Commercial head cleaning TCS-01LP, OCP-RS worth it?

[Smile]

Has anyone tried to use this method

Don't know if they pull or push ink cleaner to the nozzles :/

 

[Smile]

I tried the commercial cleaner I got a few days back (it's inktec brand). Don't know what it is made of as I bought 200ml bottle and it is without any labels at all. Has very weak ammonia smell.

I tried it on my 6700D print head where I had minor problems with BK C PM PC M nozzles few faint lines (why is yellow always fine?)



So I soaked the head in this liquid for 3 days and nights. I heated the stuff to 40 degrees C in microware about every 5 hours and using syringe pulled and pushed liquid on every port.

The result was disappointing. It did not work as expected. And I had clear expectations: Should work better than homemade thing.

 

[lin]

I tried it on my 6700D print head where I had minor problems with BK C PM PC M nozzles few faint lines (why is yellow always fine?)

The yellow ink passage way is at the center of the printhead. In my opinion, during heavy printing demand, the yellow ink reaches much more readily to the nozzles bank area than it would have been for other colors. If you had one confirmed dead printhead, you can try to dismantle it and remove the rubbery connector and use a needle to poke the yellow inklet port filter, use a touch light to shine underneath, you see the direct light coming through the yellow inklet port. If you did the same with other colors inklet port filter, you won't see any light coming through. Other colors like Cyan, Magenta and BK etc, those colors travel a certain passage/pathway before they reaches the nozzles bank area which is not as direct as the yellow.

Smile, everytime you did such cleaning method, before you test print to see if the cleaning works, you need to let give some time for the ink from the cartridges to reaches the printhead nozzles before you start printing the test print. Should you see any streaks after cleaning, try perform a couple of purge print. Sometime it may take many pages and waste a lot of ink from the purge print to clear the streaks.

When printing the purge purge, should the streaks appear for the colors ones, choose photo paper pro as the media type and select fine (1) for custom printing quality setting. The photo paper pro is the only setting that prints at the max/highest resolution of the printer specification (for eg, if your printer max resolution is 9600 dpi x 2400) and PPP makes 16 passes during printing. Patience is the key (as long as it's not electrical printhead problem). Remember that even during heavy printing, you will notice that the printer will halt for a secs at interval timing to pull the ink to the printhead nozzles area before continuing the printing. So try to Print couple of purge print and let the printer rest (so that the printhead parks at the damp pad and for the ink to reaches the nozzle bank area) and repeat the purge print for the next couple of days. You should see that streaks will slowly clearly up.

 

[Smile]

If you look at full res picture I included in my post you'll see a few lines in PM and M nozzles. These lines are always there, I waited after I did cleaning cycle like you say. But it did not help.

I'll try to clean with stream next, just to make the nozzles damp with warm stream. I know it can be dangerous if done incorrectly. However I have successfully unclogged few print heads this way when other methods failed. So I'll give it a try.

 

[lin]

If you look at full res picture I included in my post you'll see a few lines in PM and M nozzles. These lines are always there, I waited after I did cleaning cycle like you say. But it did not help.

I'll try to clean with stream next, just to make the nozzles damp with warm stream. I know it can be dangerous if done incorrectly. However I have successfully unclogged few print heads this way when other methods failed. So I'll give it a try.

Yes, I saw those lines in PM and M in your pictures. This shouldn't be difficult to clear. As you have already uses the solution/or cleaning the printhead externally, there isn't any necessary to undergo another round of external cleaning again. What you have now are just lines/streaks, usually after solution/external cleaning process, the printhead nozzles are very 'ink starve'. So it's typical or common if there are a couple of streaks/lines. Try printing many pages of purge print of those colors that you have streaks/lines in the finest print quality mode that is available according to the paper media type you have selected.

Sometime it may take as much as 10, 20 or 30 full pages or more of the purge print to clear those lines/streaks depends on situation. Usually, after 20-30 full purge page, if it's still didn't clear those lines/streaks, I let the printer rest for couple of hours/ the next day, and repeat the process of purge print until the lines/streaks are clears.