page so that color text printing (from a webpage, for example) was unreadable. I dont have any of those test pages anymore. For some reason that I now do not remember, I assumed that the magenta ink jet was clogged. But if it WAS clogged, then how could the magenta ink tank now be empty? I assume that if the magenta ink jet was clogged, then the printer would not be using any more magenta ink and so there would still be some left in the cartridge.
So my original assumption that the magenta ink jet was clogged seems in contradiction to the current situation where the magenta ink tank is empty. I would have to say that I am now uncertain whether or not the magenta ink head actually is clogged. In addition, more recently (a few days ago), I printed a test page from the maintenance screen on the printer, and the color was similarly not correct. Then I put the Windex on the purge system, as described in previous posts, and now the printer does not give me the option of printing a test page. When power on the printer comes up, the screen goes immediately to the U163 error page which says that the three colors mentioned above are empty. So, in summary, I would say that it is clear that the three colors are in fact empty now but I am not entirely sure which if any of the ink jet heads are clogged. Still, I would be surprised if NONE of them were clogged since there was certainly color printing problems before the printer said that the ink cartridges were empty. Sorry for the confusion.

George also said:
So you may have three things you need to learn about:
1. How to refill your cartridges.
2. How to reset your cartridges.
3. How to unclog your magenta nozzles.
Personally, I think this is a bit much for a novice to try to master all at the same time. I would strongly recommend that you purchase three new OEM Canon cartridges to eliminate the first two things in the above list and go immediately to item 3. I know this will probably cost you over $50 and so you probably will be reluctant to go this route but I see you still trying to resolve this problem two weeks from now and wishing you had gone this route.
I agree. It seems a bit much to me too. I originally began this project with the hope of finding a cheap fix for the MP610 and also finding a way around expensive OEM inks, possibly to use with our other newer inkjet printers. But you are also correct that I am reluctant to spend $50 with uncertain assurance that this would actually fix the problem with the MP610, especially since a new MP620 from Amazon.com is only $100 and other Canon models are even cheaper, although other inkjet printers apparently have similar clogging problems and OEM ink cartridges vary widely in cost/page. But it seems like such a shame to junk the MP610 which is after all a very sophisticated piece of electronics. Nevertheless, unless you have other suggestions, it does seem to me like that is my only reasonable option at that point. Im not really interested in a lot of work and time without a good chance of success. Finally, it is amazing to me that apparently all new ink jet printers have these clogging problems when my old HP Officejet G55 is still going strong after eight YEARS, but it uses cartridges that contain new heads in every cartridge. So thanks again, George, for your comments and analysis. I think my final decision is to junk the MP610 unless the free samples actually do show up in the mail, in which case I may be back to this discussion.

 

[fotofreek]

You can get starter refill ink sets from either Hobbicolors or Precision colors for this printer for well under $20 plus shipping. If you have plenty of time and want to try to get this printer to work it would be a small financial outlay. I don't have a printer that uses the chipped carts, but I assume that yours will permit you to print without resetting the chips if you agree to forgo the warranty. You then lose the ink monitor function, but I think you can restore that function in the future if you decide to keep the printer and purchase a resetter.

I had the same experience with IS - I ordered samples and didn't even get a response that they wouldn't send them.

 

[embguy]

RFarmer.
Unless you are not buying inkjet printer anymore, you will have deal with the ink clog problem sooner or later. You old HP printer may serve you well because you buy a new print head with each new cartridges. But you are paying through the nose for it.

Yes, you can buy a new MP620 for $100. But you will be paying for it because the PGI-220 and CLI-221 ink cartridges costs the same as the PGI-5 and CLI-8 cartridges but with less ink in them. Therefore, the operating cost for the MP620 will be higher than the operating cost for the MP610. If you want to refill the inke cartridges, there is no chip resetter for the PGI-220 and CLI-221. But you can buy a chip resetter for the PGI-5 and CLI-8.

Sooner of later, you will have to deal with the ink clog on the MP620. You may as well start learning the tricks now on keeping your MP610 running as long as you can. Members on this forum are willing to guide you through every steps.

As fotofreek said, you can buy refill ink inexpensively. You may take long to get to the unclog step. But it is doable. If you are not prepare to learn what members on this forum are doing, you may want to consider laser printer. Laser printer does not has ink clog problem for not printing for long time. I have an old HP laserjet printer in storage for over a year. It prints prefectly without doing any clean cycle.

 

[ghwellsjr]

RFarmer, it sounds to me like the real question for you is how to determine if your printer is broken without spending any money. I believe there is a way.

Make holes in your empty cartridges as if you were going to refill with the German method. Use your short needles to inject water into the sponge part of your cartridges as far as the needles will reach and then slowly pull them out while still injecting water. You want to saturate just the bottom sponge but it is ok to get some water in the top sponge. The water will mix with the ink in the sponge to allow you to see the result of doing a nozzle check.

I'm assuming that your printer will allow you to do nozzle checks if you tell it that you are willing to void the warranty. If you can do a nozzle check and you see that all the colors are printing as they should (except very lightly) then you know that you have a working printer and print head.

If you don't get the correct nozzle check pattern, you can do print head cleanings followed by nozzle checks to see if you can get them to work. If you see patterns starting to print, you can continue to repeat the cleanings and nozzle checks until hopefully it is working correctly. If you don't see any improvement after three cleanings, then let us know and we'll give more advice on how to get your print head unclogged.

I'm basing this advice on your final comment that you are going to junk the printer if you don't get the free ink samples. If you were to get some ink, I would advise that you inject that into your cartridges instead of water.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I thought of an even easier way to get water into the sponge area without making a hole and without using a syringe and needle. All you need to do is partially submerge your cartridge in water. Here's a picture of a CLI-8 cartridge that has run out of ink:

Next, I am holding the bottom of it underwater in the kitchen sink. Note that I am holding it at an angle so the chip does not get wet and so that no water can get into the air vent hole on top of the cartridge:

As the water moves into the sponge, it starts to turn the sponge white but then at the top of the sponge you will see that it turns the dye darker. I stop when it gets up to the water line:

Now I remove it from the water and place it on a dry surface. It's easy to see where the water has saturated the sponge:

After an hour, the dye had diffused back into the bottom of the sponge:

And now you can put the cartridge back in your printer. You should only do cleanings and nozzle checks until you fix the problem or give up. Remember, this advice is given because you want to junk your printer if you do not get free samples of ink.

 

[embguy]

ghwellsjr,
I think this is a good way to unclog print head without wasting any ink.

I wasted a quite a few cartridges while trying to unclog the photo black on my MP830. This is especially useful when unclogging without connected to PC. The cleaning will always for all colors. One cannot selects black only or color only cleaning.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I don't know if the same thing will work for printers that used chipped cartridges but what I do with my printers that are not connected to a computer is: I have an empty pigment cartridge and an empty dye cartridge. If I want to clean only the dye nozzles, I swap in the empty dye cartridge, close and reopen the cover, swap back in the full cartridge and do a nozzle check. This will automatically cause a cleaning on just the dye inks before the nozzle check is printed. If I want to clean just the pigment nozzles I swap the empty pigment cartridge in and out.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Embguy, you gave me an idea: use Windex instead of water to "refill" the sponge part of the empty cartridges. I was thinking originally of finding a way to provide some more ink when you don't want to spend any money in a situation that may prove futile, but since the cartridge may also be used for cleaning, why not make it a cleaning cartridge. Just fill a bowl with Windex or other window cleaner, especially one with ammonia, and submerge the tilted end of the cartridge in it. Or you could make a hole and inject the Windex into the sponge.

 

[embguy]

I don't know if the same thing will work for printers that used chipped cartridges but what I do with my printers that are not connected to a computer is: I have an empty pigment cartridge and an empty dye cartridge. If I want to clean only the dye nozzles, I swap in the empty dye cartridge, close and reopen the cover, swap back in the full cartridge and do a nozzle check. This will automatically cause a cleaning on just the dye inks before the nozzle check is printed. If I want to clean just the pigment nozzles I swap the empty pigment cartridge in and out.

It will work the same way as long as there is a chip on the cleaning cartridge and was reset.

 

[RFarmer]

Thanks again, ghwellsjr, for your suggestions. I did the water method that you suggested for the three empty cartridges on my printer, PG-5BK (Pigment Black), CLI-8M (Magenta Dye), CLI-8C (Cyan Dye). The CLI-8M and CLI-8C behaved as you said - the water turned the sponge white and then the dye came back to the bottom after sitting on the table for a while. The water did NOT turn the sponge white in the PG-5BK (Pigment Black) cartridge. All three cartridges emitted air bubbles from a vent hole at the bottom of the cartridge so that seems like proof that water was entering all three cartridges even though the PG-5BK sponge did not turn white. I assume that this was to be expected. I held the cartridges in the water for less than a minute until bubbles stopped coming out the bottom. After the cartridges sat on the table for a while, I noticed a small amount of liquid back in the ink tank of the Cyan and Magenta cartridges, but it was not enough to cover the prisms on the bottom of the ink tank. There was NOT any liquid in the PG-5BK ink tank. When I put the three cartridges back into the printer, however, nothing had changed. The printer still reported all three cartridges as out of ink.
So I took the three cartridges back out of the printer and put them back into a small basin of water. This time I put a couple of bricks in plastic bags (to keep dirt from the bricks out of the water) and used the bricks to hold the three cartridges at what I hoped was the correct depth in the water. Im really not quite sure where the chip is or the air hole at the top of the cartridge, but the depth was about what you had shown on the previous picture so I hope it was OK. I left all three cartridges in the water for about 20 minutes. This time the dye leaked into the water, but there was also more liquid in the cartridge ink tank, although still not quite enough to cover the prism. I dont know how the printer determines whether the ink tank is empty. After the cartridges had dried for half an hour, I put them back into the printer. Same result: The printer still reported all three cartridges as out of ink. So its not clear to me why it worked in the printer of ghwellsjr.
Im doing these experiments stand alone with the printer NOT connected to the PC. After the printer reports the U163 error with the three cartridges out of ink, no other button does anything. Is there something else I should do to override the out of ink report or to make this work in some other way?

Related Questions and comments:
1. I did get the following message from Image Specialists saying that ink samples will not be sent, as others have said. Here was the message that I got today:
Since we do not sell to end users you would have to purchase our products through our US distributor listed below. Requested samples will not be sent.
MIS Associates, Inc. 1725 W. Clarkston Road Lake Orion, MI 48359
Tel: 1-248-690-7612 Fax: 1-248-690-7618
E-mails: sales@inksupply.com <mailto:sales@inksupply.com>
Web Links: http://www.inksupply.com/bulk <http://www.inksupply.com/bulk>
Contact: Rob Loftin Products: Desktop Inks, Wide Format Inks, Cartridge Filling
Best Regards ; Joseph P. Costello Image Specialists, Inc.

2. If the submersion technique actually gets water back into the cartridge (although it hasnt worked for me yet, apparently), why couldnt a similar technique get dye/pigment back into the cartridge, and avoid the syringe/hole drilling complexity?

3. How do you get pictures into your forum posts? Is there a FAQ on how to do that somewhere?

Thanks again for all your suggestions.