Cannon Ink Tank Error Message for the IP4300. Anything agreed on yet?

[jru]

RE: chipped carts for ip4300, ip4500...
Remove carts ONLY WITH POWER OFF (to prevent any possible recordkeeping of number of times carts are removed)

I think that Trigger37's suggestion that when we remove carts, do so with power off, is a good one, and doesn't seem like it can hurt:

But, your idea of 1. Open the cover to get the head to the center. 2. Pull the power cord out. 3. Pull all ink carts and fill them all and replace. 4. Plug the power cord back in to the printer. Power the printer on. This will stop the count of how many time the ink carts have been pulled.

It seems like if those of us with ip4300 / ip4500's can all do this and report back, we can see if this works to prevent KittyMarmendale's
"ink tank errors have occured, open the printer's cover and replace tanks of which the lights are off" error message, which some have hypothesized may occur after some limited number of cart removals.

 

[Trigger 37]

jru,... I would add one more item to the list,.. if you're going to pull and fill all ink carts, you might as well pull the printhead and at least clean the bottom of the nozzles. If it has been printing ok, don't rinse all the ink out of the inside of the printhead because if you do you will have to "Re-Prime" the printhead with new ink and this will just waste ink. Clean the bottom of the head where a lot of ink has dried. Use a paper towel wet with HOT water and gently wipe the excess ink off. This can also be done by just "Blotting" the head on a wet paper towel. Don't let the head set on anything,...just blot it. If you let it set on any surface that has a lot of water the colors can "Wick" together and cause contamination. Then you have to print "Purge" files to clear it up. The goal is to get the dried ink off the bottom of the head without changing anything inside the head. Also, don't get finger prints on any of the contacts.

 

[Smile]

Don't forget to short circuit the plug pins as this discharges the capacitors. Without this your printer will know you removed the cartridges as it knows how many times it was on/ off etc.

 

[jru]

Thanks for the added suggestions, Trigger37 & Smile!

 

[Trigger 37]

jru,.. I would like to strongly disagree with the suggestion that SMILE just posted. I would never EVER short out the power supply pins. This is a very good way to damage the power supply. Just unplug the power unit and let it set while you work on the ink carts and printhead. It will slowly discharge itself. There are overvoltage protection circuits in all of these supplies and other ESD circuits attached to the same lines. Shorting out the pins will produce an extremely high current surge in the line not to mention an voltage ark across the pins which could also damage and burn the contact pins. These units are designed to tolerate the normal plug and unplug from 115VAC and this is tested extensively. They are not designed or tested to tolerate shorted AC pins.

Another reason is that while the EEprom does count the number of "Power ON/OFF" cycles, this has noting to do with the count for the number of times the ink carts are removed. There are people that power their printers On and Off everyday and none of them report any kind of problems with the print function being blocked.

When I get some time I will take the iP4200 I have and do several cartrige removal cycles and in between I will print out the EEprom data to show the exact change in count for each ink cart. I will do this with the power cord left in and then again with the cord pulled out and we will know the difference.

 

[Corybuff]

I have a newer Model 4200 (received from Canon website) that I have been using since the end of January 2008. I have recently refilled 3 of the cartridges and replaced for the first time. No problem with the printing. On this new model Canon it does not seem to allow me to be disable the "ink monitor". The message as of now just shows the "explanation point message" but does not go pass this message to allow it to be disabled. It shows on the diagram that the refilled cartridges are empty, but does not allow it to be disabled. It still allows the printer to print at this point. I am afraid at some point it is just going to shut down with refilled cartridges. I have been checking the cartridges for ink levels and have removed them many times to monitor. I will follow the advise and turn off the printer next time I check. Could it be that Canon has now not allowed refilling cartridges by not being able to disable the ink monitor with perhaps new software? I am worried.

 

[Smile]

Shorting out the pins will produce an extremely high current surge in the line not to mention an voltage ark across the pins which could also damage and burn the contact pins.

There is no arc that can damage pins? There is even no dangerous voltage, go unplug your printer and check the power cord pins with a multimeter.

Just unplug the power unit and let it set while you work on the ink carts and printhead.

You must wait at least 15 minutes at least on pixma 3500.

Another reason is that while the EEprom does count the number of "Power ON/OFF" cycles, this has noting to do with the count for the number of times the ink carts are removed.

I would not agree, how do you know that? IF the printer can count "Power ON/OFF" cycles it can count ink tank removal too.

I have and do several cartrige removal cycles and in between I will print out the EEprom data to show the exact change in count for each ink cart. I will do this with the power cord left in and then again with the cord pulled out and we will know the difference.

I doubt you would see anything, unless Canon is more stupid than me ant deliberitaly shows this in EEProm print :/

 

[Trigger 37]

Smile,.. Gee,.. if there are no electronic functions that could be damaged by shorting out the pins, what were you hoping to accomplish by doing it???? You are free to do what every you want with your printer, just don't recommmend it to others. Ever since the first iP4200 printer was introduced with CLI-8 ink carts the Canon software has been capturing data about everything the printer does. Listed below is an Explanation of all the data they capture directly out of the Service Manual;





The image below is also from the service manual and is and example of what that data looks like when it is printed. As you can see they compress the information so if you don't have a service manual, you wouldn't know what your looking at. In the information print, item 11 is the Ink tank replacement count. You will also notice that there is HDEEprom data and explanation for that. It is basically everything about the carriage, printhead, and the current ink levels for each ink cart.



Just because we can reset the EEprom data on the main logic card, this does not affect the data on the Head EEprom or what ever eeprom there is on each cartridge chip. There continues to be more people reporting different types of ink carts reset problems, expecially those that have a late model iP4200 refurbished.

I am limited in any further testing I can do since all of the iP4200's I have still have solid RED ink carts and I have no plans to mess with these ink carts or test them in any way. If I had a damaged iP4200 I would do it ASAP, but these are all in great condition. I also don't have any empty CLI-8 ink carts except the ones in my iP6600d, which I use every day. I don't want to experiment with them either. I've never had my hands on a iP4300 or iP4500. If I get anymore info I will post it hear. There have been other posts that have suggested that resetting the EEprom data would restore the ink level but I don't think this will work as there are two records kept of the ink levels. If they don't match, I have no idea what will happen.

 

[Trigger 37]

lin,.. Thanks for your private message. I understand that your english is not that great so I will try to explain. When "Smile" suggested that we short out the pins, what he meant is to "Physically take a screw driver or some other piece of metal and electricall connect or "Short" to two pins inside the printer where the power connector normally plugs. His goal was to stop the logic inside the printer fron detecting that the ink cartridges were about to be removed. Somehow he felt that if any residual power supply voltage was left, the logic card could still sense that a ink cart had been removed, and therefore log the fact to the eeprom, and he felt if he shorted the pins, this internal logic voltage would magically go somewhere and it could no longer detect any ink cart from being removed. His goal was correct, we don't want the logic to detect the removeal of any ink cart. However, I totally disagree with his approach and I warn anyone not to short out the power supply pins. You can achieve the same effect by just leaving the printer unplugged while you take care of your ink cartridges.

These machine long ago stopped using isolation transformers in the design of power supplies and now only use "Switchiing Regulators", which means all of the voltage and current regulation from the 115VAC down to the 5.0 logic voltage is directly connected to the two external power pins. There are 1000's of ways to design switching regulators that will convert 115VAC down to the very small logic voltages that printer use and I have no way of knowing which type of design is used in any printer. All I know is that "SHORTING OUT THE INPUT PINS OF ANY SWITCHING REGULATOR WHILE IT MAY STILL BE CHARGED IS A BAD THING TO DO, ESPECIALLY IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO IT."

Lin,.. I hope this explains what we were discussing. I also hope we can get past this topic as it is distracting from the main purpose of this thread.

 

[Smile]

Somehow he felt that if any residual power supply voltage was left, the logic card could still sense that a ink cart had been removed

Well on my ip6700D you can enter a special service menu if you short power plug pins then enter some code with buttons otherwise it does not work as charge still remains in printer and as I said can take long to drain.