Printers - don't buy Canon ip3600

[Kardell]

I have a Canon printer Pixma ip3600. I'm becoming very nervous user of this brand. This damn printer is cleaning round and round, draining my precious Hobbicolor ink all the time, before, during and after printing, Even I choose grayscale it sounds like this printer is cleaning all the nozzles. After a while I have a belief that this printer is living its own life, doesn't care about its user. It takes approx. 30 seconds to see the first page. I can imagine thousands of people wasting their money for orginal carts instead of own refilling. It's like tobacco, cocaine or swine flu vaccine business: no matter what happen, we have to increase the intake!
Cameras yes. Printers never.
Please share your experience.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I personally have come to appreciate more and more the older chipless printers that Canon used to make, especially the MP780 AIO. Fortunately for us people in the know, right now, there are a lot of people selling their perfectly good old printers just so they can get a new wireless printer. Keep your eyes open and take advantage of being the first to grab up one or two of these printers when they go on sale. I do not recommend buying one on eBay because you won't be able to see it before you commit to buy it. Craigslist is a much better way to go. You want to see it doing a perfect nozzle check or ask for a reduction in price of $55. Also, unless a seller knows how to prepare a printer for shipping, there is a good chance it will arrive non-functional or become non-functional the first time you turn it on.

Just my humble opinion.

 

[Kardell]

Thank you, I see you are very experienced in Canon brand. I've heard that older Canon printers are more reliable.
Is there any way to disable or limit this annoying numerous cleaning procedures in newest Pixma printers?

 

[leo8088]

Kardell, are you sure it really dumped your ink? Every Canon printer does a round of checking for its paper trays, rollers, ink cartridges, print head and electronics each time the printer is powered up. If the printer idles for about 30 seconds it parks its print head by doing a round of checking of the rollers, paper path, print head carriage, etc. and finally moves the print head to park. By doing all those it does take time but it does not really dump your ink into the waste tank. It will prime and print head (waste some ink of course) only when the printer is not used for a lengthy period time or an ink cartridge or the print head is removed and plugged back in. To prime the print head it does a cleaning cycle and it involves moving the print head in and out from the top of the purge unit. It sounds like cycling through the same thing like the printer is powering up. All Canon printers do that. SOme do it faster than others. Ip3600 is a low end (but excellent low budget) printer. It is slow but it does not waste ink as you think.

 

[The Hat]

Kardell..

leo8088 is right if youre not using your printer regularly it takes a bit of time to come up to speed.
I dont know about the 3600 but any canon Ive had have been very easy on ink wasting, if you want a real waster get yourself a cheap Epson or dell printer. You can turn off the ink monitoring on the canon so as it wont do much in the way of cleaning or ink wasting, but then you wont know how much ink is left in your cartridges and that would be bad for your printhead. You could always try to pick up an MP780 AIO as ghwellsjr suggested..

 

[Kardell]

Thanks for your contribution.
It is rather difficult to say what is exactly happening inside my printer, however I hear very often the same noise pattern as during cleaning or nozzle check and this noise is emanating from location where cariage is parking. Furthermore I was surprised few times, when just refilled big black cart and after short time ink has gone, that I was suspecting a leak, more than just realised I depleted it.
Besides I red many times on this board from many people that this printers cleaning procedures frequency is unecessarly too often.
I have no idea, perhaps it is my subjective impression, however usually this printer takes ~3 minutes to prepare itself for printing.
Carts were refilled many times and ink level was disabled. I suspect that Canon has applied some nasty setting to punish refillers. I sense that cleaning procedures are more often since I start refilling, but this needs confirmation from the others.
Thank you for your attention.

 

[ghwellsjr]

When you say it takes a long time for the printer to prepare itself for printing, are you saying that applies to every time you print, even if it is a second printout just a few minutes after a first one, or does this only happen for the first printout after you turn it on? Canon printers all do a cleaning cycle before the first printout after they have been turned on. Leaving your printer on all the time will reduce this problem but the first printout of the day may still do a cleaning cycle.

I have very little experience with Canon printers that have chipped cartridges, but it may be that if you can get a resetter for your cartridges, this may reduce the number of cleaning cycles. Just a guess.

 

[leo8088]

My ip4300 is a much faster printer. So it does the cycle of checking itself fairly fast. But it does the self checking cycle about 30 seconds after the printer is idled. After the checking cycle the print head is parked. The noise of a cleaning cycle is almost identical to the noise of a self checking cycle. You really can't tell if it is a cleaning cycle or a self checking cycle. The self checking cycle involves checking the rollers to see if there is any paper jammed in there. A cleaning cycle does cause the rollers to turn because the rollers and the purge unit use a same motor.

If your ink consumption is excessive you may have a leak in your cartridge. You can let the printer idle for say 5 minutes and remove the print head to look at the bottom of the print head. If you see ink on the surface you have a leak. That's what I was taught by Dave from Hobbicolors. He helped me solved a leak problem before.

 

[Silverstreak]

>>>>>Kardell, are you sure it really dumped your ink? Every Canon printer does a round of checking for its paper trays, rollers, ink cartridges, print head and electronics each time the printer is powered up. If the printer idles for about 30 seconds it parks its print head by doing a round of checking of the rollers, paper path, print head carriage, etc. and finally moves the print head to park.<<<<<<<

Hi I have just picked up a decent iP4600 off ebay and to go with it I purchased a CISS from City Link express all works fine However, I noticed the same action by the printhead as mentioned above which following the making of a print the print-head if then left idle for about minute or so it goes through the same process. I too thought it was cleaning so Im relieved to know its not wasting ink. I have done about 20 A4 prints today and Im checking the ink but it does not appear to be effected when the head goes through the in- between print motions

Cheers
Bob