I've spent hours this past weekend reading posts on this site and being amazed at all the incredibly detailed observations about print heads and manual cleaning. I'm pretty impressed and decided if I wanted to get any sleep tonight I'd better post my own question before I become totally obsessed!
I've been really happy with my Canon MP730. I've had it for 4 years and really used all of its functions fairly successfully. I don't print pictures all that often, but have also been satisfied with those even though I likely don't do as much maintenance as I ought to.
Recently though, the printer is producing evenly spaced vertical lines from top to bottom, unacceptable by any standard. I noticed concurrently that when performing a nozzle check the blue pattern had some pretty outstanding 'cavities' in it. After doing a lot of reading I decided that I ought to try carefully cleaning the print head as described in a number of posts--notably by trigger. After doing it once the nozzle check still looked exactly the same, so I attempted the extra special cleaning recommended by trigger in the same post. I just did that today, and unfortunately, I likely messed something up because now I've got some 'cavities' in the black portion of the pattern. I'm not convinced that the black shortcomings are permanent though as they seem to be getting slightly better following each cleaning, but without a doubt, the blue portion is not improving any.
I'm going to see if I can post a picture of a recent nozzle check. I have one ready to attach, but won't know if I can figure it out till I try. The 'B' section on the bottom is the one that seems to be permanently 'broken.' And I'm guessing that the anomaly with the blue section on the top section is related.
Hmmm, ok, it looks like as a new member, I can't post an image yet! Perhaps on a reply?
Feeling discouraged, I just went ahead and purchased a new print head online. Though now, after reading some more, I'm wondering if perhaps the problem with the blue fault is electrical rather than mechanical and that a new print head won't do me any good. So I thought I'd post and see if anyone had any suggestions or thoughts! Thanks! /Joel
I've been really happy with my Canon MP730. I've had it for 4 years and really used all of its functions fairly successfully. I don't print pictures all that often, but have also been satisfied with those even though I likely don't do as much maintenance as I ought to.
Recently though, the printer is producing evenly spaced vertical lines from top to bottom, unacceptable by any standard. I noticed concurrently that when performing a nozzle check the blue pattern had some pretty outstanding 'cavities' in it. After doing a lot of reading I decided that I ought to try carefully cleaning the print head as described in a number of posts--notably by trigger. After doing it once the nozzle check still looked exactly the same, so I attempted the extra special cleaning recommended by trigger in the same post. I just did that today, and unfortunately, I likely messed something up because now I've got some 'cavities' in the black portion of the pattern. I'm not convinced that the black shortcomings are permanent though as they seem to be getting slightly better following each cleaning, but without a doubt, the blue portion is not improving any.
I'm going to see if I can post a picture of a recent nozzle check. I have one ready to attach, but won't know if I can figure it out till I try. The 'B' section on the bottom is the one that seems to be permanently 'broken.' And I'm guessing that the anomaly with the blue section on the top section is related.
Hmmm, ok, it looks like as a new member, I can't post an image yet! Perhaps on a reply?
Feeling discouraged, I just went ahead and purchased a new print head online. Though now, after reading some more, I'm wondering if perhaps the problem with the blue fault is electrical rather than mechanical and that a new print head won't do me any good. So I thought I'd post and see if anyone had any suggestions or thoughts! Thanks! /Joel
