Clogged Canon print head

[Grandad35]

Can you print a nozzle check and an extended nozzle check (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=869#p869), scan the prints and post the results (Use the "upload" button at the top of the page)?

 

[Trigger 37]

berryrice,... There are many things that can cause this. The first question to ask you is; Have you changed, refilled, cleaned and refilled, installed new ink carts. If you don't have good ink flow to the printhead you won't get anything.

The next possibility is the purge unit. They are divided into black and color, each one has its own suction pump to suck ink from the ink carts(if they aren't dry) into the printhead to prime it. If there is not continous viscosity of ink from the tank all the way through the printhead, the whole thing won't work. So the purge unit sucks into by sucking on the bottom of the printhead on all of the nozzles and pulls almost a full ml of ink out and spills it on the bottom of the printer, where it runs across the plastic base until it finds the waste ink pad and hopefully gets absorbed.

Try checking your ink carts for flow. Take the out one at a time and pat the bottom of an ink cart on a folded paper towel. You should get a decent drop of ink on the towel. If you don't,... well you know what to do then. Test your Purge unit by putting several drops of Windex on the ceramic pads and doing a power on/off cycle. This tries to flush windex through the purge unit and hopefully clean it out. Do a cleaning cycle and listen to the printer to hear the distint sounds of the purge unit cycling through a cleaning cycle. Many time the purge unit gets "Stuck" and does not do a full cycle. If you know how, take the covers off and run the printer that way and watch the cleaning cycle in operation to verify that it is working. One way to know for sure, and this is what I do,... Remove the covers, remove the main printer carriage from the bottom case. Rest the main carriage on two small pieces of wood, each one supporting the printer ASM at the side rails. This will raise the printer about 3/4" off the table. Fold up a paper towel and put it ONLY under the two discharge tubes coming out of the bottom of the purge unit. Run a Cleaning cycle for both black and color. You should see about 0.5 ml of black and about 1 ml from the color(it will look black because as all the 3 colors reach the purge unit and mix, they will make black.

If the purge unit is blocked you can't prime the printhead,... and without a full prime it won't work. A very good symptom of a bad purge unit is when all colors or only black will not print anything.

If all of this information does not help you, wait about another week and you can buy one of my manuals on eBay which will show you pictures on how to do this and a lot more to fix your own printer.

 

[pingo]

Hello.

I have a Canon i350 which is giving me headaches with the black color not working properly. Here is a pic of how it prints a black square: http://shrani.si/f/3J/y8/3JvOQzFq/cartridge2.jpg

I have tried many things. I thought that the nozzles were clogged so i tried cleaning the head with hot water, soaking it in ammonia + water, pressured air, nothing helped.

At this point I thought that the nozzles had to be clean so I decided that since the ink does come from all the nozzles at start but then stops flowing soon that maybe there was somethign blocking black ink's way inside the printing head.

This is why today I have disassembled the printing head and washed everything. I could see through all the holes in the plastic and printing head perfectly also ink seemed to flow through the membrane on which the cartridge is put just fine. I also took the occasion to clean everything with pressured air and all nozzles should now be extra clean.

But the results are the same and I don't know what to think. I can't explain this to myself. Can anyone help me here? The only thing I can think of is that maybe the nozzles are somehow broken, maybe the heaters dont work correctly and stop soon after activated which stops the ink from flowing. Does anyone know or have a theory what else it could be or what I could try more?

 

[Trigger 37]

pingo,.... If the nozzle test print looks good, then the picture you sent is a classic example of "Ink Starvation". There is no clog in any part of your head or you could not print the beginning. As the printhead moves across it runs out of ink because the ink cartridges can't supply enough ink. The printhead prints in both directions and that is why you see it faded out on both sides. If you are refilling your ink carts, the black is internally clogged from very old ink. It could also be clogged at the exit port. This can be caused by not having a tight fit when you snap the ink cart into the printhead. If there is anykind of air gab the "Tiny little suction" that each nozzle creates can not maintain a "Vacuum" which is what pulls the next ink out of the cartridge into the printhead. The entire stream of ink from the cart to the bottom of the nozzle has to be air tight to maintain suction. Another problem could be the air breather hole in the top back of the ink cart. In order for ink to leave the bottom of the cart, an equal amount of air must come in the top. If this is blocked by tape, it will also "Starve" the printhead of ink.

Buy a new ink cart and try it. Check the sealling gaskit under the ink cart to see if it is damaged.

 

[Tin Ho]

Pingo, Trigger 37: Actually it looks like a clog in the print head to me. Replacing the ink cartridge (with a new OEM one) is likely to make no improvement. I have seen it and it does look like what I saw before. There is an easy method to unclog it. Just get an after market cheap bci-3ebk compatible cartridge that is pre-filled with dye based black ink. Just plug it in and do a light cleaning cycle then print some text and if possible a block of black a few inches wide and 2 inches long. Just let the dye ink to blast through the nozzles to clear out the dried pigment particles in the nozzles. It worked very well for me. After the clog is cleared you can install a good quality like OEM bci-3ebk with pigmented ink. It will work fine from there. I learned this technique from a friend who learned it from some tech support on the internet. I tried it and it worked.

 

[Trigger 37]

Tin Ho,... The first part of my post said,...

If the nozzle test print looks good, then the picture you sent is a classic example of "Ink Starvation".

I don't believe it can be a clog if it prints a good nozzle check. I've never seen a clog that would "Come and GO". If a nozzle prints for 1" but not later, and then start printing again,... that is not a clog.

 

[pingo]

Thanks for the replies, this forum is great.

The nozzle test before disassembling the plastic that holds the printer head looked like this

I don't think the head was clogged since I could get perfect results for a short time but then as Trigger 37 said, it started starving from lack of ink.
I tried a new cartridge and the results were a bit better but far from good, I can show you 2 black squares pritned with the old and with a new cartridge (Cant really understand why the improvement since the old one was not empty ).

After many head cleaning attempts, the results were still the same. The cartridge had air access and the only thing I could think of more was that the plastic between the head and the cartridge was blocked somehow.

So I disassembled it. Here are some pics after cleaning: Plastic - side A Plastic - side B Plastic cartridge container <- Only one I cant be sure that is not blocked (water drops make it through easily though).
Head side A Head side B

Now after reassembling it back together I'm having a hard time printing anything at all. When i tried to take it apart it was quite hard and seemed like it was "glued" together so I had to force it a little. Now reassembled, all the channels dont fit 100% anymore since when i open it again the inks seem to be leaking and mixing which can be seen from these pics: pic1 pic2

I think that material around the holes was some kind of weird glue to make those channels fit and not leak and when I took it apart it was those which were making it hard to do so.

So whats the purpose of my post? Well maybe someone can give me some more explanation with all the info I posted on:

- What could have been the main problem for the ink starving (I still dont know what was causing that)
- Did I really break the whole thing by disassembling it or could I still try fixing it?
- Is my theory about why it appears to be leaking now right?

It's not about fixing the printer in the first place anymore, Im trying to understand what has been and is going on.

 

[Trigger 37]

pingo,... That is the most complete set of pictures I've ever seen of complete heads. I've only disassembled one head down that far and I had the same problem. It seems impossible to make the head "Seal" tight inside, since it leaks. I gave up on the head and just bought a new one. Since then I have decided not to attempt to take the head apart. In my opinion, clogs are only pico drops of dried up ink and they should be able to be dissolved in solutions of warm to hot water. I don't get any more aggressive than that and I have been very successtul. I have had head that have a couple of nozzles that will just not come clean. I believe now that they are just "Dead" nozzles, which means the Resistor element that heats up to create the ink drop has burnt or come open. It will never work again. It may look like a clog but it is only an open circuit.

For your questions; Since your nozzle check pattern is great,... yes there are a couple fo nozzles that don't fire but they are not in groups. Therefore I say this is not a clog. My point has always been, if the nozzle can print once, it is not clogged. Since you can print the nozzle check over and over and it works every time, this tells you that when the ink flow gets to the nozzles it will print. As you are printing a black bar and the printhead moves very fast across and back some nozzles don't get suffient ink and they "Gradually" stop printing. Look at the dramatic difference a new ink cart made in the print. More ink was getting to where it had to go. When you had the head apart, did you look at the filter screens and see if they were clogged.

In the disassembly of the head, the internal seal was broken and I don't ever thing it will work again. However, Grandad35 has done this before and I believe he had success. You might ask him.

As far as the answer to the orginal question, I don't thing we will know without final conclusive testing. If you get a new printhead and the symptoms come back, that is a new story.

 

[pingo]

Thanks for the reply. I will try sealing it back with some special glue and if I succeed do some more tests and report. It clearly is ink starving or some weird nozzle failures but can't make any conclusions yet.

Im definitely buying a new pritner, this one lasted more than it was expected to. So... any advice on which canon to buy? ip4300 seems good for refilling and cheap too or is there anything better for approximately the same price?

 

[Trigger 37]

pingo,... Canon still has the iP4200 printer on sale for $59. This is the best buy that I can recommend. Check out the following web page.

http://estore.usa.canon.com/SearchResults.asp?PARENTOID=7004. As far as your old i350, the iP4200 will blow that away not only in speed, but in the quality of the print. Better hurry while they still have them.