Canon Pro-100 User. Some new findings about cleaning cycles.

[Noctivagus]

Hello forum,

I've been reading the forum for quite a long time. Now I've decided to contribute a little bit from my side...
I own the Canon Pro-100S for 6 month now. I studied a lot about the printer (Thank you, Joe) before purchasing and was aware of cleaning cycles. After I bought it, I started logging all my printing and cleaning cycles. After some time it was obvious that the rule about occurrence of cleaning cycle 60 (or 120) hours after last printing was not right. Analyzing the log showed that the cleaning cycle was occurring independent of the printing. The only important thing was the time elapsed since the last cleaning cycle. Meaning when 120 hours have elapsed from the last cleaning cycle and the printing was started, then the new cleaning cycle was initialized, independent of how much and how often was actually printed between these two cleaning cycles.
This is actually the same information as quoted in the older Service Manuals (i.e. Pro 9000): "Timer cleaning - 1: If 120 to 480 hours have elapsed since the previous cleaning till the start of the next printing."
If I am right about my finding, then Pro-1 and Pro-10 may also behave similarly with even shorter timer at 60 hours. What do you think about it? Did you have the same experience?

Greetings,
Erwin

 

[Emulator]

A good bit of careful observation!

 

[The Hat]

Hi @Noctivagus, glad you decided to join us here, you are most welcome.

The Cleaning cycle on the Canon printer is a very contentious one, some say yes, some say no, but there are a few amongst us that know different, nice of you to air this subject.
P.S. Don’t expect too many to agree with you...

 

[Noctivagus]

It sounds like you are familiar with the situation, The Hat. I know this whole cleaning cycle story is quite contradictory as there is no uniform source to prove one or the other side right or wrong. Unfortunately I either wasn't able to find service manual for Pro-100. That's why I decided to make my own little study of this problem.
On the bright side, I found that changing the ink cartridge will not initialize any cleaning cycle in Pro-100. Overall the printer is quite economical even with OEM ink and produces great results on many papers. But knowing cleaning cycle time table and triggers would just allow to avoid unnecessary ink consumption.

 

[The Hat]

Many of the Canon model printers all behave differently as to when and at what point they do some sort of mini clean, but they all have a set time for their standard regular maintenance cycles.

If you let a cart run low or out of ink and replace it, regardless of printer model, it will run a purge cycle, so Nifty members came up with the answer of saving 3rd party ink, the simple way is to replace all the carts at one time, not just the one that’s low on ink.

You are wasting your time looking for a service manual for the Pro 100, Canon have not make them available to print owners like they did with their other models in the past, nor are you allowed to enter Service Mode.

Here is a bit more on the cleaning cycles..

https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/forum-rants.9658/page-6#post-104638

 

[BruceW77]

Erwin, I totally agree with your findings. In fact I started a thread on the Qimage forum about a month ago, linking back to this thread to further support my findings.
The link is: http://ddisoftware.com/tech/printers/canon-pixma-pro-100s-cleaning-cycles/
Since that time I have regularly updated the thread with my findings. I won't repeat all the info here, I suggest you read the info on the Qimage forum. I have also created flow charts and a spreadsheet detailing ink usage for my Pro-100S.
In summary, for every test I have done the results closely match the Service Manual for the Pro9000, which in brief indicates there are 2 timers for each of the 2 printhead groups; ie 120 Hour and 480 Hour. It's a purge that resets the timer not a print. A print is required to initiate the pending purge.
The other point you mention about removing ink cartridges is also true. However, there is a 60s timer, also mentioned in the Pro9000 Service Manual. The timer is per cart, it's accumulative and if it expires for any cart, then the whole group is purged with the next print. By "accumulative", I mean if you take the cart out for 40s and replace it, and then take it out for 21s, then next print will cause a purge for the associated group.
I need to thank you Erwin for alerting me to this information.
I also need to thank PeterBJ for his efforts in providing links to all the Service Manuals.

Bruce

 

[stratman]

Those who have installed an external waste ink tank can advise best on purged ink situations. Maybe @The Hat has a printer potty installed and has studied the evacuations of ink.

 

[The Hat]

Hi @BruceW77 and welcome, this myth has been bandying about for a long long time and that’s all it is, because if you use your printer as it was intend it, then you’ll soon realise that’s all it is, A myth.

You can’t stop your printer from cleaning itself and you found out to your horror what happens when these cleaning cycles are interrupted, they are a necessary evil for the proper running and maintenance of all Canon print heads.

Here is a Rant below, I had on the same subject, because there are some guys out there unnecessarily putting the wind-up printer owners, for something that has always happen to all properly maintained printers.
P.S. Fit a Printer Potty and see for yourself..

https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/the-60-hour-myth-on-canon-printers-not-here-say.12295/

 

[BruceW77]

Thanks The Hat for moving this thread into the Canon section of the forum. I initially felt that was the proper thing to do, but since I did not initiate the thread, I thought the approach I took would at least bring the thread to notice.

I think it is worth clarifying here what you believe was the “Myth”. About a week ago I happen to read your thread. I suspect I had not seen it earlier, because I would have been searching for Pro-100 specific information. Anyway, one of you sentences contradicts other information you provide. I will post in that thread and be more specific. Maybe there is a word missing.

As far as the Pro-100 goes, let me start the ball rolling here as to what I believe you meant by “myth”.

A lot of information around about Canon cleaning cycles suggests that if you send a print job to the printer more frequently than 60hours you can avoid a purges or cleaning cycles. That to me is the main part of the myth, because you cannot stop a timed purge, only delay it until you send a print job to the printer, in which case the purge will always precede the print job.

There are other components to the myth, and these components tend to be printer model specific:

a. It is also reported that removing or replacing a cartridge initiates a purge. That may be true for the Pro9500 but not totally true for the Pro9000 or Pro100. You have 60 seconds before the purge is initiated for these Dye printers. Again it is the next print job that completes the purge.

b. The value of the timers varies between models. For the Pro9500, there are 4 timers for each of the 2 printhead groups. The shortest timer is 60 hours. However, again the Pro9000 and Pro-100 are different, in that there are only 2 timers for each of the 2 printhead groups and the shortest timer is 120 hours.

As you have pointed out, the volume of ink purged is more for the Pro9500 than for say the Pro-100.

My feeling is that now we know how the Canon printer purge works, we can stop trying to trick the printer into not doing a purge. The purge is there for a reason and that is to stop the printhead clogging. However, I can now relax because I know when the purge is going to happen. With my Pro9000 I previously would get quite annoyed when out of the blue it would do a purge and often when I was in a hurry.

With my Pro-100, I know a purge of Group 1 is due tomorrow at 4:30PM and a Group 2 purge is due at 9:30AM next day. I plan not to print in the window between these 2 purges, so I can resynchronise the 2 group purges.

A bad practise I developed while refilling ink, on the Pro9000, was to open the printhead cover and power off at the mains, because I knew from experience a timer would cause the printhead to return to the parked or capped position, while I was part way through filling cartridges. I now know that just wasted ink.

Returning briefly to point a. above (re 60 second cart timer), this behaviour of the Pro-100 offers an opportunity for users to replace a cartridge without initiating a purge. It may even allow users refilling enough time to refill a cartridge if they have the refill bottles with the needle refill caps. Hence avoiding the need for 2 sets of cartridges.

The printer potty looks interesting. I may look at doing that to my Pro9000 when I get it back up and running.

Bruce

 

[The Hat]

These purge cycles are not something to get hung up on, and at best should be excepted as part of the norm for enjoying the use of a Canon printer.

All the newer Pro models now use a similar purge cycle to the one that was first developed for use in the Pro 9500, the only amendments Canon made to that programme was to reduce the length of time and ink it used.

When you have a Printer Potty installed, you can see exactly when and where the printer is running a small, normal or large cleaning cycle by the duration and amounts of ink used and can help in the normal weekly print run or when replacing cartridges.

There are many things that can cause a printer to initialise a cleaning cycle that you may not be aware of and at the same time when you think your printer is idling and running a purge cycle, it may not be.

The only advise that I can give, is to use the printer regular and never unplug it from the wall, (Power off) and to change all the cartridges when one is showing low, this will cut down the unnecessary clean cycles that occur...