How do I stop my inks drying?

[ghwellsjr]

Windex (or an off-brand) especially with ammonia is the favored cheap cleaner for helping to clean print head clogs. For a professional cleaner, I use the OCP product sold here: http://www.inkjetsaver.com/tools.html but can probably also be purchased from your local OCP distributer.

I mainly use the OCP head cleaner when I want to have invisible ink for testing which print modes use different colors.

I have had varying degrees of success with cleaning nozzles. Sometimes the results get worse the more I try to clean and I wonder why I'm spending so much time on a $55 print head. Athough I have made cleaning cartridges using Windex, it's probably not a good idea to use 100% Windex. I usually take a cartridge that has an empty reservoir and dribble Windex into the outlet port until the sponge is saturated and then use that (after the ink has resaturated the bottom of the sponge). You want to have some ink mixed in so that you can see when the problem has been fixed. I sometimes think the best cleaning solution is the ink itself.

I don't recommend deep cleanings unless you are using a cleaning solution because it uses up your ink really fast.

You generally want to have all cleaning carts in your printer when you are doing cleanings because all of them will be wasting ink otherwise. Be aware that the nozzles are fired during a cleaning cycle, it's not just sucking on the bottom of the print head.

 

[l_d_allan]

ghwellsjr,

Thanks for your patience with the refilling newbie. I've learned a lot.

Mea culpa ...
I did have a scare about a week ok when some prints looked terrible, and I actually looked at a nozzle check and tried to figure out what it meant. The CLI-8M magenta had problems that I guessed meant vacuum issues, print-head clogging, or ???. Not good. Drat.

I hadn't really been keeping track of what I was doing, so I was deeply puzzled.

I did some cleaning cycles ... no better ... some deep cleanings ... no better ... swapped in another Magenta cart that I didn't refill ... no better ... Drat! ... several cleaning cycles ... no better ... several deep cleaning cycles ... no better ... some test prints looked terrible ... DRAT!

Then the next day, or the following, it was ok. Prints back to looking ok, and nozzle check ok. Humbling.

I'm fuzzy on what happened, and what got better. Something dissolved? It may have had something to do with trying out another budget photo paper brand besides Costco's budget Kirkland, as the time-line is similar, IIRC. Or a coincidence?

[Edit] Or could have been ill-advised used of tissue paper as a final cleaning of the outlet port and #1813 outlet port cap before putting into storage? I think after the refill, I would seal the top and open the bottom outlet port to check for leaks. Then I would "blot" the outlet port into tissue paper, and wipe things down. I can image some of that tissue semi-dissolving and getting to the print-head. I speculate that a paper towel is better for that purpose than tissue. Duh ...

I've since been more careful about "inventory control", and put the suspicious/problematic CLI-8M cart back in at the next refill (which came pretty quickly with all the deep cleanings ... ouch). Nozzle check ok. Whew.

Sorry for the "war story" ...

If the following more or less correct?
If your nozzle check is ok, then your printer is probably healthy and your refilling techique is probably adequate.

Maybe confirm with a familiar test print, and get back to printing?

 

[The Hat]

l_d_allan

I dont know what youre doing to you printer but you seem to have more problems with it than just about most people on this forum.
My advice to you would be just leave it alone and let it get on with what its good at and thats printing.
If you keep fiddling with it its not going to last very long, happy printing..

 

[l_d_allan]

My advice to you would be just leave it alone and let it get on with what its good at and thats printing.

Good advice. Noted. Thanks.

It's certainly better at printing than I have been able to coax out of it so far. Each day I feel I'm getting a little closer to realizing its impressive potential. This forum has been a tremendous resource.

I'm the first to acknowledge that I've got lots of room for improvement in my refilling technique. But whatever I'm doing seems to be working ok, as my refilled carts seem to be behaving ok.

I've got a big backlog of prints to make, so I anticipate that being my focus going forward. I need to get a lot better at printing to meet some big expectations this summer. Also faster at refilling would help.

 

[ghwellsjr]

If the following more or less correct?
If your nozzle check is ok, then your printer is probably healthy and your refilling techique is probably adequate.

Maybe confirm with a familiar test print, and get back to printing?

Not necessarily. You can still have ink flow problems that won't show up in a nozzle check. For me, this has been especially true for the pigment black cartridge. What I do when I put in a freshly refilled pigment black cartridge is I print a page of solid black to make sure white streaks don't show up.

 

[l_d_allan]

Ok, but the 9000-2 has 8 die colors and no pigment carts. Does that change your reply, at least as far as a Canon printer in the same family as the 9000-2 with no pigment inks?

 

[ghwellsjr]

It doesn't change my reply, you can still have flow problems with dye inks, it's just a little more complicated to detect. With an all-in-one, it is very easy to make a copy of a black page simply by opening the scanner cover with no paper on the platen and copying that. It comes out solid black on my MP760. I don't even have to be connected to a computer to do this. If you want to test the dye ink cartridges, you have to have some pages of solid colors that you print. I just don't normally worry about it for the dye inks.

 

[l_d_allan]

it is very easy to make a copy of a black page simply by opening the scanner cover with no paper on the platen and copying that. It comes out solid black on my MP760.

I suppose with a photo editor like Photoshop, PS-E, Paint, etc., you could just make a new file and put in pure black as the fill color? 0/0/0 ... and print that?

 

[ghwellsjr]

Yes. The only reason I'm pointing this out is that many times I'm working on printers that are not connected to computers.

 

[l_d_allan]

The best way to store cartridges is to seal their outlet ports with vinyl tape and seal off any refill holes but leave the air vent on the top of the cartridge open. Then put the cartridges in a ziplock bag with a piece of dampened paper towel.

I currently run two cartridges for my printer, one in and one filled as a replacement ready to swap in as needed. The refills sit with orange caps held in place with a rubber band and the air vents and 'German' holes taped over. I don't use a ziplock bag, though I can see that would be a good idea, nor do I store them with a damp paper towel.

I wonder if people using this storage method have had any problem with mold/mildew within the ziplock. Seems like this could result in a petri-dish-like environment for growing all kinds of crud.

Or not?

[war-story]
I was storing seeds for the next garden season in a small, airtight ziplock. Several batches weren't dried enough, and got pretty disgusting.
[/war-story]