Clogged Brother printhead

[Squarepusher]

Hi, on my Brother MFC J430 (all in one), I bought some ink from ebay like well over a year ago, and somehow the ink seems to be bad and clogged my colors. So, I did the print cleaning, and even purges after swiching back to Genuine Brother ink, and it still would not fix the issue (on my Cyan/Yellow not printing fully).

Can anyone confirm, that yes it was the cheap ink that caused the clog, and is there any way to fix/clean this? thanks!

 

[Don Matteson]

I have two o them that did the same thing A Brother MFC-J6920DW and another one that is simular. Both I purchaced inks off of Ebay and its the same thing as you. It just stopped printing.

 

[wilko]

I've gone through 3 brother DCP-J4120DW printers in the last year One was s/h and had a print head blockage which I couldn't resolve. The other two eventually had duplex printing problems resulting in jammed paper problems. In my experience Canon Printers are far superior to Brother printers for print quality but I was impressed with the Brother build quality as opposed to cheap Canon printers which give great print results but are comprised of cheap plastic.

I do a lot of photo and duplex printing and Canon printers are far superior to Brother printers in these areas, IMO. Personally, if I wanted a printer for business use, I would go with a laser as opposed to an inkjet but for non photo and one sided printing use, then Brother inkjet printers are ok.

However, Canon inkjet printer non OEM cartridges are generally cheaper than Brother carts, so Canon wins it for me.

This is just my two penneth on this issue and not a statement of fact. Been using printers since the dot matrix days but just for private use. Haven't found anything better than Canon printers, for my personal needs.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Can anyone confirm, that yes it was the cheap ink that caused the clog,

There is not more than circumstancial evidence for that assumption. it is in most cases not in the nozzles but in the ink channels to the nozzles - a small wire mesh filter which clogs and cannot be cleaned easily, since it is pretty difficult to get there.
I'm doing 40 000 - 60 000 pages with Brother printers, with an earlier DCP-195C model , with refill, it just prints.
And yes, it is very slow when printing photos, and the bottom feed of thicker photo papers can cause problems which limits the use for photo printing pretty much. But such printer prints very good when looking to the colors, the gamut and print resolution

 

[wdt]

I have some experience with this. Brother are damn good printers, but the feed path, from bottom tray
and 180 make them not so good for thick paper. Many mfc, if you lift lid and press/hold stop/exit
will move head to center. So you can fold paper towel and place under head for the next step
Many of the carts plug onto a spigot, about 1/8" dia. maybe 3/8" long, so find tubing that will fit
snugly and with hypo suck all ink out, then flush, several times. Takes about 2 ml to fill line and head.
Move head as towel gets wet. Be a bit gentle when filling, more vigorous when sucking.
Discard fluid often, warning, warning, do not use strong cleaning mixes. The internal channels in the head
are not that strong, you can make a "blow out" to the next colour, the head has become "junk"
For strong cleaning, make a puddle where the head parks, leave overnight. There will be some mixing,
a purge will get rid of it. I will make another post re: head changing