i950 wont print cyan; yet it works using purging syringe. What to do?

[~PJ~]

This is beginning to sound uncannily similar to the problem I have with the black [see post on Pixma ip4000]. Ink getting through the printhead but not onto the paper.

 

[Lilla]

~PJ~ Hummm... so that makes three of us so far
* ~PJ~'s problem in thread titled Printhead problem with Canon Pixma 4000
* MrSpin's problem in thread titled Clogged Canon print head scroll down to post #39

I came across this thread and thought it might help with my two clogged Canon printers. The first is a Pixma ip1500, the second is an i350. They take the same cartridge and the print heads look the same, but are not interchangable. In both, the black ports are completely clogged. They clogged while using 3rd party inks. Neither printer made it through more than 3 or 4 refills before clogging.

My cleaning process was very intensive. I dismantled the printheads completely. Soaked them in many things, including, water, 90% iso.alcohol, and denatured alcohol. I made fitting out of vinyl tubing to fit all the ports and connected my air compressor to them at 120 psi. I was able to easily clear the color ports and they print fine, but I can't even get a bit of black to print. I can get water to pass through the black port, and cannot detect even the smallest amount of black ink coming out, when cleaning. However, they don't work at all.

So is it an electrical problem or what? Can anyone speculate?

Thanks,
Lilla

 

[~PJ~]

As far as my problem is concerned, the consensus from another forum is that the voltgae regulator is goosed, and has actually physically blown the two printheads. However, if another printhead works in this machine it probably can't be the same problem.

 

[hpnetserver]

Lilla said: i950 wont print cyan, yet I can get a flow using a purging syringe.

I remember seeing a drawing of a Canon print head. It showed one inlet and two outlets for each nozzle. The inlet is at the top from where ink is sucked in. One of the outlets is the actual nozzle itself where bubbles shoot down. The other outlet is a bigger one which branches out between the inlet and the nozzle. Don't really know why the 2nd outlet but Pixma series printers with FINE print head too have 2 outlets. The 2nd larger outlet is probably for cleaning cycles to suck ink through to clear bolckage in the ink feeding channel. The nozzles are way too tiny for the cleaning cycles to effectively suck ink through. Besides, if there is pollutant such as micro dusts in the ink the clean cycle will suck them into the nozzles causing permanent blockage in the nozzles.

I think when you purge the print head with a syringe the ink flows out of the larger 2nd outlet of each nozzle. The 1st outlet, which is the nozzle itself, is still clogged. This is probably why you can purge it and get ink to flow but it won't print still. This is clearly a clog in the nozzles but not in the ink feeding channel.

Soaking the print head with Windex may eventually dissolve the clog still. But since you are not getting any Cyan nozzles to fire it is highly likely an electrical problem though.

 

[Lilla]

hpnetserver, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! That explanation seems very plausible and it has given me reason to not give up that the cleaning could work yet. And realizing too that it could be an electrical problem instead of a clog.

To all,

Additional information about the initial problem that is not explained in my initial post. Initially, when using the purging syringe, I had to push MUCH harder to get the cyan channel to flow than with the other channels. Further, sometimes the cyan channel would be flowing when I was using the purging syringe and then all of a sudden it would freeze up solid; I would then have to work it again to get it to flow again. The cyan channel appeared to have what I called "a floater" something that would move around and impede the flow. This is why I decided that the cleaning procedures would be worth trying.
At this point, the "floater" seems to have cleared as I can push a lot of water through using the purging syringe without experiencieng any sudden freeze-ups like I was experiencing initially.

So, perhaps it is time to try printing again. If it still doesn't work then I think I'll try the ammonia methods posted by Barry Shultz here.

Most of the toughest clogs can be fixed by soaking the print head in a bowl of a 50/50% solution of ammonia and water overnight. If that doesn't work you can soak it in pure ammonia for up to 1 hour then a 100% water rinse.

Question 1: If I soak the print head overnight in 50/50 clean-ammonia/water overnight or if that doesn't work then in pure ammonia for 1 hour, do I need to be careful to keep the depth of the solution below the circuit board? How deep is safe?

Question 2: I would like to try dripping 50/50 ammonia solution (or even pure ammonia) via a 1 inch section of tubing attached to the inlet port of the cyan channel. But will the 50/50 (or pure) ammonia melt the tubing and deposit goo in the noozle?

Thanks to all for your help,
Lilla

 

[Lilla]

I made a Print Head Purging Hose that attaches to the water faucet, as recommended by Grandad35. I posted pictures of it at the link below.

Pictures of Lilla's new Print Head Purging Hose

 

[Lilla]

It's been a while, but I wanted to give a final post to let people know the end of this story. But first, I want to thank everyone that posted advice to help me. I learned a lot in the process of trying to find a solution.

In the end, I concluded that the heater in the cyan channel was burnt out. My sister decided to get a new printer, rather than replace the print head. Further, she decided that refilling is not for her, and she is going to use Canon OEM carts only from now on. For the most part, she is what you might call an infrequent printer, and she wants the "magic" that is in the Canon OEM ink that helps the printer to not clog.

She gave her dysfunctional i950 printer to me. I put it on a family computer that doesn't need to print on photo paper, printing is mostly word text documents, excel spreadsheets, and light web page printing of pages that don't have to be perfect, just usable. I call it a "take what you get" printer. I put a cartridge filled with windex in the burnt-out slot, no point having ink in it that would just dry out. It prints only on plain paper; however, in the printer driver I set the default paper type to "matte paper" so it will call for Photo Cyan instead of Cyan. Within these limitations, the printer is still living a useful life.

An example of the results of using plain paper vs. matte paper settings is shown below.

Lilla

 

[ghwellsjr]

It's been a while, but I wanted to give a final post to let people know the end of this story.

Well, maybe this isn't going to be a final post.

It prints only on plain paper; however, in the printer driver I set the default paper type to "matte paper" so it will call for Photo Cyan instead of Cyan.

I can see why this could be confusing since Canon calls the pigment black ink "Black" which is only used on plain paper and the dye black ink "Photo Black" which is only used on photo paper, but the pattern ends there. All the other inks are dye inks and they are all used on both plain paper and photo paper. The so-called color "photo" inks are just lighter versions of the non-photo inks. Photo magenta is a lighter magenta and photo cyan is a lighter cyan. Yellow is already so light they don't bother having two versions of it. These lighter inks just make it easier to produce the full gamut of colors without creating graininess.

In general, the photo papers use much more ink than the plain papers which result in a little bit of blurring, although I'm not sure if that holds true for the matte photo paper. You should try an experiment to see if matte really is an improvement over plain (even with a dead cyan head), you may just be wasting ink and getting inferior printouts.

 

[Lilla]

ghwellsjr,

I decided that the best way to demonstrate what I am getting is to show a picture printed with both settings. I added this picture to my post #17.

Please scroll up to post #17 to see an example of a picture printed on plain paper settings and another picture printed using matte paper settings. As stated above, the cyan channel on the print head is burnt-out and the cart is now filled with windex. The other colors give a perfect nozzle check. The i950 is a six color printer with C,PC,Bk,Y,PM,M all dye based inks.

It is true that the matte paper setting puts more ink onto the plain paper than the plain paper setting would, but the matte paper setting looks much better, and since I am refilling, it really doesn't matter.

Lilla