Canon pixma mg6150 banding problem

[sijuw1]

I have a brand new pixma mg6150. I'm printing Black and white images with the pigment black ink on heavy plain paper. At first it worked perfectly, then banding started to appear in dark areas only. Since the first original ink I have refilled with compatible inks, but now have replaced again with original ink. I have cleaned the heads using the cycling process, and, using an isopropanol cleaner. The test printout shows that there is no clogging, however I still get two types of banding, one horizontal and the other vertical (all using the original canon ink in original cart). I have also done a head alignment. Please see the image. Has anyone else had this experience or have any idea what is going on?



BTW, the dye inks print fine.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Usually, when people have what they call "banding" problems, it's because of a lack of ink causing white stripes or streaks. In your case, it looks like you are getting darker areas--is this how you perceive it on your originals? If that is the case, it is probably caused by a saturation and warping of the paper while it is printing. I have seen situations where I don't see this slight variation in density with the naked eye but when I scan it, it shows up. But in this case, it is merely a warping of the paper. I now use heavy paper to avoid that problem. But you mentioned you are using heavy paper already. I'm just telling you all this to give you a little background that may or may not be relevant.

Now for some questions:

You said that you started off with original ink, I persume the OEM ink that came with your printer. Were you doing this same kind of printout at that time with the same kind of paper and do you observe the problem then? You then said you refilled your cartridge and then went back to OEM ink. Are you saying that this problem developed while you were using the compatible ink and that is the reason you switched back to OEM but the problem didn't go away? The reason I'm asking these questions is because I doubt that you were originally printing pages of solid black. I'm sure you are doing this only to diagnose your problem. But is it possible that with the same exact printouts that you were doing before you noticed the problem and with the exact same paper and the exact same printing quality and the same exact ink, the printouts are identical now as to what they were before?

My only suggestion is that you try different papers and different print qualities to see if you can minimize the problem. It looks to me like it is a problem with ink saturation. Sorry I can't be of more help.

 

[sijuw1]

Thanks very much for your response.

First, I think you are absolutely right about the paper warp! I was testing on a thinner paper so as not to waste.

Let me explain in detail what I have done.

First in was the OEM ink which printed on 130gsm paper perfectly as it should. (I'm sure but can't remember for certain, I did see some banding with this ink at some point) I then purchased some canon compatible ink (at the time it seemed hard to come by - from Hong Kong and looks like it's unbranded) and some compatible carts. I tried it but wasn't satisfied because the black was not deep black and comparable to the OEM. I purchased yet another compatible, this time canon compatible, KMP universal black pigment, which I heard was good. I did not flush the compatible cartridges save made sure they were empty. I used the KMT for a while but was again not satisfied with the deepness of the black on plain paper. But I also had the problem of the banding. So I began cleaning the heads so as to rule this out. I used the isopropanol cleaner with a paper towel, as described in many areas on this site. Later, returning the head to the printer I did a few rounds of cleaning with test prints. The test prints showed the printer to be clog free, however, frustratingly the bands where still there in the range of dark grey in the scans I have attached (I chose the deep grey from where I was seeing the bands in my photograph, since I wasn't seeing them in any other areas). So I returned the OEM cartidge and ink. A few cleans later, I found a good test pattern, but bands still in the same range of grey.

This is when I wrote to this forum.

Since then, I though I really have to make sure this is not about clogging. So Out came the heads again and I did a more intensive clean of the heads using the isopropanol cleaner with a pipe to the inlet gauze/filter and some pressure by blowing through the pipe. I did this more 'substantially' and then dried the head before returning it. Then the usual cleaning cycles.

I have cleared the bands.... YES.... but... not every nozzle in the test print is clear, though this changes every time I do a test.

I think I'm getting there. My judgment now is that I did have a clogged head, though I'm perplexed as to why the test pattern show perfect (though there does seem to be a reduced black tone?)

and jeezuz, watching OEM ink go into cleaning is like watching gold being thrown into the deep sea! Canon has made these carts unreasonably small!

 

[sijuw1]

After more experimentation I'm beginning to doubt my initial assessment. Once again I have a good test pattern with banding in mid to dark grey areas. Different pigment inks seem to produce different degrees of banding. Flow, surely, is effected both by cart *and* ink type? Might this be a case of ink starvation? Could an OEM cart flow be messed up with using the wrong pigment ink?

Anyone have any experience of using compatible pigment inks with the mg6150. Ie printing a photo on plain paper at fine quality in grey scale?

 

[ghwellsjr]

I think the reason why this hasn't been raised as an issue before is that most people don't print b/w images on plain paper using the pigment ink. The nozzles are much larger and spaced farther apart so the quality of the printout is not up to photo standards.

Is there some reason you have to use the pigment ink or is it just because you are using plain paper? If you can use the dye inks, I would suggest that you tell your printer that you are printing on matte photo paper (even though it is the same thick plain paper) and it will use the dye inks. Unfortunately, it will only use the dye black for the very darkest parts of the image, most shades of grey use the color dye inks which doesn't always print as pure shades of grey (so I'm told, since I'm partially color blind, it looks perfectly fine to me).

Another solution if you can tolerate dye inks is to get a set of grey inks that Mikling sells for printers that use four dye inks. You can read all about it here.

 

[sijuw1]

Yes I concede it unusual to print photos with pigment black ink on a printer where it is used for txt. I debated it for a while. There are a couple of reasons why.

I'm printing a5 booklets on a cream paper (300 print on demand copies, 10 each - if I can get consistent results) and I have yet to find a double sided 130gsm cream paper coated to accept photo quality dye inks, and if I did, would it be affordable? The pigment inks are water resistant, this is a plus against wet fingers etc, though I can fix inkjets with a spray but in bulk this is not cost effective.

Despite the loss of quality of the 600x600 res - the contrast, tone and brilliance on plain cream paper was almost luxurious with the rich pigment blacks and the bright highlights complimenting somehow the film grain. By keeping the size of the image closer to a double page spread, ie almost A4, the quality is pretty good.

The only down side was that the individual dots were too obvious in the highlights, but I remedied this by making sure highlights were a very light shade of grey.

If I could find a black dye ink that could match the deepness of black pigment on plain paper, I would certainly consider changing, particularly given that I think I may be breaking the rules too much with the canon hence the ink starvation (or whatever) issue in the dark grey area. I have in fact achieved pretty color-cast free dye prints on plain paper, they just lack that deep black richness that would be possible on a coated paper.

If I succeed, I may actually break even on my efforts and expense.

Before I bore you to death further, I just want to thank you for responding!

 

[The Hat]

sijuw1

As you are using the 526 cartridges why not try the 521s instead there much easier to refill,
just change the chips.
If you use good quality inks and dump the Chinese stuff you would get better quality from your printer.

The cream paper sounds like a good idea all right beats the hell out of white thats for sure.
If you want a very good cream heavy paper then the only one to use would Conquer, it comes is several different weights
but its not cheap and it works excellent with inkjet printers, I have printed thousands with conquer paper.

I wouldnt be worried about the pics at 600dpi if you use a higher dpi on the plain paper a lot of your halftones would start to fill in anyway..

 

[sijuw1]

Hi The Hat

I have the image specialist ink on its way. I'll report back on that. Yes the conquer is good paper. At some point when I've got my process working I'll be sure to go for the 521's

 

[sijuw1]

For what it's worth (since there might be a very small audience of pigment black photo printers if any at all) I thought I'd post some recent observations.

I've tried various black pigment inks over the last two weeks. I've tried both OEM carts and compatible carts. All in various combinations.

I have found that the pigment flow is restricted for both OEM carts and compatible carts in dark shades of grey towards black. This causes ink starvation bands. I confirm it is worse for the compatible carts, therefore implying that the compatible carts have more resistance on flow. Annoyingly the canon carts do not have enough flow to print dark photographs properly either though.

I am looking at ways to increase the flow of ink - any ideas?

Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert and could have missed something. It would be good to see if, on this same printer, someone else can print dark BxW images with pigment ink on plain paper without bands.

 

[The Hat]

sijuw1 It would be good to see if, on this same printer, someone else can print dark BxW images with pigment ink on plain paper without bands.

I tried out your idea with some of my printers and yes I got banding as well,
on standard and high quality setting using only pigment black.
I tried the same Pic this time using dye ink in the pigment cartridge and got no banding at all on eider setting.
Interesting the pro 9500 did not have any signs of banding either..