Purging a bunch of old carts - Lots of Gunk... Maybe Algae ?

[Nifty]

I was purging a bunch of old Canon BCI-6 carts to take to Staples for recycling and discovered a few that had some thick gunk in the ink reservoir. I'm assuming it is algae because I can't imagine anything else that would be growing / condensing in there to such a degree.

What's interesting is it seems very sporadic in just a few carts and not in others. I'm wondering if it was one of the inks I had used, if I had somehow contaminated the carts, or stored them improperly.

Well, either way, it was quite thick and I'm glad I've yet to run into this stuff in carts that I'm actively using <fingers crossed>.

Here is my yellow cart with sludge on the side:

 

[fortisi876]

Why do you purge before recycling, sorry if there's an obvious answer.

 

[yupkime]

nasty!

 

[Nifty]

Why do you purge before recycling, sorry if there's an obvious answer.

Great question! I was mostly doing it to just clean them out a bit. Some still had a bit of ink in them and I didn't want to leave them with a mess of leaking carts. Oh, and I had just hacked together a purging hose / contraption that attached to my garage sink and wanted to give it a try. I didn't do a super clean purging. Just enough to get them mostly empty of ink.

 

[ghwellsjr]

It appears there is a refill plug in the top of the reservoir so this must have been caused by a third-party ink. Do you recall which one?

 

[Nifty]

I really wish I knew more details of this cart. It is 3rd party and was refilled with another 3rd party ink. Unfortunately it was in a pile of old carts I never got rid of, so I don't know the original manufacturer, what I refilled it with, or the storage conditions.

I know that I'll definitely be keeping an eye on my other carts and my ink bottles!

 

[ghwellsjr]

The image of the reservoir appears that it is empty of ink but has that gunk in it, yet the sponge side looks like you are in the process of purging it. Was there ink in the reservoir prior to purging? In other words, are you speculating that this algae was growing in liquid or on a dry surface?

 

[Nifty]

Yes, there was ink in the reservoir prior to my purge, so it was growing in a wet environment. Of the 20 carts I had purged, there were 2 that definitely had very clear evidence of "foreign matter". The other cart was a BCI-6 bk.

 

[Nifty]

Of note: The growth seems to have been only on one side of the cartridge. I wish I had known where and how it was being stored to see if that had any bearing on the way the buildup occurred.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I would be interested in know if the gunk is really algae or some other growth or if it is just concentrated dye color. If it is from the dye, it should be water soluble. You would probably have to cut the cartridge open to gain access to it to do more experiments but here is what I would do:

Take some of the offending material and put it on a plate (assuming it is soft enough to adhere to the plate) and run water across it and see if you get a stream of the ink color flowing away from the material while the material gradually dissolves away. If it does that, I'm sure it's just the dye material.

If you think it is algae, you could dab some of it on a clean slice of cheese and see if it grows there after a few days. That's my scientific growth bed for germs and other nasty stuff.