Unusual Things, Canon Chipped Cart Printers. With Answers Or Without.

[canonfodder]

I'll start this out with my startling report concerning last night's operation. It has become a FNO post. Sorry

I have been refilling CLI-8 color carts in my Canon iP4200 for a while now. In their turn, each cart was declared as empty and I did the "continue printing" command with the reset button. The ink monitor has shown those color carts as empty, of course. The little graphic of the ink tank has been showing "no ink" in each of the carts.

I had not printed a lot of text since getting this printer, so the pigment black had not been refilled as yet. It has been saying "ink low" for a while now, and finally it declared that cart empty, making me do the reset to continue printing. With this last cart, the pigment black, being declared empty, last night I stopped other tasks and prepared the cart for refilling, drilling and tapping a hole on top near the front to use for refilling and to take the 6-32 screw with "O" ring for sealing.

I filled the prepared cart, installed the screw, let it drip, (which it didn't do much at all) and returned it to the printer. Knowing I would be away from the printer for a little extra time while drilling, tapping, and filling, when I removed the cart, I had closed the cover to let the print head be parked in its normal parking spot. I thought this might reduce any drying. (Even though there is a humidifier out in the hallway, our house is so dry you could shake out your washed wet shorts three times and they'd be ready to wear!) So when the cart was prepared and flled and sealed, I returned to the printer, and opened the lid. The print head dutifully came out, and I reinstalled the pigment ink cart and closed the lid.

Nothing unusual yet? Yes, but wait!

I decided that a printing a nozzle check print would be a good idea, so I brought up the maintenance page and selected the check print. When the printer got ready, the "all carts empty" ink monitor presentation was the UNUSUAL thing.

THE PHOTO BLACK CART IS SHOWING FULL !
THE PIGMENT BLACK CART SHOWS EMPTY.
ALL THREE COLOR CARTS SHOW HALF FULL !

Almost not believing my eyes, after the nozzle check print finished in fine condition, I immediately printed a full page photo on plain paper. No problem with the print, and the ink monitor still showed the levels as stated above.

I turned the printer off, waited a bit, and turned it back on. I repeated the act of printing a full page photo on plain paper, (as low cost as Kirkland paper is, I just can't bring myself to use it if not necessary). Everything still the same. Print is O.K. and the ink monitor STILL says that the photo black is full, the pigment black is empty, the yellow, magenta, and cyan carts show half full.

Needless to say, I planned to watch that ink monitor closely. Will it report the proper reduction as ink is used? Can I get the printer to do this trick again?

So this morning I had to try a print to see what changes, if any, occurred overnight with the printer Off. I was almost disappointed to find that those half full carts are back to the empty presentation on the ink monitor. But the previously shown as empty photo black cart, which showed as full last night, now shows half full. This then is still an "unusual thing".

One thing I thought of was the fact that I had rinsed off the refilled pigment black cart. Do you suppose that a water droplet trapped behind the chip could have confused the monitor function? I gave the cart a quick rinse this morning to see what would happen, but that changed nothing. Of course, just where would a water droplet need to be, to foul up the action? A water droplet would only conduct a small current, especially at the low voltages present at the chip. A nice experiment would be to bring out a tiny wire from each terminal on the chip and externally try some high resistance like 100KOhms across each combination of the wires. Then again, this phenomenon may have nothing to do with a water droplet or film at the chip. And it certainly has not been proven to reset any chip. At this point, I could only say that the ink monitor reported the wrong things for a while. But I will still wonder "What's up with the photo black?"

What are your theories? What are your experiences, related or unrelated? What have your heard, even from a friend of a friend?

canonfodder the puzzled

 

[chippedoff]

Hello.

I had a simular event. However with spent chip contact swapping (in series). I'l get back to you on that when i've done more tests.

One question though.

What kind of water did you rince with?

Distled, artisian (hard water), city (chloronated/flourenized) water, saline water?

As for your water results. It would probably required more than one jumper (wire) between two points.

I will try your water (very lite damping of the chip) trick on an old 4200 , however as i do not know your water's composition i will try salt (saline) water as it conducts more.

Obviously you had a dual reset of your chips. As for the first results of all reporting as full (shorted twice).

It is possible that you did have a full permanent reset, then the chip shorted out the second time redering it half full. However by then the water had evaporated.

In theory (and yes i've done this several times on laser pritner counter chips). Was to use some contact solution on a cotton swab and with two very thin copper wires (+ & -) and a minute current and rubed it on the chip. Since the contact solution is not interconnective after about a minute I put the chip back in the pritner and voila . Reset every time.

Now i won't claim that this will work on inkjet chips that run encrypted data such as canon.

However if consider the epson chip reseters , The also do a simular shorting out.

Canonfodder you just may have found canon's achiles heel.

 

[canonfodder]

"Chippedoff,

The water was straight from the faucet. It is moderately hard, coming from a well in the earth. I would not expect it to be nearly as conductive as salt water. Salt water can REALLY conduct an electric current.

In a quick check with an Ohmmeter, I took a small plastic glass with about 3 ounces of our faucet water in it. I sunk the two 1/2 inch long probes in the water to a 1/2 inch depth. The initial reading is about 0.5 megohm. The reading climbs with time, because with a DC Ohmmeter, the polarization of the probes starts to insulate them. The polarization is the extremely thin layer of gas bubbles which forms on each probe, with oxygen on one and hydrogen on the other. A lower voltage Ohmmeter would reduce this effect. I put 10 grains of table salt into the water and stirred it up. The initial meter reading now is around 0.1 megohm, or 100K Ohms.

I presume that the chip is CMOS and therefore can do things with very small currents, but I would expect that 100K might not spoil anything "in-circuit" no matter where it connects, because the inputs are connected to rather low driving impedances and the outputs should be low impedance them selves.

While writing that last paragraph I thought of one possibility for conditions other than low impedance being present. We plug and unplug carts with the printer powered up. The chips are making connections or breaking connections with power on, and they undoubtedly connect in no special order. So we could easily have some water bridging the "wrong" thing and an input not yet connected, but a power pin making connection already and.........you see where this leads, right? We certainly can't assume that the connections made are "bounce" free, either. A hand-driven contact "makes" many times during the transition between the very first touch and the last bouncing "open".

 

[chippedoff]

Hello CF.

Sorry for the confusion. Being on at the same time and writting the same posting at the same time without refreshing tends to confuse the train of thought.

As for results of inserting into a powered printer or an unpowered one i will have to try that.

As for which pins contact first durring insertion . I wonder if the printer waits for all contacts to be detected at once or in sequence.

Uusaly the insertion is very quick perhaps a ms, and the angle of contact of the chip to head contacts is roughly parallel.

The water becomes the variable.

 

[canonfodder]

Referring back to my original post: I have not printed a lot since that post, but I wanted to report that my Photo Black is still showing half full in the Ink Monitor display when I print. I have not printed enough to know whether it is really counting down or not. It may have just stuck a number in memory and it doesn't update because the printer had already declared that cart empty and stopped counting. I'll try to figure out how to blow that Ink Monitor box up enough to see small changes. I believe a screen capture right when it is printing should do the job. I think I could blow up the screen capture a specific amount and then print it and actually use a ruler to "read" the distance. We'll see.

 

[Tabriz]

I have found that the Canon level monitor seems to show changes in large steps rather than small.
There should be an entry in the registry showing levels and reflect what appears in the display. With my printer the entry is as follows:-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers\Canon iP5300\PrinterDriverData\CnmSLM_CIR : PBK=070,BK=070,Y=040,M=040,C=040

These entries do not change between prints so I can only assume that there are preset reporting steps.

Hope this helps
regards
Tabriz

 

[chippedoff]

I have found that the Canon level monitor seems to show changes in large steps rather than small.
There should be an entry in the registry showing levels and reflect what appears in the display. With my printer the entry is as follows:-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers\Canon iP5300\PrinterDriverData\CnmSLM_CIR : PBK=070,BK=070,Y=040,M=040,C=040

These entries do not change between prints so I can only assume that there are preset reporting steps.

Hope this helps
regards
Tabriz

Hello.

Yes indeed the canon ink monitor seems to only display amount in small chunks to start (about 1/8),then jumps by 1/4-3/8 increments.

Yes CF i did take full res screen captures and the levels never drop in slight increments.

It sould be noted that even the epson ink monitor does roughly the same but average chunk ink monitoring(a bit smoother) However if you have a util such a the SSC util the ink levels are accurate.

From general use the orignal canon &epson ink monitoring software are very broad averages. Which could be anywhere from 15-20% leeway. While this could be good thing to keep the print heads from drying out. It can't account for the actual true amount of ink in the cart after refilling. Which you'll notice when one colour is suddenly missing and the inkmonitor level states 50%.