Inkjet Printhead Cleaning Method

[fotofreek]

I prefer OEM carts for refilling also. As they start feeding poorly you can use Grandad's purge technique to restore them to excellent function. Last week I scrounged half a dozen empty OEM carts in the cart recycle bin at a CompUSA. The big office supply firms accept some carts and give paper or a credit toward ink purchases, but they generally don't take Canon carts as the refillers don't need Canon OEM carts.

I also have a set of MIS virgin bci-6 carts, two sets of Hobbicolor carts, and some Arrow carts that I use for refilling, and they have functioned well also. Knowing how well the OEM carts work, however, if I were starting over with refilling I would find a way to acquire a few extra sets of empty OEM Canon carts and use them exclusively.

 

[sandenscot]

hmmm...I will check the prices on ebay..however, unless I am misreading didn't Nifty Stuff say in his post link to his opinion of consumer reports

"The ink doesn't match the brand name ink.
Cheap ink will clog your nozzles more often.
Off brand ink won't last as long.

To this I say HOGWASH! In my 8+ years of refilling experience with all of the major brands of printers, and with ink from many different third party sources I've NOT ONCE had an ink so bad that I felt I should throw it out and go back to OEM / brand name ink"

isnt he saying non oem's work well? again, I didnt go with any old crap...using what I thought was reviewed pretty good....and i will look in to refilling..but i thought that refilling wasn't recommended

 

[fotofreek]

1) Refilling is the best way to assure yourself of a consistant product. Most of the third party prefilled carts come out of China and the manufacturers of these products have been known to change ink sources without notifying the venders they sell to. The Canon Refill inks most on this forum use are MIS, Formulabs (from Alotofthings) and Hobbicolors. Some prefer one, and some prefer another. No manufacturer of inks can absolutely match another's color response. For those who are most particular you need to calibrate everthing and use custom profiles. Having said that, many people just enjoy printing with one of these ink sets as is with an occasional tweak of the printer software.

2) The quality of many of the third party carts is poor. Some leak. Some have poor quality sponge material. More often, the poor quality shows up as insufficient air venting which prevents ink from being released adequately for printing under high demand. You may had decent prints until the ink flow slows, at which time the printhead becomes ink starved. You then get color shifts, banding, and burned-out nozzles. Case in point were the Arrow carts several of us purchased a few years ago. I purged them, took the tape off of the air vent area, and found that there were two different air vent maze patterns on the top - probably from two different manufacturers (but with the same labels.) One manufacturer's carts had smaller air vent hole than the other. I simply used a push pin to enlarge the air vent holes on those carts and they now work fine. Before, some were marginal and some just didn't work well at all.
3) Nifty recommends refilling, I recommend refilling, and many other participants on this forum recommend refilling. Consumers magazine and one of the PC magazines absolutely recommended Canon brand (OEM) ink/carts only, but Consumers did indicate that some of the inks they tested - notably Carrot - would work ok. Neither of these organizations had anything good to say about refilling. As I recall (I read it some time ago), Consumers said it was too messy for anyone to bother. Neither of these organizations reviewed the inks most of the forum's participants use, so we aren't convinced that the negative comments pertain to our favorite aftermarket products.
4) Wilhelm, a well recognized image testing firm, indicated that prints made with non-OEM Canon inks fade quicker than those made with Canon OEM inks. Grandad35's evaluation of fading under intense UV light exposure showed more fading over time with the non-OEM inks.
5) I have seen used BCI-6 carts in fairly large lots for sale on ebay. Not knowing how long they have been sitting around would concern me a bit, but Grandad35's purging technique does work well and the inks used in these carts is water soluble. If you have friends who use Canon OEM bci-6 carts you might have them save their empties for you in a sealed container. You will then know that they will clean up OK.

 

[panos]

Excellent posting, Fotofreek!

 

[sandenscot]

fotofreek, are you then recommending re-filling CANON OEM cartridges?...do you buy the ink from Canon?

 

[fotofreek]

Panos - thank you for your nice comment. I tried to sum up the issue for sandenscot. and to sandenscot - Yes. When you've used up the ink in a Canon OEM cart you can the adapt it for refilling. If you haven't thrown away the orange cap that you snap off the ink outlet at the bottom be sure to save them as they can be rubberbanded back into position to seal the outlet. You adapt the cart for refilling by either opening the factory fill hole or creating a hole that will work as a fill hole, after which you must get an airtight seal before using the cart. Read the thread on this forum on sealing the fill hole.

Decent empty carts are also available from MIS and Hobbicolors, to name just two vendors, but empty Canon OEM carts work extremely well. They have all the R&D and quality control of a major worldwide printer manufacturer behind them. It is very rare to find a new Canon OEM cart that doesn't work properly.

You can not buy bulk ink manufactured by Canon. If you wish to refill there are many sources of inexpensive ink designed exclusively for these printers. See my previous answers to your question for a few vendors that have been recommended on this forum. Do not use any "universal ink" but only buy ink formulated for your printer. Canon used the same inks for several years over several model changes and just recently changed their ink for the newest printer with chipped carts.

 

[Nifty]

If given the choice you should always pick OEM carts to refill vs. non-OEM. That being said there are some cartridge makers that are better than others... just as there are some ink manufacturers that produce a good ink and other's don't.

As pointed out, for many users refilling is preferred over pre-filled because you can rarely be guaranteed of the quality and consistency of ink.

 

[deh7402]

Good evening all (well it is here in Aus),

From extensive reading of the posts in this forum I believe I have a clogged printhead and I am preparing for the big day of printhead cleaning (haven't done anything like this before you see). Anyway, I have my distilled water and isopropyl alcohol but the only ammonia I could find was 'Cloudy Ammonia'. Now here's the rub - most of the posts I've read that talk about using ammonia suggest that you use clear ammonia - ?? I have searched the Web, read a whole heap of MSDS' on both types and haven't come up with a whole heap of answers other than one is NH3 and the other NH4-OH. One thing I did find out is that the type of ammonia in my Cloudy Ammonia (NH4-OH or Ammonium Hydroxide) is the same type found in Windex (Australian) and I understand that that works a treat. Bottom line - Is there any reason I should NOT substitute my Cloudy Ammonia for the suggested clear ammonia? If it's a problem I guess I can still try the alcohol and water.

Just for the record the symptoms of my allegedly clogged print head are:

I attempt to print a nice colour [yes that's how I spell it ] picture but all my reds are green - pretty but not right
I then perform a software head clean and re-print my picture and voila it works albeit a dirty red and lacking the verve that my printing once had
BTW if I print a nozzle check here you can actually see a fine dark band above the magenta strip - anyway back to it
I then decide to print another pretty colour picture the next day and you guessed it all my reds are green
After another clean almost all is right with the world again - just a bit dirty

As you can imagine this is pretty costly on inks. Now the answers to the obligatory questions:

1. The printer is a Canon Pixma iP3000;
2. We probably print 4 or 5 days out of the week - I have two kids at high school doing homework and projects and we print most of our own photos and greeting cards;
3. I have always used OEM carts - call me stupid but I felt I was doing the right thing and that I would never have these troubles - D'OH!!!!;
4. The problem has continued to occur over I think three or four cart changes.

Please accept my thanks in advance for any help you may be able to give me.
Regards,

Derek Holmes

 

[ghwellsjr]

I cannot offer an opinion on the type of ammonia to use except that you want to use very little of it, maybe even less than 5%. Some people claim that distilled water is all you really need and maybe you should start with that.

The most important diagnostic you can perform is the nozzle check and your description of how it looked is ambiguous. When you say there is a fine dark band above the magenta strip, do you mean that this band is in the white space above the magenta strip where there should be no printing at all or do you mean that it is embedded in the magenta strip somewhere? Aside from this fine dark band, do all the other colors show any evidence of nozzles not working?

Also, is there any difference between the nozzle check after a day of no printing before you do a cleaning and the nozzle check after you do a cleaning?

Are any of the grid marks missing from the black part of the nozzle check?

You haven't indicated whether your color shifts occur on plain paper or on photo paper. The reason that this is important is that your printer has no dye black ink and does not use the pigment black ink on photo paper. If it turns out that you are not having a problem with your black nozzles as evidence by the nozzle check, then it would be better when you are doing test prints to tell your printer that you are printing of photo paper even if you are using plain paper. That way, the black will not be used and it will be easier to tell what the colors are doing.

I'm wondering if your problem is not even in your print head or cartridges. Your symptoms sometimes point to clogged purge/prime pads and tubing. What you should do first, even if this is not your problem, is place some distilled water (since you don't have the right kind of Windex) on the two pads you will see off to the right where the print head parks. Turn the power off and on or do a head cleaning to get the suction to pump the water down to the waste ink tank. Do this several times until the pads remain clean or at least you can see the colors from the individual nozzles.

If the purge/prime unit is clogged, it will not be able to get ink to flow through all the nozzles and it can create the problems you are seeing. It is just one more thing you have to watch out for but may not be the problem you are having. I recommend doing this procedure every few months or so to keep the tubings clear.

You should also take a cotton swab and clean the thin vertical rubber blades that wipe the bottom of the print head. If these are full of ink, they can actually paint the bottom of the print head with ink. After you do a cleaning, and this ink is still wet, the nozzles can work but maybe not as good as they should. But after this ink dries, it blocks some of the nozzles completely until you do enough printing or cleaning to get the nozzles to blast their way through this dried ink. If you remove the print head after it has been idle for a day and look at the nozzles under a magnifying glass and you see painted ink there, this could be at least part of your problem. You can take a wet rag and clean the bottom of the print head to see if this alone clears up your problem. But you should still clean the pads, tubing, and blades as described earlier.

Let us know how things go.

 

[elpasodon]

Hi,
I'm a newbie to this forum and a computer novice. We are part of a non-profit organization that has helped the poor on both sides of the border in El Paso over the last several years. Last week our HP Business Inkjet 1100d started giving us problems. At first, it would print part of the page, then it would have white lines going through the printing for the rest of the page. However, today all we get is white lines going through the printing for the whole page. We called HP, but they wanted to charge us to answer any questions. We have run all the programs we know to run. We have updated software, firmware, etc. We don't have any idea if it's printheads or ?
If anyone has any ideas we would be most appreciative.
Don