My trusty ip4000 still lives on!

[Music Image]

The Hat, thanks for your suggestions. Thankfully Ive known it's not good to refill 3rd parties, and fortunately they are cheap enough where you shouldn't have to anyway. I do like to have those Canon Carts on standby. I've never refilled them myself, but taken advantage when a good promo offer comes along from a reputable company. In my area at the time, I found getting ink for refilling myself, was more hassle than it was worth.

Interesting point comes to mind about the 2 blacks ... maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong... it was always my understanding when printing text (aside from a minute amount from each cart) the pigment is used for text and the dye black for photos.

Thanks again for all your comments.

 

[PeterBJ]

Music Image wrote:

...Interesting point comes to mind about the 2 blacks ... maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong... it was always my understanding when printing text (aside from a minute amount from each cart) the pigment is used for text and the dye black for photos.

This is correct. The use of pigment black for text printing has some benefits, but the pigment black is totally unsuitable for photo printing. This is the reason for addition of the photo black (dye ink) cartridge in the Pixma 4000.

At start up, when changing a cartridge, when a print head cleaning is ordered, and at some intervals determined by printer firmware, the the printer cleans/primes the print head by drawing ink from all cartridges through the nozzles. This is the reason photo black is also used even if you only print plain paper documents. All inkjet printers use ink to do this automatic cleaning, which is necessary to keep the print head in good working order.

 

[Music Image]

Thx Peter. Ah yes now I remember, now that you've pointed out about the pigment being unsuitable for photos. Also the pigment is more water proof, right?

I'm scratching my head trying to remember whether drafts were totally black pigment, but maybe the question is more: ....What settings and/or what paper choices use only pigment ink?

Back in the day there was talk about printers like the ip4000 pre-configured to fail at 5 years. I was interested to find out about this and managed to dig up a service manual online. There is a reference in there about 5yrs but offhand I cant remember what it is about. It cant be the purge tank because Ive had my printer over 8 years now and Ive never had to reset any counters (yet) . I know that job is coming up, but as I said I don't print a lot.

I heard that its good to leave the printer turned on, otherwise every time you turn it on it uses more ink to do those little cleans. Any thoughts about that would be much appreciated.....like what about if the printer is sitting there turned on but not being used for a month as has been the case with me sometimes.

 

[The Hat]

If you print a text document on plain paper but set the printer to use photo matte paper
then your printer wont use the pigment black at all, only the dye inks.

Leaving your printer on/off makes no difference as to how much it cleans itself,
the count is from the last time you printed a sheet and not from when you last turned on the printer.

If the print interval is a short on, it performs a quick head clean but if it has been a longer period from the last print job
it will carry out a deep clean just to make sure it can print without causing any problems..

 

[PeterBJ]

Hi Music Image

In case you don't have a downloaded version of the service manual, you find it here, with 2 supplements. Instead of clicking download, you can also just click the pdf files and save a copy.: http://service-manual.eu/model.php?id=3182

A parts catalog is found here: http://elektrotanya.com/canon_pixma_ip4000pc.pdf/download.html . Before downloading files from electrotanya see this instruction: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=61324#p61324

The benefit of the pigment ink for text printing on plain paper documents is a clearer and sharper print as the ink doesn't spread as much on the paper as the dye inks do. It is also more waterproof and resistant to smearing when using a highlighter.

I didn't find any info about which settings and modes use only pigment ink in the service manual.

I don't think the printer has a built in self destruct counter/timer. I think the values on page 1-2 in the service manual are expected or average values.

It has been much debated if leaving the printer on saves ink, by eliminating power up cleaning of the printhead. I think the general opinion is that it saves ink, but that maybe only applies to the later chipped printer models? Personally I don't know.

The appendix has a table of how much ink is used in various types of cleaning. It is found on page 2-2 and 2-3 Maybe you can figure out from this table if leaving the printer always on saves ink. I can't, I think more info is needed.

The manual also has info about service mode operations. From service mode you can print out test and info pages and do an ink absorber reset plus other things. Be very careful when using service mode operations so not to make unwanted resets or change vital settings. The changes might not be reversible.

And here is an excellent guide to taking the printer apart and changing the waste ink absorbers. This guide is in English even if it is from a German site: http://www.druckerchannel.de/artikel.php?ID=1831&t=workshop_change_waste_ink_tank_canon_pixma_ip4000

The Pixma 4000 is a very good printer in my opinion, I have one. The build quality is higher than the newest models of canon printers and it is easily refilled and without chips, so I think it deserves some "Tender Loving Care" to keep it alive as long as possible

 

[Music Image]

WOW! The Hat and Peter, thankyou so much for your help and informative posts.

I will still have my Service manual on my HDD somewhere but Ive downloaded these with the 2 other docos. Dont remember getting those. LOL just a couple of days ago I saw that excellent guide on druckerchannel.

Now I followed your link Peter, read your advice (don't you just love it when sites do funky stuff like this) and careful not to click on anything. Looks like they've slightly changed the wording... and This is what I got .... and the link didnt change to "get manual" ...

Note! To open downloaded files you need acrobat reader or similar pdf reader program. In addition, some files are archived,
so you need WinZip or WinRar to open that files. Also some files are djvu so you need djvu viewer to open them.
These free programs can be found on this page: needed progs
If you use opera you have to disable opera turbo function to download file!
If you cannot download this file, try it with FIREFOX or CHROME browser.

Then red writing came up complaining that I was blocking stuff (ads) and using security SW like a firewall.... ughh. great! Should I risk disabling ABP temporarily?

Other than for pure interest, I think it's really not going to be a lot of difference between leaving printer on or off for saving ink. This MAY make a difference when one is shelling out for expensive Canon ink vs 3rd party carts/ink. Still it would be good if anyone has some conclusive data on this. Anyway way back I read about this here and decided I would leave it on.

Im going to heed your advice and try and look after my printer better making sure I do weekly nozz tests. TLC is definitely on the cards!..then hopefully it'll be on the paper for a long time to come.

 

[PeterBJ]

You are not the first one to have this problem with electrotanya. That is the reason I wrote the instruction.

To check the link I have just downloaded the Pixma 4000 parts catalog from electrotanya. After a minute or so the "processing (please wait)" changed to "Get Manual" and clicking this downloaded the file in seconds.

So nothing has changed at the site. I would not disable the firewall or any other security programs to get the file. You don't know what could happen! You can send me an Email, requesting the parts catalog. I will then answer that mail and attach the parts catalog. The catalog is a .pdf file of only 347 kB size, so it should be no problem receiving the mail.

I don't know what browser you are using. Download might work only with Firefox and Chrome? I'm using Firefox browser and AVG Internet Security and have no problems downloading files from electrotanya.

A weekly nozzle check is a very good exercise to keep your printer fit for fight hopefully for years.

Edit: If ABP means Ad Blocking Program, then it might not be very risky temporarily allowing ads from electrotanya. After all the site is ad sponsored, and blocking ads might also block downloads? But "beware, it is a jungle out there!", and don't click anything other than the "Get Manual" link.

 

[Music Image]

Hi Peter, You're dead right. It is a minefield out there!

I'm on FF but I try to have my browser screwed down pretty tight since I'm a very security conscious person (or try to be), especially in light of the latest NSA horror story but I better not get into that except to say NZ is one of the 5 countries in on this disgusting spy racket.

Im still learning about ABP (Ad Block Plus) You can set it to allow trusted sites to serve ads and I think that's fair (up to a point) when its their source of income, but setting up white lists takes time. I most certainly wont be disabling my firewall for anybody. I also block scripts and allow them on an "as needed" basis on trusted sites.

Ive not long updated FF from a very old version because I like the way it's Cache worked and I was really forced to do so. Just been in its settings and seems you've always got to be alert to new things tucked in here and there that PHONE HOME (grrrr) and do so by DEFAULT. Just found one of these called "health report" (options>advanced>health report) . There's 2 others as well. Clicking on the link beside this option tells you this:

We may disclose aggregated FHR data openly in order to help further our mission of promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web.

Since there's been problems with others on this site I think I'll take up your offer instead. I'll Email you through the board.

Being fairly fastidious about lists and logs, I have documented over the years what and when Ive printed something. On the odd occasional Ive forgotten to enter something but it would be at least 95% accurate. I've also kept my "blooper" prints and no doubt all these would be through user error rather than my trusty printer. It's been a very "forgiving" machine. I do need to learn other aspects of general cleaning, what when and where. Its a great machine for my needs.

 

[PeterBJ]

I have now sent the parts catalog.

Thanks for info about Firefox. I think I have to look into what info it actually sends home. I have been using Firefox for many years, since I was told by IT pros that it was much more secure than Internet Explorer. Maybe things have changed since then?

I might also look into Adblock Plus, since it is recommended by the Mozilla team. Do you need to set up a whitelist to allow ads from electrotanya to also be able to receive downloads, or can you temporarily, only while you visit the site, allow ads with one click? Maybe the instruction for downloads from electrotanya should be edited, so thanks for reporting the problem.

My Firefox has Danish language, but I found the health report setting, which is enabled per default. There is also a "Telemetry" which is disabled per default, and an error reporting which is enabled per default. I think this is acceptable as the telemetry, which I find is the most objectionable, is disabled per default.

 

[Music Image]

Thx Peter, received that file. Not opened it yet.

FF is most certainly more secure than "Internet Exploder" (LOL) Theres one thing Ive learned.... What is reputable today might not be tomorrow. You have to keep your wits about you including FF. On another angle, FF is the only safe browser to use with TOR in fact they now have the TOR browser bundle which is a separate FF from your installed one. It can be run off a USB stick and is not installed. Im sure it writes nothing to the registry either. Dont get me started on Google, but since we're talking security, heres the best search engine I can come up with: https://startpage.com/ It doesnt log ip addresses and serves as a proxy in front of Google. If you click on "details" under Google it tells you how secure you are using startpage.

As I said, if theres anything that gets my ire up its stuff phoning home behind the scenes that doesn't need to. Example, I run a purchased legit pro program on my Mac and it was trying to force me to register when I don't want to. I would get this nag screen once every 5 times I brought the program up. I was FURIOUS! As such I did a search and got a script from a reputable source, got into the terminal and instantiated the script...and walla no more nag screen. Apple is as bad as M$.

In addition to your own additions, there are 2 whitelists you can choose from in ABP. One is easylist and the other is fanboy list. Im sure when I installed ABP I just chose which option I wanted. You can change it but Im not sure at a glance how you do this. Theres heaps of info clicking on the supplied links.

HTHs.