stratman said:
1) If the printer is still under warranty then contact Canon tech Support.
No, it is not. However I phoned and they basically suggested buying a new printhead.
2) Do you refill the cartridges? If so, what ink and what method of refilling?
No, always genuine Canon ink.
3) You can try cleaning the electrical contacts on the print head and the printer with isopropyl alcohol and a lint-free cloth or use a soft pencil eraser.
I will try to do that when I put the print head back.
4) What happens when you print images of solid colors? Is there banding with either missing color(s) or alternating light/dark colors? Does the printout begin fine and then gradually or suddenly have missing/less color(s) after a while?
I printed a test photo print to check and see if the colours are off after a long time after the last colour print. The colours were waaaaay off from top to bottom, basically showing that probably no yellow ink was actually used in places and colours that should have partially used it and so parts of the image looked like bleached or similar. Not exactly sure about magenta as I do not have the print handy now.
5) This could be anything from a clog, a print head malfunction, a cartridge issue such as ink starvation or a combination of issues.
The cartriges are fine - I replaced "low" catriges to new ones (genuine) and did the nozzle chack after that with the result I have posted with an empty yellow block.
What puzzles me most I have not found anywhere that a bad test result could be a a block of 2, darker and brighter shades of the ink colour. I have bought Service manual and had a glance at it but have not found any information regarding such problem, only regarding white lines.
6) One way to narrow the possibilities of what is wrong is to try a new OEM Canon Magenta and Yellow since these appear to to be the problem colors. Report back what happens when you try these new cartridges. If new OEM cartridges correct the problems then your old cartridges either need to be flushed to clear the issue or discarded entirely.
I had changed the to brand new ones with no result before the nozzle check without a possitive result.
7) Do not print anything else but nozzle checks for now. If cleanings have not improved the nozzle checks so far then you might want to hold off on more at this point until you try the above suggestions.
Thank you, noted.
8) There are many versions of cleaning solutions and methods to unclog a print head and flush a cartridge. What is best is a matter of opinion, but usually people use either straight water or water plus an alcohol of some type and/or ammonia. Some use Windex with Ammonium D (original Windex). For one certain ink clog, a little liquid dishwashing detergent was added to water. The following are links and text of various methods.
20 ml isopropanol (isopropyl alcohol)
80 ml distilled water
10 drops of propylene glycol (Ed. - Used to recondition the cartridge's sponge or for long term storage of print head)
(optional: 5 drops of concentrated ammonia)
Ammonia Concentration: if used in cleaning cycle stick with 5 drops per 100 ml and when used to soak printheads externally increase it to 20-25 drops.
Fold a paper towell into a nice thick and even strip and drench it with the cleaning solution and put it under the printhead and let it soak for about 1 hour. After that, execute one cleaning cycle.
25-30 % ammonia: this is concentrated ammonia. If you use household concentration, increase accordingly. Standard household ammonia in the UK is 9% w/w (weight for weight)
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=49137#p49137
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=7022&p=1
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=49410#p49410
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=38244#p38244
Thank you for detailed information!
At the moment I tried some methods but before I return my print head into the printer I am trying to be sure I did fix the printhead. I have looked at the printhead and noticed the yellow line was kind of more prominent than others - much more vivid in colour while others were of rather muted colours except for black one but that worked fine on the test.
So I
flushed with almost hot tap water
put some paper towel in a container, put the prinhead on the paper, and poured around 1 % ammonia solution and put in an oven to up the temperature. Initially made a mistake not checking the temperature closely with digital thermometer (thermocouple) so it went higher than planned 40-50 C, to probably 60+. I could not exactly measure the temperature of the bath because I put everythink in a transparent plastic bag to keep the ammonia smell from filling the kitchen and evapourating
And then I left it overnight to cool down.
After that I still saw the yellow a little irregular line on the printhead and opted for izopropyl alcohol and dropped using a syringe on intake ports of different colours on the printhead. Also took paper napkin which seems to be quite soft and rubbed gently the printhead with the izopropyl alcohol. I noticed that particularly slow to absorb the drops were cyan, yellow, magenta - these also remained a tiny bit coloured - and grey intake ports. Apart from yellow, inks of these colours seemed to work OK at least on user level nozzle check test. So time to time I droped the alcohol on these and other ports. Some ink went out on the paper but very litlle evidence of yellow marking mostly black ink marking.
So I thought these ports do not transfer ink well because they are slow to absorb it in comparison to the rest of ports. I have seen a method of connecting a kind of hose or adapted syringe so the ports to push the water or other liquid through. So probably I could make an adapter for a syringe from a used Canon ink cartrige or simply make cleaning catriges from used cartriges (I have 147 (!)
))) ). The slow ports show no to little improvent in absorbing alcohol (ammonia solution is way slower to be absorbed at any port). So now I am tempted to try option of making cleaning cartriges but I have to decide what should I opt for as fluid for a pigment ink based printer. So at the moment I am doing a research on which one is the best and before I decide.
I put the prinhead in a similar bath at room temperature with isopropyl alcohol untill tomorrow afternoon (no heating this time).
Your formula seems interesting - thank you very much for it! I just do not have propylene glycol at the moment and I am not sure if it is equally suitable for both cleaning cartrige and bath or should it be modified.
BTW, used cartriges had 2 to 3 ml of ink left.
Thank you very much for your help!
P.S. It might print OK by now as the other ports for grey and cyan seem to print OK but I want to try maximize the result as I suspect some nozzles might eject less than they should if a problem solution merely gives a rough possitive nozzle check result and... I am not eager to waste ink in priming and flushing ink each time I would try another method. So to speak, "One shot, one kill"
)
