How to reach ink waste tank? /Dismantle i960

[jackson]

It can't be an ink issue.
It seems the printer thinks the head is there (else it would give a message) and I'm sure you remembered to bring the locking lever down all the way.Is there a little lever on top of the assembly for envelopes/paper?That moves the head up and down on the i850.
Something jarred loose when the chassis was taken apart?

 

[Trigger 37]

I hope you're sitting down. Let me ask you,.. when you had the carriage out and took out the ink pads and cleaned them,... did you also remove the inktanks before that and take out the printhead. You should have cleaned the printhead in water once you had it out. You should have also made sure it was not clogged after you cleaned it,... and you should have made sure that you got it totally dry by using an air compressor to blow any water out of the back of the printhead where the EEProm chip is located. You don't want to put it back in the printer when anything is wet at all. Here is the really big point. Once you had the carriage out, you should have turned it over very carefully and inspected the Purge unit and the two ink tubes that dump the ink onto the ink pads. There is a process to clean out the purge unit so you can be sure that when you do a cleaning cycle you are really sucking ink out of the ink tanks and through the printhead. If nothing prints and the printer thinks it is working, you're not getting any ink through the printhead. There are about 8 things that could cause that to happen.

I repair, service and sell printers. I also have written a complete step by step maintenance manual for the i Series printer, with detailed pictures to show each step. It would have shown you where the screws are and about 2 dozen other things. I have provided this manual to people who have purchased printers from me and as I am still working on the finishing touches it will be about a month before I start selling the manual on Ebay. It will come with the complete set of Service Manuals, Parts Manuals, as well as special service instructions generated by Canon. Last but not least it will cover complete maintenance on these printers for such things as "Waste Ink Pad cleaning", complete disassembly, Purge Unit cleaning, Printhead cleaning process, ink tank cleaning & renewal, modification instruction to setup ink tanks for easy and safe refilling. And finally it will cover everyday things you can do to your printer to make sure it stays working great, without filling up your waste ink pad.

Why am I doing this? Well you can't believe the number of people that have Canon printers and don't know how to take care of them, or don't know how to fix anything on them. That is not all bad. A lot of people that have no technical skill should never tackle anything like taking a printer apart. For these unfortunate people they have to take their printer to a Local Canon Service Tech and pay $80 to get something fixed. Most of them just give up and go buy another printer,...and pretty soon we have to truck our trash out to the desert since all the waste dumps are full of printers, monitors, and computer parts. For those that have a little "Mr Fixit" in them, my manual will help them get it done for a very low cost which helps to pay for my prescription drugs and a few libations. Most of all I do it because I can, and I enjoy fixing things and putting them back together and seeing them work.

One last suggestion about your ink problem. You might want to get a couple of paper towels and fold then into 1/4 size, then take out each ink tank one at a time and hold it over the towel and softly blow air with your mouth into the top back of the ink tank. You do this to make sure that ink is flowing through the tank and it is not clogged. Once you have done all of that, put them back in the printer and run several deep cleaning cycles in a row. Then print a nozzle test pattern. If nothing still comes out, remove each ink tank, one at a time, and check to see if the screen in the printhead for each ink tank is wet with ink. If they are wet, take out the ink tanks, cap the bottom off, take out the printhead and set the print head on a couple of folded up paper towels on a cookie sheet. Use a syringe or an eye dropper to fill the small compartment around each ink tank screen in the printhead with water or Windex. The object is to see if the water drains through the printhead nozzles, and that each of the CMY BK colors shows up on the paper towel. IF that doesn't work, clean the printhead by putting it in the laundry room sink and running water over each screen and watching the ink come out. What you want to see is evidence that there is ink of each color in the printhead. Remember to completely dry the printhead before you ever put it back in the printer.

That's enough for tonight,... I could have just attached my whole manual and saved all this time. Good Luck.

 

[Trigger 37]

Hello,

It has been 7 days since I post my long boring note. Hope it didn't scare you away. Did anything help or do you still have your problem?

 

[pepperinapress]

Sorry! I wasn't scared away, just -- away. I'm in Australia for the month actually. My poor printer is reassembled and useless at present, although as soon as I get home I'm going to try what you suggest. It may be too late, considering that it will have been sitting idle for four weeks by then... But I'll give it a go before I throw in the towel... Thanks for the useful advice!

 

[mrelmo]

hey trigger, i have an i560. as you have said i also enjoy taking things apart, reassemble and seeing them work, how can i get a copy of the i series maintainence manual that you have written? thanks

 

[Trigger 37]

Mrelmo,... I'm still working on the document. When I finish, it will be much more valuable than the standard Canon Service Manual, which basically only tells you about their standard error codes and other things on how to reset the waste ink counter and EEprom, which many people have already provided on these web sites.

The i560 is a great printer, but if something goes bad, you have not choice but to take it to a Canon Service center or sell it for parts. What I hope to do is create something that will have all the Service information, Parts Catalog, Still pictures showing the correct way to disassemble the printer, detail instructions on a "Safe way to clean the printhead", instructions on how to regenerate or renew Canon BCI cartridges, instructions on how to modify carts to make them easy to refill, and finally, instruction on ways to take care of your printer and to keep it working good so you don't have to send it to a Service Center, or to the local waste dump. This is the part that you don't want to hear. when I get this all done, I will sell the complete CD for each Canon printer on eBay. I hope you can appreciate the amount of work I'm putting into this. I may never sell one of them, but at least I'm going to try. I think $10 for all of this is a good price, considering people are selling the Service Manual alone on eBay for $5.00 to $10.00.

There are some Service Manuals that are free and posted by others on the net,... I'm sure you can find them. Get one and take a look at it. Once you open one of them and go through them in detail, you will see they are not worth much. However, if you have 30 of them, and the Parts Manuals to go along with them, they can really educate you on Canon Printers. Then if you have 10 or more Canon printer and start taking them apart and taking pictures as you go, now that would be something worth a few bucks. I'm retired and I have to find a way to pay for my Alcohol bill,... and if anything is left, I pay for my prescription drugs.

 

[Trigger 37]

Pepperinapress,... while we are waiting for you to get back,.. here are a few questions about your printer. Let's go back to the beginning. You started out chasing the "Waste Ink Pad" location but you never mentioned what error codes or flashing light sequence you had to begin with. There are some codes that look like "Waste Ink Pad" problems which are really just a bad printhead. I know this is a terrible thing to tell you, as so many people really just blame anything that goes wrong on a bad printhead. I have another i560 that gave me the Green-orange-or-or-or-or-or-orange-long Green, then repeat all over, error message. I also at first thougt this was the waste ink error, but as others have pointed out, "Waste Ink Error" is really a Cyclical error with alternating flashes of green and orange. That is --Green-Orange-Gr-Or-Gr-Or-Gr-Or-Gr-Or-Gr-Or-Gr-Orange-Long Green, and then repeat. That is 7 flashes of orange interspaced with green flashes.

Anyway, I had all the same flashes on the i560, did all the cleaning, reset the waste ink codes, and the EEprom, but still no help. I finally ended up at the same point you are where the printer will think it is printing but no ink ever gets on the paper. I have concluded this is a bad printhead,.. after that I went to the detail search at the Canon web site where I found their 7 orange flash error condition = Bad Printhead. The major clue was that the printhead would not go to the center of the carriage when the top cover was opened.

I'm working on proving this by putting a known good printhead into the i560 to see if that will fix the problem. Hope you get home safe.

 

[Soporose]

I'm still working on the document. When I finish, it will be much more valuable than the standard Canon Service Manual, which basically only tells you about their standard error codes and other things on how to reset the waste ink counter and EEprom, which many people have already provided on these web sites.

... I think $10 for all of this is a good price, considering people are selling the Service Manual alone on eBay for $5.00 to $10.00.

Hi Trigger 37.

Just read a couple of posts of yours about these manuals you are working on. If they cover the i865 I WANT ONE --- and I'll tell you up front that, if they are as comprehensive as you describe, US$10 is WAY too cheap.

My i865 is just on 3 years old and it's greatest importance to me is for printing quality labels on printable CDs, plus it's a very cheap duplex printer --- and duplex is a GREAT feature.

Anyway, I'm off to the authorised Canon repairer again tomorrow for what I think is the second print-head in 2 weeks and the third in under 4 months. Prior to that, one head lasted about 2 years. I dunno what's going wrong, but trying to get anything out of the service people is like grilling the NSA. You absolutely cannot talk to an actual service tech, so everything goes through a receptionist, who is, well ... a receptionist.

Although I've been in IT for decades and have stripped/reassembled/designed/built countless PCs and servers, I've just never had any call to get into the insides of printers. Fact is I'm perfectly happy these days to pay specialists for any type of servicing, but I'm now in a position where I can't trust these people - and I have no real alternative. Is it just a run of bad luck or they aren't doing the job properly.

When print head life is quoted by Canon at 10,000 pages of colour printing, repeated failures of the print head in the same unit (after only a fraction of that through-put) perhaps deserve deeper investigation than just accepting what would normally be the obvious cause. The entire through-put of the printer in three years has only been marginally over 2 x 10,000 pages, yet there have been two failed print-heads in less than four months, the last using Canon inks purchased from the same service centre.

They have blamed the Bontex inks I've been using (made in China and one-third the price of Canon's) but as I used them for over a year with one head and have had 2 heads fail in 4 months, I'm very skeptical, especially as I've used their Canon inks since the last head replacement.

Anyway, it's become obvious that I'll have to become more hands-on if I want to keep this i865 going, as I can't see any suitable replacement for it.

Hence my interest in your manual set. Last night I bought an "i860 SERVICE MANUAL" online for 3.5 UK Pounds, but there is precious little useful content and no illustrations at all.

I have some experience with marketing information products online and here are my thoughts on pricing.

Your target market is very specific and well defined, and you aren't going to sell more manuals by cutting the price. I would try selling them for US$29 from a dedicated web page, as well as eBay. If the manual set is really good and well illustrated it may be worth even more, but you can always test various prices. Marketers of information products do it all the time. I'd be happy to discuss this further with you if you like.

- Billy

 

[Trigger 37]

Soporose,... I guess that the i865 is just the European version of the i860. Yes, one of the manuals is for the i860 series. It is only slightly different than the i560, i960 series. I see that you purchased the Service Manual and can see that while it does have good information, it is no where near enough to allow anyone to service the machine.

I can't believe that you have gone through 3 printheads. There is something else wrong. I am currently working on the complete removal, and cleaning of the Purge Unit. This is what really keeps the printhead working. If the purge unit is not working right, it will clog up the printhead so bad you won't be able to use it for anything. The other key thing is knowing how to clean your printheads. Tell me more about what you have done to your printer and maybe we can stop some of this bleeding.

 

[mrelmo]

Hey trigger it will be money well spent to stay away from chipped tanks