ink keeps drying up! Canon iP3000

[Bimbob]

My friend and I both have the same printer, he uses his daily and has no problem. I use mine only a few times a week. We both use the same ink and cartridges. Every time I print something the colors are all wrong and I have to do the clean cycle. Then it works fine till the next printing. Obviously I'm using up a ton of ink every time I clean, so how can I keep the ink flowing? TIA

 

[Bimbob]

For anyone having this same problem, I found the answer:
http://www.neilslade.com/Papers/inkjetstuff3.html
this website seems to be very helpful and I think printing a simple test print every day will save me a lot of time and aggravation in the long run.

 

[billkunert]

There is a program called MIS Autoprint available at MIS supply ( www.inksupply.com ) that can be set to automatically print a copy anywhere between every day to, I think. once a week. I have mine set for every 4 days at 2100 and am very pleased with it. I have a Canon Pixma MP600.

 

[Trigger 37]

Bimbob,... Let me say up front that I totally agree with Neil's suggestion of printing something of color each and every day. I don't know many people that don't at least logon on to get their email everyday. So, my suggestion is to print a "Nozzle Check Pattern" each day. This is easy to get at via the Maintenance tap of the print driver. The advantage of this is two fold; 1. It prints all the colors in a controlled image so you know what color should be printed and where. Other images are made up of combinations of colors and if something is missing, it is hard to tell which color is bad or wrong. 2. The nozzle check shows you a detailed image of what is working and what is not. The cross hatched bars of each color are specifically each printhead "NOZZLE" printing for a specific duration. You can't get any better information.

So, this print test uses all the inks to keep them fresh in the printhead,... and it tells you if you're about to have a problem. One last point, don't worry about ink. If the test tells you something is wrong with a color, clean it right now. Ink is cheap. Printheads are expensive. The sooner you fix the problem the lower the cost.