AAAGh - the injet gods demand a sacrifice

[Roy Sletcher]

In this post, I related how I recently experienced ink starvation in the PC channel which turned out to be in the body of the print head, not the nozzles.

As luck would have it I was also subsequently away for 4 weeks, during which time the printer was turned off. Just like you, the nozzle checks were perfect after returning and I printed a number of perfect prints. Somewhere after about sixty 4x6 prints, banding suddenly appeared in prints with sky, and it was found that the clog in the PC channel in the print head body had suddenly returned. Some work with a syringe cleared it again and everything is now OK again.

Apparently there is a glob of something floating around in the PC channel, and this weekend I am going to boil the body to try to break it up. Perhaps the "yellow problem" can manifest itself in other colors, but at a much lower level.

Well!! Boiling a printhead is far beyond my skill or comfort level.

Guess I will stick with the simple stuff. my experience has been that when these problems start, and even if one manages to resuscitate the printhead, it seems that the improvement is not permanent and eventually it dies. Hoping to change that pattern.

RS

 

[Emulator]

It seems the print head failure saga continues, even in the Pro 100. Not having inspected a Pro 100, is the print head the same as the Pro9000 II, but with more channels? Is the technology the same?

 

[Grandad35]

Well!! Boiling a printhead is far beyond my skill or comfort level.

The electronics and ceramic print head will be removed from the (what appears to be) phenolic body, so the critical bits won't be boiled, only the body. Sorry if this wasn't clear.

 

[The Hat]

You should just soak (2” deep) your print head in whatever solution you prefer for 4 or 5 days the longer the better, and if that doesn’t cure the problem then you’re looking at a new print head, sorry.

Your problem is not caused by ink starvation and reintroducing new OEM ink into the equation at this stage would not solve anything but it might be better to use a refilled CLl-8 yellow cart instead, and stay using your excising inks..

 

[Roy Sletcher]

HERE IS THE RESULT OF MY EFFORTS.

Thanks for all who commented. Followed most of the advice and am cautiously optimistic.

Will go into some detail about steps taken. Not intended to bore readers to death, but just in case there may be clues that others can build on, or add to our growing knowledge base.

1: Followed Miklings advice (which coincides with the Hat's advice) to soak the outlets in Windex, and pour windex down the inlet pipes inside the plastic case. Lots of coloured ink emerged. Left overnight in the Windex.

2: This morning dried the outlets. Sprayed compressed air to dry up any liquid residue and then GENTLY used a warm hair dryer to ensure no moisture remained on the print head before replacing.

3: Replaced head and cartridges. Ran two cleaning cycles and a nozzle check. Results were disappointing. All colours were blotchy and very light. Concluded that because all except yellow had been printing OK this result may have been due to residual Windex in print head.

4: Ran two deep cleaning cycles. After this the problematic yellow was perfect, but some of the other colours still had imperfect results. because I was confident the other colour nozzles were OK, knew this was going to work. YAY.

• If step 4 had showed no improvement was prepared to implement Miklings "WIndex Cleaner Cartridge" plan, and had one prepped ready to go. Fortunately it was not needed. Cartridge remains on stand by.

5: Took some time to get all nozzles with a clean nozzle check. Am attributing this to impurities introduce by the Windex.
Have now made about 8 letter size prints and tested image against my test images and all is looking good. Fingers Crossed!! I have had cartridges or nozzles come back before, only to die in the not too distant future.

6: Interesting additional fact - checking my logs I see that my first problem with the yellow occurred on November 17th last year. I used a new OEM cartridge to verify it was a cartridge problem, and continued refilling the yellow CLI42 OEM's until the "Yello Gello" problem was reported early in 2014, whereupon I felt it prudent to change to the CLI-8 yellow for refills. Even though the evidence, was, and still remains, circumstantial.


We will see what revenge the Inkjet gods are planning!!!

Roy Sletcher

 

[The Hat]

Good on you Roy, it’s good to hear of your success, unfortunately you’ll just have to wait till next year to find out if it’s going to repeat its self again, hopefully not..

If anyone else finds themselves in the same predicament as Roy did, then don’t be tempted to revert back to using OEM yellow..

 

[mikling]

Roy, the part about drying the printhead nozzles with a blow dryer or compressed air possibly needs to be reviewed. If liquid is left inside, the cleaning cycle in cooperation with capillary action WILL pull out the balance of what liquid is inside and ink will replace it. Once you dry the nozzles out, you are out looking for trouble. First any residues from windex or even left over ink WILL dry inside there and then cause trouble. Once the nozzle dries out and some type of residue is left, it can be hydro..something... that does not allow capillary action and then you have air voids.
After the windex treatment, I would simply do a quick rinse or simply pat dry the printhead except for the nozzle plate and inlet. I always want the inlet to the nozzles remain wetted. No "ink link" breaks.

Just as an example I have an iP3300 taken out of storage and it took about a month of use before ALL the nozzles would be perfectly uniform again. Prior to that you could observe some crooked shooting and I attribute this to a very thin film that had dried on the exterior rim of the nozzle. The printhead was washed before it was put away.

You should use compressed air to only dry behind the electronic plate but I suggest never directly into the nozzles or the inlet screen.

There is a reason why Canon keeps new printheads wetted with some glycol during storage inside the sealed bag. It prevents all the problems you had getting it going again.

Well it is good to see it is printing good now. f you can acquire spare printheads while they are inexpensive on Ebay because of the rebate situation, it might be prudent to keep one on hand. When the rebate is gone, the same printheads will be much more costly.

 

[Roy Sletcher]

Roy, the part about drying the printhead nozzles with a blow dryer or compressed air possibly needs to be reviewed. If liquid is left inside, the cleaning cycle in cooperation with capillary action WILL pull out the balance of what liquid is inside and ink will replace it. Once you dry the nozzles out, you are out looking for trouble. First any residues from windex or even left over ink WILL dry inside there and then cause trouble. Once the nozzle dries out and some type of residue is left, it can be hydro..something... that does not allow capillary action and then you have air voids.
After the windex treatment, I would simply do a quick rinse or simply pat dry the printhead except for the nozzle plate and inlet. I always want the inlet to the nozzles remain wetted. No "ink link" breaks.

Just as an example I have an iP3300 taken out of storage and it took about a month of use before ALL the nozzles would be perfectly uniform again. Prior to that you could observe some crooked shooting and I attribute this to a very thin film that had dried on the exterior rim of the nozzle. The printhead was washed before it was put away.

You should use compressed air to only dry behind the electronic plate but I suggest never directly into the nozzles or the inlet screen.

There is a reason why Canon keeps new printheads wetted with some glycol during storage inside the sealed bag. It prevents all the problems you had getting it going again.

Well it is good to see it is printing good now. f you can acquire spare printheads while they are inexpensive on Ebay because of the rebate situation, it might be prudent to keep one on hand. When the rebate is gone, the same printheads will be much more costly.

Good points about drying the printhead, Mike.

Was not aware of then and will revise my procedures for the future.

Also prudent to get a new print head whilst they are in the US$60 range. Even came a across a couple of complete printers minus the ink for same price. Unfortunately shipping into Canada would be prohibitive.

RS