Synchronise your Cartridge purges to avoid ink waste

BruceW77

Getting Fingers Dirty
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Location
Melbourne, Australia
Printer Model
Canon/Pixma Pro-100S, Pro9000
This thread relates specifically to the Canon Pro100S, but more than likely will apply to other Canon printers with 2 or more printhead groups.

For anyone who has had a printhead clog on a Pro100S, they will know they have the option of doing a partial manual purge. ie. There are 2 groups within the printer maintenance tab as follows:

Group 1 = PC, M, Y and PM
Group 2 = C, Bk, LGY and GY

You can choose to clean nozzles for Group1 or Group 2 or Both groups. So if you had a blockage in say the Yellow cart, it makes sense to just clean Group 1. However, if you choose you clean just one group, that group will now be out of synch with the other group when the automatic purge is next performed.

I have discovered, for my Pro100S, that the average amount of ink purged, during an automatic purge, for both groups synchronised is about 1.78 gram. However, the average amount of ink purged, during automatic unsynchronised purges, for both groups, is about 2.08 gram. ie. Almost an additional 17% of wasted ink, or 0.3g.

In my case I know my Pro100S would do an automatic purge every 5 days, if I used the printer regularly. That’s 73 purges a year or a total of 21.9g per year (just for additional ink used if groups are not synchronised).

If I am using OEM ink, I would be swapping carts when the printer reports a specific cart is empty.

Based on just 2 carts that I have had report as empty, by weighing the full carts and comparing to the empty carts, the average (usable) ink per CLI-42 cart is 9.67g. So the cost of wasted ink due to non synchronised groups in this case is 21.9 divided by 9.67 (ie. 2.26) multiplied by the cost of a cart.

If I use a typical US cost of $15 per cart, as an example, the wasted ink is costing US$34 a year.

You could also say it is filling up your waste ink pads faster as well, but I have seen on another thread that the (Pro-100) pads take about 25,000 prints, so it’s not going to affect too many people.

I am not saying to only use the “Both Group” option when choosing to do a manual clean. I am saying that once you have cleared the clog it may be advantageous to re-synchronise the 2 groups. There are a few ways of re-synchronising the groups:

1. Perform a Manual Clean of both groups once the clog is fixed (my least preferred method)

2. If you know when your next auto purge is due (for the group not manually purged), preempt it with a manual purge of both groups, say 30 minutes before the auto purge is due.

3. If you know when your next auto purge is due (for the group not manually cleaned) and your last one was recent (say 1 or 2 days previous), you could stop using the printer just prior to the due purge and start using it when your manually cleaned group is next due, a day or 2 later.

An example of option 3 will make that clearer: If you knew your last automatic purge (both groups) was 1st August at midday and you performed a manual purge on Group 1 on 2nd August at 2PM, then the next automatic purge for Group 2 is midday on 6th August and for Group 1 at 2PM on 7th August. If you stopped printing between 11:55AM on the 6th and restarted at 2:05PM on the 7th August, both groups will purge at 2:05PM on the 7th August, and will again be synchronised.

Options 2 and 3 is based on the fact that my Pro100S printer employs a 120 hour purge timer. I know there is at least one member of this forum who’s printer behaves differently. So if you know your printer does not have the timer you may be stuck with option 1. I suspect the 120 hour timer is the most common variant. Jtoolman has confirmed that his Pro100 implements this timer: https://youtu.be/rz-nQ6OhIYI. So it is not specific to the Pro100S since his printer is the Pro100.
 
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