Clogged Canon print head

[dralsop]

Thank you to all. Grandad35 you did a great job. Our church has a Canon i560 that sat for a long time. We fired it up and colors printed but the black text would not print. After reading all the above and understanding where the clog probable was I went after it with alcohol first with no results then gave it a boiling water bath which clraned a lot of ink out of all chambers and ports but still no black text. I then put it in hot water and left it while I went to the hardware store. When I got back I reboiled more water put the print head in it and sloshed it up and down to simulate that pumping action. After 7 or 8 minutes of that the water suddenly went very black. I kept changed the water and keeping it hot until the verticle sloshing produced no more black. I did not let it dry but shook as much water off as I could then went right to the printer. I tried a nozzle check and for the first time got a slight hint of a black pattern at the top. I did a deep clean and more of the black pattern began to appear. Three nozzle checks and deep cleans latter I have a full pattern with two nozzles not spraying. one more deep clean and not only do I have a complete black pattern but black letters all over the chart. I went to a page with text and tried to print it out with great results. I wated a few minutes and printed again and the black was faiding fast. one more deep clean and I now have perfect text. I printed the page every 30 min and got good text each time. It is now 5:00 AM EST and I just tryed it again...perfect. Thank you all very much. Don in Jamestown, NC USA

 

[Trigger 37]

dralsop,... Congratulations,... It is always great to hear a good success story against the dreaded "Totally Clogged printhead". Many people would have given up way before but you hung in there. Many of us have never gone to the "Boiling Water" route as we were scarred to damage the printhead. Just to hear you describe it makes me nervous. There are many things that can go bad with the bonding of the printhead to the flex cable, inlcuding the rubber seals around the filter screens where the ink carts set, and the very soft rubber seals inside the printhead that mate the ink input to the ceramic head. One question would educate all of us that have not tried this. How deep was the water in the pan that you heated and was the head in the water from the beginning such that the heat buildup was gradual or did you just set the head into the boiling water. Was it really a rolling boil. All of this info will help the rest of us learn more about really sturborn ink clogs.

We need to learn what the tolerance limit for heated water and printheads.

 

[dralsop]

First of all I am thrilled that some one actually read my reply. Thank you for making my day. My only hope was that granddad35 would still be around to get the thanks for the pictures. I notice that others on this web site also have some great photo work posted. This is a great forum. You also show up a lot around here; thanks for your questions, glad to reply.

The boiling water was not my idea, I learned two things from another blog: first from "moe" then from "yakker":
http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/inkjet/31712

From "moe" For the 3,476th time "alcohol does absolutely nothing to ink!" The warm water wash is what did it since the ink is "water soluble!"

Then from "yakker" It took three or four full jugs of boiling water to finally dissolve the deeply imbedded dry ink in the black ink well but eventually it came clean. Works like a new one now

I dont know how big his "jug" is, here is what I did and why it did not hurt the print head.
I got a pie pan (that absobs heat quickly and acts as a type of heat sink) I first I did not want the print head to contact the aluminum; I was afraid of a reaction between that and the nozzles. I brought some water up to a rolling boil (you need this energy to get to the clog because the heat does not last long). I held the print head and dribbled the "hot" water only over the input of the black but soon found that I could not avoid the others so I thought that I would clean them all. When some of the water got on my holding hand it was hot alright. I pored the water from the pan into a ceramic measuring cup hoping to get a precise pour but no luck. I was holding the print head with the black at the lowest point but when I could not get a precise pour I went horizontal and soaked them all. A lot of "black" water came out of the nozzle end, that was all the colors mixing. I did this until the water ran clear. Thinking I was done the print head went back into the printer...still no black text but granddad35 allowed me to visualize the clog deep in the plastic so I thought that water and heat had to get into the center of the print head. by this time I had learned that there is no reaction nozzle to pie pan. I put the print head in the pan and poured fresh boiling water over the screens this time just letting the water built up until it cover the screens. You will be suprised just how fast the water cools as the print head and the pan soake up the heat. I agree with you that we should not imerse the print head into boiling water for all the reasons you gave; my water cooled pretty fast but leave it in there until the water is cool enough to leave your finger in it, pour that out and put more in to make sure the center of the print head is warm. With water that deep my main concern was that it was covering the bottom rows of the "gold" contacts on the back. In the end, no harm done. After two tries and no black water, I just let it sit in the cooling water and went to Home Depot. When I got back there was just a little black ink coming from the black nozzles, I got excited, heated up more water, put the head in the pan and on with the hot water. I then slowly at first moved the print head up and down in the cooling water. It was when this action became more vigerous that a large amount of black ink came from the nozzles. What a great reward. I kept this up, changing the water until the water was clean no matter what I did. I tries to "fling" as much water as possible from the head but and dried of the rubber seals and the nozzles. The white plastic holding all the nozzles was a beautiful and clean white. I did not want the print head to cool nor drie out on the inside but went right to the printer, did a deep clean to "charge" the head and nozzles and for the first time got a little true black on the nozzle check test pattern, another deep clean and got the whole pattern minus two white lines, two nozzles still not working, another deep clean and well I teared up and said thank you through a prayer to Heavenly Father for his help and for allowing me access to all the work of you great guys and gals. For the following three days I made is a point to print something at least twice a day. We now get perfect true black text in all fonts....now, if you are still awake from all this I hope you and others benifite from the experience. Have a prayer then turn on the heat.

 

[Trigger 37]

dralsop,... WOW,... that is some very inventive & risky work you have done. Most of us would be chicken to try what you have done. Now you have "Paved the way" for us to learn more about cleaning printheads. I thank you a bunch. If there is something I can give you for your effort let me know,... you deserve a prize. My first good printer was a Canon Multipass 2500 and I still have that but then many years ago I got the i560 and loved it till I sold it for much more than I paid for it. But it was in top condition. Now I have the MP730 and the iP6600d and they are both great printers. The MP730 has the exact same insides as the i560 including the same printhead.

If you are interested I will send you one of the Repair Manuals I have created for the Canon i560 printer. If you ever have to take the printer apart for any reason, this manual will teach you and show you how to do it. It will come on a CD and will also include the Canon Service Manual and Part Catalog for the i560. Just email me your address and I'll mail it to you. I sell them on eBay from time to time for $25 so you will at least be getting something for your creativity.

Grandad35,... I would appreciate your thoughts on what dralsop has done and the aggressive process he has used to clean a very difficult printhead. As he said in his first note, his printer had been in storage for a long time so that is how it got so dried up.

Anyway, thanks again,... I know I will be using your process to clean some older printhead I have that have never wanted to come clean.

 

[Grandad35]

Grandad35,... I would appreciate your thoughts on what dralsop has done and the aggressive process he has used to clean a very difficult printhead.

I have to make a confession. In my first post in this thread, I mentioned that I got a replacement print head under warranty after the heat sink came loose. I didnt know it at the time, but I caused the heat sink to loosen by an attempt at a boiling water cleaning. The boiling water didnt clear the clog in that instance (disassembling the print head did the trick). I tried boiling water again at a later date (on the same replacement print head) and the heat sink came loose on that print head also. In this case, it only took two mistakes to see that the heat sink was fastened to the print head with an adhesive that didnt like heat. Once this was found, the heat sinks were re-glued on both heads (the print heads had to be removed to do this) to restore both to full functionality. One of the repaired heads has been running without problems for about 2.5 years (the other is a spare, as are 2 new heads that are packed away with a spare i9900).

A defective head from another printer that was previously dissected (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=13256#p13256) was put it into boiling water for 10 minutes with one of the rubber grommets left in place. The boiled rubber grommet was not distorted and had the same feel as the non-boiled grommets. This isnt exactly surprising, since most common rubbers used for these types of applications have a continuous use temperature of at least 212 deg F. Even neoprene (with the lowest temperature rating) is rated at 180 deg F continuous use, so a short exposure to 212 deg F shouldnt be a major problem. I dont have the multi-holed rubber piece that seals the print head to the carriage, but it should be similarly rated.

I dont know what the black plastic carrier is made from, but it is obviously a high temperature polymer. By feel, the stiffness of this part was unchanged between room temperature and 212 deg F, so it should also be OK in boiling water.

The actual print head is made from a ceramic like those typically used in mil spec components.
*Mil spec electronics (http://www.national.com/news/1996/9610/ds90c.html) must operate from -55 to +125 deg C.
*The print head runs through a soldering operation, and most solders dont melt until about 200 deg C.
*The print head locally runs up to about 300 deg C to generate the bubbles that fire the ink droplets.

Similar numbers apply to the flex cable and circuit board, so 100 deg C on these parts should be OK.

in summary, a print head MAY tolerate boiling water, but if there are glued components involved (e.g. a heat sink), it may be damaged by the elevated temperatures. As was stated with the disassembly technique, I wouldnt do it unless the next step is to replace the print head and there is nothing to lose. It would not be my first procedure to use on a normal clog.

Based on what we know about the possibility of impurities in the water depositing conductive salts on sensitive electronic circuits, only use distilled water for this procedure. Because the lack of impurities in distilled water can greatly increase the tendency of water to super heat above the boiling point and suddenly erupt (http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/superheating.html), be sure to follow the safety precautions given in the link.

 

[dralsop]

Trigger; your appreation is reward enough for all that typing, a working printer is reward enough for the effort and Granddad35; you sound like a scientest. Trigger, I am humbled by your offer. I need a font type for a document restoration project I am doing that that can be purchased on line. I will be more than happy to give you my address and the $25. It would be worth it. By the way. My wife and I each have Dell A920 printers and that i560 did a better job, a much better job on printing a black and white picture on plain paper. The i560 belongs to the church which is why it was in storage; members there are also suprised that it is working again.

OK Grandad, try this. If I had known about your melt downs I would not have done what I did. But lets think about this a minute. I brought the water, tap water, oops, to a rolling boil. I am in Jamestown, NC. www.idcide.com/citydata/nc/jamestown.htm says that we are a 775 ft above sea level so that rolling boil was that close to 212 degrees F. I then poured that into a thick ceramic measuring cup to get a more precise poor. The cup was room tempure so that brought the "impure" water down. The print heat sat on an aluminum pie pan which took more heat out of the water but I pored the "hot" water right on the black screen. The water coming out of the cup was hot to the touch but cooled quickly in the pan. When I went to Home Depot and left the print head in the water the water was very warm but not what you would call "hot". When I got back the water was room temprature but that little bit of black in the water near the black nozzles was very exciting indeed. At no time was the water temprature sustained at 212 degrees. That probably saved the print head.

I would like to from anyone who uses the same proceedure weather it works or not. Also, remember, I had prayer first.

You researchers have made this a great site, Thank you.

PS now I am concern about impurities that may be inside the PH.

 

[Grandad35]

PS now I am concern about impurities that may be inside the PH.

Don't worry about impurities inside the print head - they are only a problem when they short the electrical signals on the PC board on the back of the print head. Since your print head works, this obviously didn't happen in your case.

I realize that your cleaning water was cooler than boiling water, but so was mine when I loosened the heat sinks. I tested the print head parts in boiling water for my reply because I wanted to see what happened in the worst case.

Not all print heads have heat sinks, so this may not be a problem for all printers.

I am an engineer, as are many of the members of this forum.

 

[websnail]

Well I guess I should add my own printhead success story as well

Having suffered greatly with my magenta overpressure issue for 9 months I realised that some of the printheads I'd kept but thought were faulty, could probably be revived so I set about trying it out.

My own approach was to use toilet paper wadded up in layers and then soaked in an inkjet cleaning solution I source from my bulk in supplier. The printhead was sat on this and gently pushed down into the wet tissue before releasing it, then I applied a couple of drops of cleaning fluid onto the ink received posts in the printhead and let it sit for a bit. Half an hour later and I returned to gently repeat pressure application onto the printhead before getting a new wad of tissue, soaking that and repeating.

After about 3 hours of this I then figured all the ink would be loosed up so I got a fresh pad of paper, soaked that again and then pushing down hard with one hand I mopped up ink from the receiver posts, released pressure, appled a couple of drops of cleaning solution to the top again then repeated about 10 times until there was no more pigment ink reaching the top of the ink receiver post. Checked the pad for ink (of which there was a fair bit throughout) and then popped the printhead into a printer and added the cartridges.

At first the printer wasn't overly happy but all the dyebase colours were relatively ok... the pigment black had a number of missing jets but a quick printer cleaning routine and a few purge prints resolved that and I now have a resurrected printhead.

If anything the one thing I noticed most of all is that the pigment black was the worst to resolve... The dyebase (CYM & PK) were a doddle to fix

 

[dralsop]

Thank you Grandad35, I have a AS in electronics, and a BS in math and computer science, and was a tech with AT&T for 35 years. All that adds up to zero in print head repair but like you we can think and love to work through a problem. A tech looks at those two screws on the bottom near the nozzles and wants to see what is behind them but when he finds them very, very tight he leaves them alone and tries to find another way; an engineer finds some way of loosening them and takes it all apart. An experiences engineer can even get it back together. Whats more, the nozzles were even aligned. But thank you very much for the pictures.

Inkjet Master, what is a purge print? When our true black started to print I created a page in Microsoft Word with the words "This is a test" in a dozen fonts and sizes normal, bold, and italic. They almost filled the page and were a beautiful sight. A couple of select all's and change the color on the whole page and run it. Somthing like that or am I way off.

Thanks to all.

 

[fotofreek]

DR - a purge page is a series of solid bars of the ink colors that your printer uses. I have a set of these that I downloaded from MIS web site. They came in four and six color bars when I downloaded them about three years ago. You could certainly create your own in MS Word, Photoshop, etc. It is probably impossible to select a color that would draw ink from just one color cart for each bar.

One use would be when you wish to change from one brand of refill ink to another. The purge print would use up the ink in the printhead from the previous batch and pull ink from the new batch into the printhead. If you did this with cleaning cycles you would hasten the dreaded waste ink tank full message. It would not be used to try to clear a clog as continued printing when you have nozzles not working would possibly do damage to the printhead.

As a retired orthodontist with only the required chemistry and physics courses required for entry to medical/dental schools I really appreciate the engineering background you fellows bring to the forum. Orthodontists are generally very good "tinkerers" and love to take apart and (try to) put things back together again. I truly hate to have any device malfunction and find that I can't fix it.