Help with a canon MG5250 - new to this...

[The Hat]

glenn77 ...or am i confused still????

Totally.
When you disable the ink monitoring on the printer, you then have to do it yourself manually ok.
So if you can see ink in your cartridges then everything is fine, thats why youll have to
check them periodically yourself, before you start to print is usually the best time.

The idea of self monitoring is because there is no resetter available for the 526 chip yet.
Again when you manage to get yourself a resetter for these chips (in time)
the resetter will always set your chip to 100% regardless of what level of ink you may have in the cartridge.

When the printer is showing low ink, it is usually time to think about refilling again..

 

[stratman]

Hi - i am in the NE UK - Middlesborough. So if i only refill the cartridge say 2/3 full and 'reset' the chip so it reads full - yes the ink level would be monitored but would it record the true (ie 2/3 level) or a 'false' full level (ie 100%)...if it recorded the level as full and the ink ran out- same problem as not visually checking carts periodically...or am i confused still????

Listen to your uncle The Hat, for he leads you on the correct path, including purchasing from Octoinkjet in your home country.

There has been much conjecture on the mechanism or mechanisms which Canon uses to monitor ink level. The older method is via light shown through a prism. The other and newer method is nozzle spray counts (or some other counting method) It could be both are employed in your printer. I don't know your printer.

Suffice to say, and to mercifully simplify, no one AFAIK has reported a print head failure because they reset their chip, did not fill the cartridge "full", and then printed while observing the onscreen warnings on monitored ink levels.

One forum member might test this observation out if he goes through with his plan of setting up his printer for a couple hundred prints in one session and then walking away while the printer prints.

 

[glenn77]

OK, i think i have it - can you tell me exactly which cartridges i need to replace the set of 5 x 526's that came with the MG5250
If i understand right i will need CLI 521 Magenta, cyan, yellow + CLI 521 Black + PGI 520 Black

Am i right??

 

[The Hat]

glenn77 Am i right??

That is perfect right on but be careful not to mix up the chips in the transfer.
I would remove all of the chips from the 521s together and get them out of your way first.
Change your 526 chips one at a time that way youll have no problems at all.

Remember to put the cyan on the cyan etc, it sounds simple but if you get it wrong the printer will not print anything.
Theres one bit of advice I can give that will help you and thats take your time there's no need to rush it,
Patience can become your best friend..

 

[l_d_allan]

One forum member might test this observation out if he goes through with his plan of setting up his printer for a couple hundred prints in one session and then walking away while the printer prints.

Me?

I haven't done that, but I did put a Low-Ink cartridge in a CLI-8 based printer ... Pro 9000-2 ... and did some printing to see what would happen. I alternated between a nozzle check and this test print from ghwellsjr. My impression is that is a somewhat low-stress print to the printer mechanism.

I had hoped / semi-expected that the printer would detect that the ink was low, and provide a warning even though the cart's chip had been reset to Full. However, it kept printing merrily along. The print-driver window showing ink level stayed at Full.

I opened the printer every other print to look at the cart, which would require cleaning cycles. The cart got to the point of being obviously empty, to the point of streaks in the test rectangles. The outlet port had the appearance of being almost starved of ink ... rather faded. The nozzle checks were fine, however. I'm curious how many ml of ink it will accept when I refill it.

From this, I infer that the ink level monitoring for the Pro 9000-2 is mostly/entirely a matter of counting nozzle sprays ... albeit sophisticated ... and cleaning cycles. It seems to ignore a prism within the CLI-8 cart that would previously would have been capable of optically detect that the reservoir side was empty.

 

[stratman]

One forum member might test this observation out if he goes through with his plan of setting up his printer for a couple hundred prints in one session and then walking away while the printer prints.

Me?

I haven't done that, but I did put a Low-Ink cartridge in a CLI-8 based printer ... Pro 9000-2 ... and did some printing to see what would happen. I alternated between a nozzle check and this test print from ghwellsjr. My impression is that is a somewhat low-stress print to the printer mechanism.

I had hoped / semi-expected that the printer would detect that the ink was low, and provide a warning even though the cart's chip had been reset to Full. However, it kept printing merrily along. The print-driver window showing ink level stayed at Full.

I opened the printer every other print to look at the cart, which would require cleaning cycles. The cart got to the point of being obviously empty, to the point of streaks in the test rectangles. The outlet port had the appearance of being almost starved of ink ... rather faded. The nozzle checks were fine, however. I'm curious how many ml of ink it will accept when I refill it.

From this, I infer that the ink level monitoring for the Pro 9000-2 is mostly/entirely a matter of counting nozzle sprays ... albeit sophisticated ... and cleaning cycles. It seems to ignore a prism within the CLI-8 cart that would previously would have been capable of optically detect that the reservoir side was empty.

Yes, you had written of doing this. Bad move for a number of reasons.

There is consensus that the prism-light monitoring system no longer works the way it did on earlier Canon models when it was the sole mechanism for monitoring ink level, but there are outstanding questions as to the prism-light mechanism's operation, if it functions at all, in the chipped cartridge printers.

Your test of a reset but incompletely filled cartridge has been done to various extents by a number of others including myself. People have reported that the level detection will not quickly change from full to half, low, or empty. Reports have been that level recognition does eventually occur. I cannot confirm this. For all we know, resetting the chip, or overriding an empty warning, may alter the function of the prism-light mechanism. Your test contradicts some earlier reports. I would rely on your results for your printing use.

Your observation of nozzle checks being OK while other print output shows streaks is an important lesson learned:

1) The safer nature of initially using the less demanding nozzle checks for figuring out problems with ink output

2) Problems may not show until printing something that demands sustained output of that color without a period of inactivity which would allow ink in an "empty" cartridge to wick into the drier cigarette filter-like outlet ink port sponge between use.