PC Photo Magenta plugging?

[ThrillaMozilla]

Oh and last point on the whole flushing debate, I wrote an article sometime back about using refill ink as a flushing solution but not in the sense of purging, but rather as a sort of "cartridge refresh" to encourage ink flow within the sponge, clear hardened deposits of ink and re-establish linkage between sponge and spongeless sections.

It also has the advantage of not diluting the refill ink with water and spoiling your color balance. If I flush a dried cartridge, I give the sponge a final rinse with ink.

 

[Grazer5]

Well,

after talking with mikling yesterday we agree that there is definitely a change in the magentas and he's already on top of it. I will be running his new batch as soon as it and some empty carts arrive. BTW, I have an order in for virgin CLI-42 tanks with chips and refill plugs coming soon and I'll let you people know how that goes.

Thrill, I appreciate the info on the various filling methods but when you do as many as I do in a week ( up to 250 a week ) the top fill is the only way to go. I wasn't having any issues after I learned not to make the refill holes too big, duh!, and I flushed after about 5 refills or so.

We had sort of the same problems with our old Canon 9000 MkII's. Those ones would plug on the Cyans unless I ran OEM ink, then they were fine. We weren't refilling then, just using 3rd party fro all of the other colors. Or at least alternating every other change.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

Well, I don't know what's going on in your case, but I do note that Freedom Filling is a lot faster if you are filling several cartridges than if you are filling one.

 

[Richie]

Well, good to hear that mikling is on the case! I just completed that monster job that I was talking about a while back and it cost us 6 printheads. This was almost 22,000 sheets mind you!

There is a definite problem with the magentas not flowing properly, even after a good flushing with Pharmacist's solution. I'm not getting the staining like Richie, but we often have to pull the fill plug to get them to flow. I am actually having this show up on other colors now too, specifically Light Gray and Cyan.

During that long run, I had to stop to do another run of 1300 sheets that was predominantly red. I expected the worst, and sure enough I had 5 machines all suffer clogging within an hour.Luckily It was after that run, when I restarted the other one. Strangely, one head came back to normal on it's own accord after a couple of days! With no special cleaning?

This stuff is really wicked. I have a power flush attachment for a tap which couldn't clear the photo magenta nozzles at all, even after soaking in the solution for 2 days!

Interesting you mention the Light Gray and Cyan, I actually had the same thing happen to me early last year on those same two channels but strangely enough, I was able to clear them both. The Cyan cartridge had developed the same odd stain I was talking about earlier too but it has since never happened again on those channels.

Hate to hear you lost all those printheads during that run. How often do you flush/replace the cartridges with fresh ones? I was rarely doing it, but I'm now trying to check for slower than usual ink absorption into the sponge with every refill. If it seems very slow, I flush it and install a fresh one and just transfer the chip. If I can get to March without a problem then hopefully I will be on the right path to preventing this.

I really love the print quality on these printers and would like to get a 3rd and 4th one, but I can't do it until this mystery is solved. I have gotten lucky with Canon's great customer service as they were all under warranty, all printheads were free and they replaced both printers as well, one replacement was a brand new full retail box version which was great.

 

[The Hat]

There is one thing that keeps on coming to my mind regarding the strange behaviour of some of these CLL-42 refilled cartridges regardless of which colour it may happen to be.

The most important thing to remember is not to rush or fluff your refill procedure even if you have been doing it since Adam was a boy, because we all can make mistakes and the more you refill the bigger the chance that this will happen.

Always remember to refill at low ink and not wait till later, then you’ll have a 99% chance that the cartridge will perform as it did before you refilled it, now that’s not a bad guarantee is it.

Some cartridges when let run beyond low ink can have a less than perfect performance only after a couple of refills and under a heavy work load can fail to deliver a enough ink for the job in hand, leading to early nozzle failure.

This can’t happen with new OEM cartridges, well I never heard of it anyway but it is probably the biggest cause of early retirement when using refilled cartridges of any sort, but more so when using OEM’s because of complacency.

If this little reminder can help others or even stop one head from going west to early then it is worth repeating again and again for those that missed it the last time it was said.

Happy printing guys..