Canon InkTanks and the Notorious Air in tube issue

[echosend]

Thanks.
Someone get onto Shaquille O'Neal and tell him to put such a warning into those commercials!

 

[James Mike]

Be advised that when you unplug mid-flush -- while you don't actually spend the ink and waste tank space physically, from what I understand, the printer does the deductions on ink and waste usage immediately. So it will think the ink is lower and the waste tank is fuller than either are. Do this a few times and it adds up to premature failure in terms of the waste tank. I believe your model should allow you to reset the counter for the WT with a cryptic button combination so it's not a total end of the world, however you will need to replace the waste pads eventually and I cannot find replacements anywhere. I redirected the tubes out into a retrofit tank to get ahead of that issue.


This is my maintenance page for CMYK processes. Developed for a G7020 so it should work on a 6020 just the same.

Unfortunately the g6000 seems to have the ondevice service mode locked out or unavailable.It could be the case that the firmware is too old on the test printer (the march 2017 g4000 service manual makes mention of the mode will be added in firmware 1.030 so the g6000 may have shipped without that functionality) or the controls have been changed between the G1000-4000 and the G5000-7000.

I guess the only way to know is to have someone with a g6000 retest with a firmware update applied.

 

[James Mike]

I suppose it wouldn't push every nozzle but then it doesn't exactly need to either. The main things are to keep air out of the nozzle and minimize clogs by running the printer thoroughly (a solid block of each primary color) on a daily basis. Hence doing a cleaning and nozzle check every week... To get the crevices that the regular prints don't. It has been working well on my G7020 (slip ups likely due to printing in standard mode) and perfectly on my G620 (lack of slip ups likely because that printer is set to always print in high quality photo mode by default... Though the black nozzle not being taller probably also has something to do with it).

It's probably better for the g7020 to have the maintenance page be printed in high quality plain paper mode as it could be that the pigment black is not used when printing on photo paper as is the case for non inktank printers (atleast on the MG it seems to be true).

I would like to add that the ink lines seems to amount to about 3 pages of full page printing incase bubbles develop due to ink offgassing rather than a full scale loss of ink in the lines from air leaks (Just spotted my first air bubble in my yellow line today(wasn't there last i've checked in December) and its location makes me think its the former rather than the latter).

 

[brwinters]

It's probably better for the g7020 to have the maintenance page be printed in high quality plain paper mode as it could be that the pigment black is not used when printing on photo paper as is the case for non inktank printers (atleast on the MG it seems to be true).

I don't know if that would be true considering the 7020 only has one black. While it is pigment based, does that really leave the printer with the option to not use a black entirely as an alternative?

 

[The Hat]

does that really leave the printer with the option to not use a black entirely as an alternative?

If your printer has 3 dye inks, C,Y,M and 1 pigment black then it only uses the dye inks when printing on glossy paper, these rules have always applied..

If you print only black images, plus text on plain paper when using duplex then the printer will use a C,Y,M mix along with pigment black to lessen the chances of smudging on the reverse side of the paper.. So most printers do strange things when you’re not looking..
It’s also a falsehood to think that ink tank printers are cheaper to print with than cartridge based printers.. They are nothing but trouble..

 

[James Mike]

I don't know if that would be true considering the 7020 only has one black. While it is pigment based, does that really leave the printer with the option to not use a black entirely as an alternative?

Im not sure if the printer attempts mixing CMY with either the Dark Grey patch in the test page but it does use pigment on the G3010 when plain paper is selected.

.

 

[websnail]

Im not sure if the printer attempts mixing CMY with either the Dark Grey patch in the test page but it does use pigment on the G3010 when plain paper is selected.

It's not so much when plain paper is selected but when it it printing an image vs' a text document. Pigment black is often only used for text that has not been rasterised (eg: Docx vs' PNG).

 

[James Mike]

It's not so much when plain paper is selected but when it it printing an image vs' a text document. Pigment black is often only used for text that has not been rasterised (eg: Docx vs' PNG).

Is there any way to ensure that the Pigment black gets to print a black test patch ?

Both of the CMYK test pages were printed with Paint.NET and the 2 additional Black patches with MS Word so i just assumed its the paper type setting that dictates whether it would use PGBK(atleast i think it does from how it reacts with water).

 

[websnail]

Is there any way to ensure that the Pigment black gets to print a black test patch ?

Good question... I would hope so but I don't have an answer as I've not tried. You could certainly look at finding a font that you can create a block of "text" with and that may suffice but you may struggle to force pigment ink to be used for a black image area.

Both of the CMYK test pages were printed with Paint.NET and the 2 additional Black patches with MS Word so i just assumed its the paper type setting that dictates whether it would use PGBK(at least I think it does from how it reacts with water).

You are correct regarding ink reaction to water... dye inks will run.. Pigment will just sit and sneer at it (in a manner of speaking)

 

[The Hat]

Is there any way to ensure that the Pigment black gets to print a black test patch ?

Use Word and print a single letter with 450 point setting and it will use only Pigment black ink ..