White bands appearing when printing from Canon IP3000

[pramclub]

My Canon IP3000 is several years old but has worked well until the last couple of weeks. I only do a handful of pages weekly, mostly black and white text. I saw some faint very narrow lines, so I changed the cartridges and ran a clean. The bands quickly became wide (about half an inch) horizontally across the page.

I don't use Windows so I can't access the deep-clean option which I think is included in the windows driver. I use cartridges from printer-ink.com and have used them for several years without a problem.

Test prints are perfect - except for the white bands! Is this likely to be the print head?

TIA

 

[RMM]

What operating system do you use? Linux? Generally the Mac (At least OSX) drivers also have the "Canon Toolkit".

 

[pramclub]

I'm on Linux - Ubuntu 10.04

 

[lake43811]

The white bands are caused by a partial blockage in your printhead. this can be cleared by doing several cleaning cycles. it may take quite a few to clear it up. This will use up quite a bit of ink. If this does not clear after lots of cleaning and only as a last resort it is possible to take your printhead out of the printer remove the cartridges and then soak it in tepid water. Dry it well with kitchen roll and then replace. Do a cleaning cycle and then hopeffully you will be sorted. http://www.kc-inks.co.uk/

 

[ghwellsjr]

Have you done a nozzle check? This is easy to do by holding in the paper feed button until the power button flashes twice and then releasing it. If you have a scanner or camera, it would be helpful to upload a picture of the nozzle check.

Before you can be assurred that cleaning cycles will do anything, you need to verify that you purge system is working. You can do this by depositing some Windex or other window cleaner or just plain water on the two pads where the print head parks. Use a syringe, eye dropper or bent straw to do this. Don't worry if you splash a little liquid around. Then turn the power off and back on and do a nozzle check (or you can just command a print head cleaning from your computer if possible). You need to see that the liquid has been sucked away.

Instead of removing your print head to clean it, I strongly recommend you do that as a last resort. If you soak your print head in water, I strongly urge you to wait two days after you dry it off before putting it back in the printer. Otherwise, you run the risk of developing a permanent short inside the electronics of the print head. Instead, I recommend trying to let the printer clean the print head itself by depositing Windex on the two pads and doing a cleaning followed by a nozzle check. Keep repeating until the nozzle check shows all the nozzles working.

 

[pramclub]

Nozzle check:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pramclub/5144026270/
Some missing parts from the black, but the others look OK.
CUPS test:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pramclub/514342022
The image looks fine, but the text areas show the bands of missing print. Almost all my printing is text - but is it possible just to get errors on text areas and not images?

 

[ghwellsjr]

You're going to need a new print head. The top half of your pigment black is not printing at all which means there is an electrical problem with the print head. Also the top half of the dark cyan is not printing the same as the bottom half, so you have a second electrical problem with the print head.

If you need to print some text, you can tell the printer that you are printing on matte paper and it might come out acceptable but it will be using your dye color inks to mix a black so you will go through a lot of ink. This would only be a temporary "fix" until you can get a new print head (or a new printer).

 

[pramclub]

Thanks everyone for all the help.

 

[printhelp]

Narrow White Lines in the printed page
Since pramclub seems to be happy with your solution from my reading of his last comment -- In an effort to keep things simple, I hope its OK if I just add and continue with his post. If thats not correct I would be happy to re-post.

My problem is similar but it does not appear to be an actual problem in the print head in my mind, let me explain.

Little thin white lines are appearing across a printed picture, a little less than 1/8 inch apart but equally spaced. The white lines also appear more random when printing text but, could just be landing in the white area in between the text.

This Canon iP3000 printer had a waste ink error message. I earlier cleared the error message, temporarily installed a print head and it all printed and tested OK. I then set the printer aside, print head and ink removed until I might need it. Now that I have a need to use this printer I went back and cleaned the felt type waste ink pads in the bottom of the printer and re-set the ink waste counter again. Before testing I then installed a new print head along with 4 new ink cartages and then tested. To my surprise these little white lines appeared across the printed page. I did a print head alignment and a print head cleaning. Surprisingly the lines dont appear in the print head test page. So I removed the new print head and cartages thinking they might be defective and switched the print head out of another Canon printer that prints OK and in to this iP3000 Same problem using the second print head and ink cartages, same little narrow white lines. Restored the print heads and ink to their origonal printer locations. Maybe its a driver problem so I connected this iP3000 to my notebook computer which I had been using to print successfully earlier to a different iP3000. Same problem, different computer problem follows the printer in question.
Suggestions welcomed.
Thanks