Canon InkTanks and the Notorious Air in tube issue

[James Mike]

I haven't fully disassembled one of these machines yet but I would assume there is something to force ink down the line while printing?

at a glance(from pictures/poking around with a flashlight) it seems like it uses the mariotte principle as most third party CISS tanks do albeit with a weirder tank design where majority of the volume of the air balance chamber in a regular ciss tank is replaced by an air inlet tube running towards the top of the tank.

I wonder if the design changes makes the system less forgiving of the printer not being level. The top of the smaller chamber is at most level with the bottom of the printhead with the rest of the tank sitting about 1 cm below that level

Photo from the G4000 service manual

 

[brwinters]

at a glance(from pictures/poking around with a flashlight) it seems like it uses the mariotte principle as most third party CISS tanks do albeit with a weirder tank design where majority of the volume of the air balance chamber in a regular ciss tank is replaced by an air inlet tube running towards the top of the tank.

I wonder if the design changes makes the system less forgiving of the printer not being level. The top of the smaller chamber is at most level with the bottom of the printhead with the rest of the tank sitting about 1 cm below that level

Photo from the G4000 service manual
View attachment 15713

If it doesn't have any way to pressurize the lines even slightly, then it's no wonder it has air intake problems. I know it costs an extra buck-twenty a unit, but I'd have liked to see a pump on each tank, i.e. the purge pump, that would be firmware-controlled to automatically replenish the "dampers" (if you can call them that) every so often with a small kick of pressure. But then you'd also probably need actual dampers.

I don't know if it was because of me moving it, or the new angle of the printer, or just a bad day, but I just had all four of my lines take on air after moving my printer. Then I did some deep cleans as usual which took care of it until it didn't. Inadvertently starved the print heads for a chill 12 pages (but didn't cook them thankfully). I wound up doing the first part of an ink flush cycle to make sure the dampers got a good helping of ink and now it is working fine again. The printer used to be on a stand with a slight incline at the front, with it now being pretty much level.

I did get around to making a new cleaning page that has much larger areas of each color, so hopefully that helps reduce the random air in lines. If not I might have to start getting more creative.

 

[James Mike]

I don't know if it was because of me moving it, or the new angle of the printer, or just a bad day, but I just had all four of my lines take on air after moving my printer. Then I did some deep cleans as usual which took care of it until it didn't. Inadvertently starved the print heads for a chill 12 pages (but didn't cook them thankfully). I wound up doing the first part of an ink flush cycle to make sure the dampers got a good helping of ink and now it is working fine again. The printer used to be on a stand with a slight incline at the front, with it now being pretty much level.

it feels to me that amount of ink backflow in that scenario seems to be too much too fast even by megatank standards. Does the room experience large temperature swings if not it seems like a big air leak somewhere if ink rushes back within minutes of being relocated?

 

[The Hat]

it feels to me that amount of ink backflow in that scenario seems to be too much too fast even by megatank standards.

I wonder how long it will take for everyone to realise that Canon printers are not very suitable for the use of CISS with cartridges on the print head, and far more reliable..

2 and 2 not always makes four, the amount of time and ink you waste clearing and flushing these tubes, it would be cheaper to stick with OEM carts and inks..
Just my two cent worth..

 

[brwinters]

I wonder how long it will take for everyone to realise that Canon printers are not very suitable for the use of CISS with cartridges on the print head, and far more reliable..

2 and 2 not always makes four, the amount of time and ink you waste clearing and flushing these tubes, it would be cheaper to stick with OEM carts and inks..
Just my two cent worth..

Ink tank printers are higher maintenance, but are much cheaper to run. The same ink would cost way more in cartridge form and many of us feel it's worth dealing with the quirks. And with a quick waste absorber redirect, it's basically inconsequential to be doing a cleaning here and there at the prices bottle ink is at compared to cartridges.

 

[Artur5]

If you print a lot yes, but if you're doing 100 sheets per month, then a tank printer is a dubious investment in the long term. With that low amount of prints, you'll never save enough in ink to make it for the premium price paid in advance for the printer. In top of that, there's the the 'air-in-the-tubes' issue. I'm with The Hat on this question, give me a cartridge printer over any megatank Canon.
The only exception in the Canon range seem to be the Pro photo series (Canon Pro-1000 and above ). These machines are feed by a CISS system too but I haven't read complaints about this problem on them. Of course, we're talking about 4 figures prices here.

 

[brwinters]

If you print a lot yes, but if you're doing 100 sheets per month, then a tank printer is a dubious investment in the long term. With that low amount of prints, you'll never save enough in ink to make it for the premium price paid in advance for the printer. In top of that, there's the the 'air-in-the-tubes' issue. I'm with The Hat on this question, give me a cartridge printer over any megatank Canon.
The only exception in the Canon range seem to be the Pro photo series (Canon Pro-1000 and above ). These machines are feed by a CISS system too but I haven't read complaints about this problem on them. Of course, we're talking about 4 figures prices here.

Yes I'm speaking mainly through the lens of high volume/intensity printing. As much as I would like to recommend tanks (in principle) to people, I only do if they make it a point they are willing to put in maintenance and will use it to death (essentially being in the same boat). Otherwise, gen. purpose users should go laser or get a printer that uses the larger carts preferably.

For me it just became such a hassle refilling carts. And recently I got a Workforce with cartridges, and it's just as annoying as I remember. A daily 3¢ print and a cleaning every week or so on average, is in my case well worth it to not have to mess with those things.

 

[James Mike]

If you print a lot yes, but if you're doing 100 sheets per month, then a tank printer is a dubious investment in the long term. With that low amount of prints, you'll never save enough in ink to make it for the premium price paid in advance for the printer. In top of that, there's the the 'air-in-the-tubes' issue. I'm with The Hat on this question, give me a cartridge printer over any megatank Canon.
The only exception in the Canon range seem to be the Pro photo series (Canon Pro-1000 and above ). These machines are feed by a CISS system too but I haven't read complaints about this problem on them. Of course, we're talking about 4 figures prices here.

While i agree with the opinion of regular cartridge printers being far more economical and convenient unless doing bulk printing however, i feel like there is something defective with the particular unit rather than the typical CISS on a canon behavior if it's not able to handle a slight relocation to an arguably better location nor should it require daily prints to keep running atleast within the first 4 months/2.9k pages of ownership(i hope i didnt just jinx myself).

You probably dont waste too much ink (definitely waste ink pad usage) if you reprime the ink tubes using a syringe rather than using the ink flush function.

I wish individual cartridge printers are far more available locally in my market at a pricepoint that is competitive to the Megatanks/Ecotanks. The MB2120 would have been a perfect fit for our use case had it been sold locally at a similar price to the G-series printers as the case in the US. The cheapest consumer individual ink unit, TS702 is a few dollars more expensive than the G3010 and a scanner equipped Maxify being 2.3x more expensive. The Epson doesnt even sell cartridge based printers here anymore.

I guess refilling the two cart printers is still feasible if your duty cycle is low enough.

 

[brwinters]

While i agree with the opinion of regular cartridge printers being far more economical and convenient unless doing bulk printing however, i feel like there is something defective with the particular unit rather than the typical CISS on a canon behavior if it's not able to handle a slight relocation to an arguably better location nor should it require daily prints to keep running atleast within the first 4 months/2.9k pages of ownership(i hope i didnt just jinx myself).

You probably dont waste too much ink (definitely waste ink pad usage) if you reprime the ink tubes using a syringe rather than using the ink flush function.

I wish individual cartridge printers are far more available locally in my market at a pricepoint that is competitive to the Megatanks/Ecotanks.
The MB2120 would have been a perfect fit for our use case had it been sold locally at a similar price to the G-series printers as the case in the US. The cheapest consumer individual ink unit, TS702 is a few dollars more expensive than the G3010 and a scanner equipped Maxify being 2.3x more expensive. The Epson doesnt even sell cartridge based printers here anymore.

I guess refilling the two cart printers is still feasible if your duty cycle is low enough.

Ink flush is a last resort. Even so, I only let it run one or two rounds of suction and then I unplug it. I normally only do one heavy clean and it's good. As for waste pad, once it reports full I just redirect the tubes out the printer into a retrofit waste collection tank and reset the counter with the onboard diagnostic tool. From there it really makes no difference aside from ink loss, which again, means less considering the bulk price. It's not like I'm going through a cartridge on a weekly basis. I barely scratch the tank if I even need to bother with a cleaning.

Overall I'm not saying Canon doesn't have lots of issues with the megatanks. I'm just saying, as long as one can work around them, it can still be better than refilling. It depends on the circumstances. I would like to see Canon figure out a better way of doing things down the road but I have a suspicion they don't want to let tanks get *too* good of course.

 

[James Mike]

I would like to see Canon figure out a better way of doing things down the road but I have a suspicion they don't want to let tanks get *too* good of course.

Hence they reverted back to requiring a computer to perform service operations on the newer printers before finally moving to maintenance carts. They could just have made an access hatch for the waste ink pads and included the reset instructions in the manual.

I wonder if the Maxify GX3000/4000 units are less prone to air issues since the printhead design is more similar to the Pro-1000/Imageprograf in terms of the printhead securing mechanism and inkfeed than the regular megatanks. If they do one of my printer pipedreams is to have separate printheads for each color for lower printhead replacement costs (PGBK works fine on my B200 MG6270 if you taped the pins).