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- Apr 19, 2007
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- Canon MB5120, Pencil
Excellent information! You are the Niels Henrik David Bohr (born and educated in Copenhagen, Denmark like you?) of printer gurus. Thank you.I have made a test with a timing strip from a defunct iP4000. I have tried cleaning it with pharmacists cleaning solution, Ajax window cleaner with ammonia, denatured ethanol 93% and a thinner for epoxy paints that contains approximately 3 parts Xylene to 1 part of Butanol.
Pharmacists cleaning solution and the Ajax window cleaner worked well and didn't damage the strip. The alcohol and the paint thinner didn't damage the strip, but were not effective in cleaning ink mist off the strip. This is to be expected as the inks used in the printer are water based.
Here is a section of the timing strip that has been subject to all 4 cleaners. It can be seen that the vertical striping is not damaged, so I can also recommend pharmacists cleaning solution and the Ajax for this purpose.
Canon service manuals recommend the use of isopropyl alcohol to clean the timing strip or timing disk if they should be accidentally stained with lubricating grease, so alcohol should be harmless. But a water based cleaner works better for removing ink in my opinion.