Canon iP4700 cleaning cycle

[Stumped2]

My Canon iP4700 was already on because I printed some black text about 6 hours prior. I went to print another page & the printer started doing it nozzle cleaning ritual. I grabbed my watch & timed it at almost exactly 2 minutes of making noise & probably wasting ink.

Then a message said to replace the cyan cart because it was empty. I did not use cyan earlier & am not using it now. It was low, but the cleaning cycle emptied it. I replaced the ink cart. The printer paused for about 20 seconds, then did some more cleaning or whatever it does and finally stated printing after another 40 seconds. This scenario has happened before.

Not including the time it took me to swap carts, the printer took pretty close to 3 minutes doing its thing. Some people say to leave it turned on in order to reduce this, but it was already on & it made no difference. Ive read that disabling the ink monitor may help this. Is this done by just turning it off in the Printer Status?

This is my fourth Canon inkjet. The first two developed printhead problems after a while & it was cheaper to buy a new printer than a printhead & ink. Each newer one takes longer to do its cleaning cycle. I use OEM Canon ink because I only use a few sets of carts a year, but the iP4700 lengthy cleaning seems wasteful. Is there a current model with a shorter & hopefully more economical cleaning cycle? Or should I change brands? I dont need an AIO but if thats what it takes then Ill get one.

Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Digital10d]

Hi Agree that the newer Canon printers do like to prune themselves. However the quality of output is excellent - photos. I have just swapped from Epson to Canon because I was fed up wasting ink trying to clear blocked nozzles, at least my two Canon printers work. I think the only real answer is to except that the printers use ink indiscriminately and beat the manufacturers at their own game by using third party ink and refilling. I'm now using the 'German' method to refill OEM carts and it is very easy, clean and quick. If you search this forum you will find plenty of info on refilling methods and where to purchase good quality ink. The trick with Canon printers for successful refilling is to use OEM carts and good ink.

One day printer manufacturers will discover that selling cheap printers that use expensive ink is the wrong way of doing business. All it achieves is the majority of people give up printing because its too expensive. The rest of us who want to print lots of photos get around the problem by refilling and the manufacturers lose ink sales.

 

[The Hat]

Digital10d The rest of us who want to print lots of photos get around the problem by refilling and the manufacturers lose ink sales

Epson/Canon are not bothered by the way they do business at all,
because for every one customer that refills cartridges there are 10,000 that dont.
Keep up the good fight with 3rd party inks..

 

[wilko]

Digital10d The rest of us who want to print lots of photos get around the problem by refilling and the manufacturers lose ink sales

Epson/Canon are not bothered by the way they do business at all,
because for every one customer that refills cartridges there are 10,000 that dont.
Keep up the good fight with 3rd party inks..

Spot on. Yet they still try to prevent we refillers with obstacles like chips and opaque cartridges.

I suspect that their real enemies are the compatible cartridge manufacturers who produce cartridges at less than half the price of OEM carts.

However, this doesn't explain why Canon has suddenly introduced opaque carts, which seems to be targetting the minority of us who refill carts.

You would think that printer manufacturers would realise by now that there is no way that dedicated refillers would ever contemplate paying the ridiculous prices of original carts.

 

[The Hat]

wilko Yet they still try to prevent we refillers with obstacles like chips and opaque cartridges.

The answer to the opaque cartridges problem was given here in an earlier thread.
Just use the 520 cartridge instead of the 526 by transferring the chip and say good bye to the nasty black cartridge. .