S820 colors dis- and re-appear according to paper & quality settings

[Frutchy]

Hello,

I'm afraid my daughter's Canon S820 printer is close to death but just wanted to check here whether there is something I have missed out.

I have read a lot of posts, including in this very valuable forum and I have tried everything I found.

The issue :
Since a while, the printer seems to do a completely wrong mapping of colors and qualities.
When I print a document on ordinary paper and leave the basic settings (Standard quality = 4) and Color Management = Auto, I nearly get a correct printout.

(For my tests I created a color palette page having gray scales, the primary colors and halftones.)

But in this standard setting the printer does some horizontal striping and picture or graphics quality is therefore unacceptable.
This printer has always done that and therefore my daughter mostly used the "Very fine "(1) setting for Print Quality.
Which gave very good results until recently.

But when I now print with this high quality setting, Photo magenta and Photo Cyan are missing completely.
When I specify 'High resolution paper' with quality 2 (Fine) only Photo Magenta is not showing up.
The same paper setting with quality 1 (very fine) is doing the same but other half tones look different, more green.
With other paper and quality settings, such as "Photo", Glossy, etc. behaviour is different but still none of the settings has correct results showing all colors. In some cases even the black color disappears at about 1/3 of the page!

The list of things I have tried and which did not solve the problem:
- I changed carts with my i965 printer (luckily they are the same); I only use original Canon carts but my daughter did use generic ones.
- I cleaned and deep-cleaned the head;
- I tried to realign the head, but that doesn't seem to work at all: all colors are completely striped, from top to bottom, except Magenta which comes out correctly at +1;
- I unmounted the head, put it in water for a night, let it dry;
- I blew the head with a high-pressure cleaning air can;
- I cleaned the cleaning pads and brushes of the printer;
- I cleaned the electrical contacts between the head and the printer.
- I did a reinitialization of the printer's EEPROM .
- I reinstalled the driver and tried several ICM profiles.

Funny enough, when I put the head on a paper towel, all colors come out nicely and evenly:
6 parallel stripes, same length, same width, which makes me say that the nozzles are not clogged.
It just seems the printer doesn't use the colors that it should make use of.

Should I come to the conclusion that this is an electronical problem and that the printer is dead? Or is there still any hope?
I know a lot of devices on which one can flash the firmware but printers don't seem to be part of the list?

Thanks in advance for any help or advice!
Ronald

 

[headphonesman]

I had exactly the same problems ( would not do high res with my 820, colors weird)......, which is now dead and gone.....
I also carried out all the corrective actions that you did....to no avail. I was very disappointed with this printer after this happened because it had not had excessive use, but it was out of warranty.
Its the most i ever paid for a printer, nearly 200, I wont pay that much again !.
I reached the conclusion that it was a failure in the electronics connection with the printer head to the machine.

On a positive note I can tell you that ~I managed to keep it printing half decent color prints by selecting Transparency setting.....its the only one that still worked..........these connections seemed to still be working correctly.......its worth a try.
This worked ok for about 3-4 months.......with lots of use. (I was determined to get all I could out of it.1
The cost of a new Head is about 80.0...............not worth it.

This of course was just a stop- gap. I replaced it with a Canon iP4000, and also I have a 5200. these had better not develop this fault or I shall be very very annoyed.
Try and keep it going.........just out of spite.......but buy the canon 4200 to replace it (warning tho the carts are chipped and not cheap.......compatable ink is not yet available.

 

[Frutchy]

Hi headphonesman,

Just tried it with the Transparency setting. Hadn't tried that one before.
Yet another akward behavior: Photo Cyan and Photo Magenta are back again (how wonderful), overall image coverage OK (no stripes), but black goes purple, pure yellow (i.e. in RGB R=255, G=255, B = 0) becomes a kind of orange-like salmon colour, so there are no green colours anymore on my colour chart. Very funny.

While I was at it, I now also tried the "Superior glossy photo film" (at least that is what it says in French) : It prints with quality 1 (very fine) instead of 3 for the transparency (so it should be better), but overall coverage quality is less good (horizontal stripes again). In this setting, black is black again, greyscales are nearly OK, but Photo Cyan and Photo Magenta have disappeared again and pure yellow is still this kind of orange-like salmon colour, so again there are no green nor yellow colours on my color chart. And the Photo Cyan half tones have now become a greyscale halftone! Crazy!

Thanks for your speedy reply. I have to come to the conclusion that this printer is gone. I paid it something like 265 euros, just like the i965 which still is performing amazingly good (hope that lasts). You're right about the Pixma iP4200, I already spotted that one as the candidate for replacement: seems to be much better than the iP4000 and costs only about 95 euros in the cheap shops (120 euros elsewhere).
And yes, the carts have specific LED indicators for low ink levels which seems to make it impossible to use other brands. But I don't fancy non original equipment: Generally speaking I found colors not very reliable. So I stick to the Canon carts.

Thanks again. I feel it as a kind of relief to know that I am at least not the only person in the world having this problem...

Ronald