Canon IP3000 broad smears at page end

[Trigger 37]

yuyakay,... You many think it is "Obvious" to anyone where the smear it,... but clearly it is not. You see it because you know what to look for. All that we have seen is one image where the right side apears more out of focus than smear. Smear would have long horizontal lines, not micro smear of Dot to Dot.

I gave you several suggestions but you did not mention you had tried any of them. Ron suggested the bottom of the printhead, but there is one other key point you have mentioned. The "Smear" does not happen for the first 2/3 rds of the page. So, as that paper passes all key elements in the printer, rollers, printhead, etc. there is no problem. Then all of a sudden you begin to see smear. Try to loacate the exact position of the paper in the printer where this happens. What "Physical item" could be causing the "Tilt", Lift, bulge, etc. of the paper that would bring it in contact with the printhead.

You have not mentioned that you have any kind of problem just printing text or any other documents. The "Vertical" print position is also controlled by a circular timing wheel on the end of the paper drive shaft. These timing marks tell the printer logic what the position is of the paper down to 2400 lines per ink. If there is contamination or ink or dust or any dirt on that wheel, the printer will lose track of the exact postion of the paper. The result would be that ink dots are not put where they should be and all colors may be distorted. This is the most probable cause of a picture that looks smear for only 1/3 of the image. The wheel makes one revolution for a 11 1/2" page. All it would take would be for the photo cell to drop or misposition by one line starting at a fixed point.

Another easy test for you to do is to use a 5x magnifing glass and examine the image. If you see a consistant smear in colors for the entire width of the paper, or is it just for several inches and comes and goes. This can tell you if your printhead is dragging as it moves right to left or if the print is distorted for the entire width, it is more likely the Timing wheel.

 

[mikling]

I see the smear problem. However, to my eyes it does not look to be a physical smear. To me it appears that some nozzles were not properly outputting.

 

[yuyakay]

mikling,

Two thumbs up for you. One for seeing the problem (that's the easy one) and two for commenting that it looks more like a nozzle problem rather than a printhead smear. You are right on that. I should have seen it earlier. In the first post where I included an upload of the entire 4 photos to an 8.5 X 11 page, it can be seen that the white band between the photos is virgin paper, and then all of a sudden the rust colored band almost an inch wide starts full force. This clearly rules out printhead smearing.

it seems that almost immediately after the printhead prints the bird's tail, all of a sudden, in a straight line with the movement of the printhead, I am getting aberrant dots of Magenta, which create a broad band of rust color. In the photo of the Ocelot below the hummingbird, the problem can be seen only in the dark shadows of the tree stump. Precisely from the last 1 and 7/8 inches from the end of the 8.5 X 11 page, dark portions of the image are aberrantly sprayed with magenta. Now the question is why?

For some time there has been an oddity about my nozzle check pattern. Although there is no white streaking indicating clogged nozzles, the pattern is not quite the same as the Canon software says it should be. Rather that having one of the two bands of Cyan be dark, and the other band light, instead
the dark band is split down the middle. The lower half of it being light, and the upper half dark. ... then there is also the light Cyan band which is normal. Furthermore, the lower have of the letters 6C 6M 6Y are red instead of black, and the lower half of the greys are not true, but rather reddish ... Hmmm.

Here's my nozzle check pattern:


Somethings not right here, but why the printing seems fine until all of a sudden the last 1 and 7/8 inches is really mysterious.

 

[mikling]

When I looked at your output I actually thought Cyan was the issue. Make sure your cartridges are properly feeding and I'd flush out the printhead and then see what happens. I'm leaning that you need to prepare yourself for a new printhead not far down the road.

My further thoughts are that it isn't that the magenta is not supposed to be there but the other colors that ARE supposed to be there. I can't confirm this due to the lack of resolution of your scans however.

 

[yuyakay]

Mikling,
Does the nozzle check print look the way it's supposed to look? I thought the upper Cyan band was supposed to be solid darker blue. Not split down the middle, with the lower half being lighter blue. Also the bottom half of the letters 6C 6M 6Y are red! That's not right is it?

 

[dan_uk_1984]

yuyakay, the letters on the left are made by mixing cmy together to make "black" hence why your not seeing black, rather just yellow and magenta mixed = red.

I believe the ip3000 printhead has 6 rows of nozels, two for each colour that are offset with each other, hence enabling bi-pass printing without getting stripes. Anyway, I would say that half of them on your Cyan have packed up.

Interestingly I get a very feint band where yours start but only occasionally, and thats been the same with 3 print heads under warranty.

 

[Grandad35]

yuyakay,

This link discusses the situation where 1/2 of a nozzle check is light or missing. LOTS of reading to understand your nozzle check pattern, some possible solutions.

 

[yuyakay]

Dan,

Really interesting post. Yes I'm convinced some of the Cyan ports are plugged. My Cyan Cartridge just started giving a low on ink message. Tomorrow I'll buy another one. I'm thinking of trying to blow out the port with compressed air as recommended on Neil's InkJet Page. From what I can gather it seems he thinks this is a better cleaning than the regular nozzle cleaning which uses ink and leads to the "Waste Ink Tank almost full" problem.

Anyone, is there any downside to using compressed air to blow out the nozzles? :/

 

[yuyakay]

Whoa Grandad !

I just saw your post and was checking out some of the links. Electrical sounds good to me. (which is bad). Does this shed any light? When I print (anything) in standard mode, text comes out OK but graphics (like the gray areas of tax forms, no I mean the color gray LOL) , come out striped, as do photo prints. But If I print in High Mode or Custom/diffusion I do not get stripes. By stripes I do not mean the rust colored problem at the end of the page.

It seems like to get my printer working properly, at minimum I'm likely to need a new printhead. A new printhead (ca$40) plus $16 of ink you don't get, practically adds up to the $59 (plus tax) with which I stole the printer from Canon, aided and abetted by Circuit City 2 years and 8 months ago.

So ... are newer Canon printers on the market (3 color tanks and 1 or two black tanks) as good? or better? or worse? than the IP3000, and what's available for under $100?

Anyone?

 

[Grandad35]

Did you read all the way through Trigger37's thread? For example, this post in that thread discusses how a print head came back to life (and I believe that there was more than one instance where this happened). There is a lot of information in that thread.