I have an mx860. I have been refilling with Hobbicolors, german method for 3 years. Printer gets few pages printed every day or three. In the past I have had some clogs that were solved either by adding some windex to the foam rest pads or by removing the print head and rinsing it under tap water and drying. Over the last two months my success has gone from poor to bad. Before things went completely bad, I was finding that I could get test prints after cleaning that showed good black and good first color bands but consistantly NO lighter color bands. Doesn't this seem diagnostic of some specific problem? Actually, most recently, the black color band didn't show either. Almost imediately after the good dark bands, the colors and begin to fail and I have almost no ink on the page. Does this suggest a purge system failure?
I had an older mp machine that got the dreaded 6a00 and I read a lot about it at the time and purchased triggers repair disk (that I might be able to find) and read some of it. It seemed like a royal pain to do. At that point, I saw my mx860 as a demo at COSTCO and got it for $100 which seemed easier than fooling with the mp machine. My readings on this site turned up some hints that sometimes the purge unit can clog but be cleaned without a tear down. Might this be my problem and is there a semi easy solution? I also see that ink starvation from bad carts could be part of (or all) this. How do I tell. I did have an extra new canon black color cart and it brought the black color band back.
So in short: what does the no secondary color bands indicate and could the purge system be doing me in? Or might I just need new carts.?
I had an older mp machine that got the dreaded 6a00 and I read a lot about it at the time and purchased triggers repair disk (that I might be able to find) and read some of it. It seemed like a royal pain to do. At that point, I saw my mx860 as a demo at COSTCO and got it for $100 which seemed easier than fooling with the mp machine. My readings on this site turned up some hints that sometimes the purge unit can clog but be cleaned without a tear down. Might this be my problem and is there a semi easy solution? I also see that ink starvation from bad carts could be part of (or all) this. How do I tell. I did have an extra new canon black color cart and it brought the black color band back.
So in short: what does the no secondary color bands indicate and could the purge system be doing me in? Or might I just need new carts.?