Canon Pro 9000 Mk 11 - Review headl ceaning

[Roy Sletcher]

Merry Christmas to all. I have gained much help from the advice and shared knowledge on this forum.

The head on my trusty pro9000 mk 11 is probably on its last legs. After two years and 125 plus refills I am willing to spend the money on a new head.

Does anybody have information on a reliable supplier of new Canon Print heads, or is it best to just troll the various eBay vendors for the best deal?

I know the conventional wisdom is to purchase one of the many closed box surplus machines being sold on Craigs list. I am in Canada and unfortunately this does not seem to be an options, unless any body has a contact for them in the North East.

One last thing - My current print-head is soaking in a shallow Windex bath hoping for success with a last attempt at unclogging the PC channel. Is there any proven technique to ensure the electrical contacts are dry when I finish. I am worried in case I inadvertently splashed moisture up in that area during the cleaning. I intend to dry carefully with a cloth, and then blow with compressed air.

Is low heat from a hair dryer advisable, or should I stop after a blow dry with the compressed air?

Roy Sletcher

 

[turbguy]

The BEST supplier (and typically the cheapest) is the Canon Parts Department in the USA.

Try asking here:

Canon Supplies
1-866-226-6634
canonsupplies@canada.canon.com


Wayne

 

[FussyBob]

Roy, how do you heat your house in Canada?

I live in Pennsylvania and we all have either a gas, oil, electric furnace with forced air or water base board heat and leaving the print head on the furance for a day or two definitely drys up the moisture on the electonic side.

Reading your email it seems that you don't us running warm water on the the port side and then the nozzle side, back and forth. Don't wory about soaking the print head, I even soad them in a container for weeks if needed.

Just dry properly.

Too bad you can't buy a Craigslist one, they were going for less than $100 last week around here with all cartridges.

 

[Roy Sletcher]

The BEST supplier (and typically the cheapest) is the Canon Parts Department in the USA.

Try asking here:

Canon Supplies
1-866-226-6634
canonsupplies@canada.canon.com


Wayne

Thanks for the info Wayne.

Contacted them on Friday and suspect that due to the holidays they were operating with minimum staff.
Got bounced between Toronto and Montreal. Had to call total of three different numbers, each involved an interminable wait while they told my call was important multiple times. Eventually I ran out of time and had to terminate the process.

Will make another attempt Monday morning when I have a cup of coffee, a more reliable speaker phone, and time available.

Thanks for the tip.

Roy Sletcher

 

[Roy Sletcher]

Roy, how do you heat your house in Canada?

I live in Pennsylvania and we all have either a gas, oil, electric furnace with forced air or water base board heat and leaving the print head on the furance for a day or two definitely drys up the moisture on the electonic side.

Reading your email it seems that you don't us running warm water on the the port side and then the nozzle side, back and forth. Don't wory about soaking the print head, I even soad them in a container for weeks if needed.

Just dry properly.

Too bad you can't buy a Craigslist one, they were going for less than $100 last week around here with all cartridges.

Hi Fussy Bob,

Guess like us you got your quota of snow this past week. My reply has been delayed because of a houseful of guests (children & grandchildren). Good to have them here, but sometime hard to look sad when helping them pack for the trip home.

Did eventually resort to running water and more aggressive cleaning with the print head. Definite improvement, but can't seem to clean the Photo cyan nozzle which still has a slight clog.

The printer is over two years old with frequent use and some 125 or so cartridges in that time. From what I have read two years of so is about average for this print head.

Now the task is to get an economical replacement. I am only 45 minutes drive from upper NY state, so may try to find a cheap replacement printer in US and have it shipped economically to the border if the cost of replacement head exceeds, say $160.00

Roy



Thanks for tip on drying the electronics side. Good info!

Roy Sletcher

 

[turbguy]

I don't believe it is possible to quote a firm "life" on a print head. I suspect what you have read it is more the subject of anecdotal experience rather than actual testing by scientific methods. I'm certain it does follow a bathtub type of curve typical of most man-made devices. To the OEM, there just needs to be a good-enough failure rate to get the printer through the warrantee period so service calls are affordable.

That said, print heads do wear out, but this can be a slow process rather than a sudden event. You eventually become dis-satisfied with the printer output. An example is fine "streaking" (not banding) as seen here:

In this instance, several nozzles had worn to the extent that ink was being sprayed in the wrong places, revealed by careful examination of a service test print matrix, like so:

And many print heads suffer from electronic failures, which tend to be sudden, far before the nozzles themselves show visible wear on the output.

Ask yourself, which color nozzles get used the most in typical household printing. The answer should be BLACK. So with an all-dye ink printer, the black nozzles should show "wear" first, then the colors. For Dye color-Pigment Text inks, the pigment BLACK nozzles should show wear first. Of course, it all depends on what's printed.

Some typical search results, really nothing scientific:

http://blog.metawatch.ca/2010/02/25/inkjet-printhead-life/

Wayne