IP3000 cross contamination - cause?

[kanonvater]

Greetings! I'm a newbie, though I've been lurking for several months.

This IP3000 is new to me as of around March 2017, though it's moderately well-used -- about 4600 pages. The drain sheet is over 70% full. Purge count when I got it was M=8, R=10, T=624 (!), D=1, C=26.

I'm still using original factory-filled Canon carts, though they're of unknown age. Plan to refill them, if the printer itself hangs in there.

I've had problems all along with pg black, as you can see below. However, that's for another time. Right now I'm more concerned with the colors. I have a laser printer for black text.

Just yesterday I used the printer for the first time in about 3 weeks (power was off but it was plugged in). On a nozzle check, there was a small area of magenta at the top of the yellow bar. Prints were striped, as you'd expect.

I ran a couple of cleanings and the print quality improved, but it was still somewhat stripey, for sure not what it had been a few weeks before.

Today it was much worse, with the yellow bar entirely magenta (see below).

When I took the Y cart out for inspection, a reddish discoloration was apparent in the bottom of the sponge side.

I ran a few cleaning cycles and printed a few letter-size sheets of #ffff00 yellow. After that the reddish discoloration in the cart was gone, but I was still getting magenta stripes that make it look like an old fashioned legal tablet. As you can see, the magenta cast diminishes quickly, but the few magenta pixels (?) at the top of each printhead pass are always there. (The image below doesn't show the entire letter size sheet.)

Maybe it's cross contamination through the purge pad? I hope....

I syringed maybe 1ml of Windex onto the color pad and ran a cleaning. The liquid disappeared and the pad looked a little less grim. However, at some point I noticed what might be a spot of magenta ink on the pad. Could that be significant?

I tried replacing both the Y and M carts with new Canon factory sealed ones (again of unknown age), ran a cleaning, and got a much improved Y nozzle check. But prints were still striped, and in a nozzle check 10 minutes later, Y had the magenta top back again.

Nozzle checks are below. Top is the first one today, before I tried anything. Then after 1 cleaning, next with the new Y and M carts and a nozzle cleaning, and finally about 10 minutes after the cart change.

Is there anything else I can try with the purging system?

I haven't yet called Canon, but I'll be surprised if they still stock printheads for this old fellow. I'm concerned that the only heads available will be the Chinese heads, which though they usually claim are new, I'm pretty sure are really used and (if you're lucky) cleaned.

If the consensus here is that it's curtains for the printhead, then I guess it's time to start looking for another printer.

Thanks! I'll appreciate any and all advice, and hope I can "pay it forward" in the future.

PS - My apologies for the oversize image thumbnails, I couldn't figure out how to make them smaller.

 

[PeterBJ]

Some causes of cross contamination are leaky cartridges, purge unit blocked in dried ink that is in contact with the nozzle plate and an internal leak in the print head.

Leaking cartridges are often bad quality aftermarket cartridges. As you are using Canon OEM cartridges with the OEM ink, defective cartridges can be ruled out. The purge unit looks normal so sadly this leaves an internal leak in the print head as the most likely cause of the cross contamination.

IIRC martin0reg once wrote that he liked the iP3000 because new OEM print heads were still available. I found a German company claiming to have 100 QY6-0042 print heads still in stock. Any comments to this offer @martin0reg ? I think the print heads are true new old stock Canon OEM. It seems the QY6-0064 is a newer replacement type for QY6-0042 so also see this.

The purge count "T-value" is the number of purges initiated by a timer. I guess it could be caused by the printer being left turned on for years.

Edited to change "cartridge" as the last word in the first paragraph to "print head" which makes more sense.

 

[The Hat]

I wouldn’t give up on the print head that quick, I look to the purge unit for answers, you could try flooding the purge pads a few times with Windex and running a normal head clean to see it that clears up the contamination...

It only costs a bottle of window cleaner to find out..

 

[palombian]

I wouldn’t give up on the print head that quick, I look to the purge unit for answers, you could try flooding the purge pads a few times with Windex and running a normal head clean to see it that clears up the contamination...

It only costs a bottle of window cleaner to find out..

Indeed, after spraying with Windex your pads should be whiter with some color lines.
Maybe the pump and the tube still need more rinsing.

 

[mikling]

.New M and Y carts is perfect after one cleaning. The return of the problem after ten minutes tell everything. There is a leaky channel inside the printhead. It could be the gasket or the nozzle plate lamination. In either case, you need to consider 1. Opening up the printhead and seeing if it is the gasket. 2. get a new printhead. 3. get a new printer. 4. Make it a backup to the laser. 5. Do nothing.

Do nothing is always an option, many long time politicians know this time tested skill.

 

[kanonvater]

Lots of good info here -- many thanks for this wealth of knowledge!

I did flood the purge pads with Windex 2-3 times, but I never saw them turn white or even much lighter. Can't hurt to give them a few more squirts.

Instead of running a cleaning cycle after flooding the pads, does it make sense to dab them with a paper towel or similar absorbent material? That way the purge pump isn't sucking ink right back into a clean pad, and it won't add more to the 70%+ full drain sheet.

All that said, I suspect that Peterbj and Mikling have it, that the printhead has developed an internal leak.

I just ran another nozzle check. The printer insisted on running a cleaning cycle before printing the nozzle check, which seemed odd. The yellow had thin magenta lines both top and bottom. On another NC about 15 minutes later, the entire yellow bar was mostly magenta. Not too promising.

Called Canon today. As expected, no more QY6-0064 printheads are available.

Printheads are supposedly considered consumables like ink carts, no? Canon still offer BCI-6 and CLI-8 ink carts, so why don't they stock printheads for the printers that use those carts? (Rhetorical question.)

Anyway, they gave me contact info for a couple of dealers, which I'll try tomorrow.

Or maybe I'll just watch Craigslist for another working IP3000. It can't be any more iffy than some used printhead of unknown history cleaned and repacked in China, and it'lll probably cost less.

 

[mikling]

Printers this old are not always a safe bet. Printhead cross contamination can be the result of the breakdown of adhesive between the channels on the nozzle plate. Adhesives can break down over time. So time is not your friend in older printheads. Typically breakdown of chemicals happen non linearly so as time progresses the speed increases. Keep this in mind.

 

[te36]

There are 1000'th of these print heads available from aliexpress < $40.

Uneducated guesswork: Print head from old printer on craigslist or print head from aliexpress are same age.
Likelihood of craigslist head to have been cleaned is quite low, aliexpress print head being cleaned is fairly high. If they would sell badly cleaned heads they would get so many returns that they might loose money. And after that, both printheads lied around for many years. Go figure which one would likely work after such a long time. And the chinese will send you another head if the first one does not work.

Main gotcha: If you are in germany, customs usually makes order from china > Euro 22 a pain.

 

[martin0reg]

...
IIRC martin0reg once wrote that he liked the iP3000 because new OEM print heads were still available. I found a German company claiming to have 100 QY6-0042 print heads still in stock. Any comments to this offer @martin0reg ? I think the print heads are true new old stock Canon OEM. It seems the QY6-0064 is a newer replacement type for QY6-0042 so also see this.
...

When I got my like new ip3000 for a bargain, they probably stood idle for years, with ink in the lines, and I had no cure for the cross contamination. I'm quite sure that the sealing within the printhead, which should seperate the ink channels, was damaged oe worn out from standing idle..
https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/re-glue-ceramic-part-to-print-head.7652/page-2#post-88283

Then I bought 4 new qy6-0064 from this shop:
http://www.druckerpatronen-guenstig...o=p3281_Canon-Original-Druckkopf-QY60064.html
To identify a genuine canon head I have found that the chinese refurbishers, who use to offer their used items as "original and new", copy the packaging almost perfect ... but not the metallic "hologram" sticker. And the heads I bought 2 years ago all have this canon sticker on the outer package

 

[kanonvater]

Please forgive the length of this post; I'm responding to 3 different posts here.

Mikling said: "Printers this old are not always a safe bet. Printhead cross contamination can be the result of the breakdown of adhesive between the channels on the nozzle plate."

This isn't what I like hearing, but it seems like sage advice from someone with a lot of experience.

Do Epson printheads have a parallel or equivalent aging failure mode? Unlike Canon heads, Epson heads aren't (officially) user-replaceable. (In my experience, they also clog up much more often.)

Age-based failure seems more or less acceptable for Canon printheads, because they're user-replaceable, and Canon supposedly considers them (or at least formerly considered them) "consumables."

But I read in an IP4000 service manual that Canon considered the life of the printhead to be 5 years. The same manual also gave the useful life of the PRINTER as 5 years!

If both printer and printhead are designed to last only 5 years, the entire printer should be considered a "consumable," no? Then why would Canon continue to make even the ink carts for these old printers?

---

Te36 said: "There are 1000'th of these print heads available from aliexpress < $40... If they would sell badly cleaned heads they would get so many returns that they might lose money... And the Chinese will send you another head if the first one does not work."

This is an intriguing perspective. But surely some known failure rate is built into the price. If we're right that these are cleaned-up used printheads, the "manufacturing" cost can't be high, given low Chinese labor costs and a worldwide supply of recycled printers.

Most of these printheads carry a short warranty, too, typically 30 or 60 days.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems to me that success or failure of the "new" printhead is not just a matter of whether it is well cleaned. For sure, good cleaning is essential, but surely there must be other reasons for printhead failures.

Maybe my experience isn't indicative or typical, but not knowing any better, I bought a "new" Ebay printhead for an IP6000D.

The Ebay picture showed a Canon box, but it arrived in a plain brown paperboard box, which was marked "Made in China." The printhead itself was marked "Made in Japan." Draw from that what conclusions you will.

The "new" 6000D printhead gave a perfect nozzle check. It printed perhaps 20-30 pages beautifully, and then the printer refused to power up unless I removed the printhead. I guess this means a high voltage short-circuit failure in the head. That could indeed result from bad cleaning => poor ink flow => heat, but I was getting flawless nozzle checks up to the moment it quit working.

Kudos to the Ebay seller, who exchanged the head for another one, even though it was almost a month past warranty. The replacement works, but then so did the first one at the start, and I'm far enough past the 60 day warranty now that I don't think I'll get another free replacement if/when this one dies. Every time I print a job, I expect that it will be the last.

That's why I have some trouble seeing Chinese "new" Canon printheads as very useful in the long run.

If I buy another used IP3000 locally, I can check its page count in the EEPROM dump, and get some idea of how much use the printhead may have gotten. (But is this useful information?) With the Chinese refurbished printheads, I have no way to tell. And if I pay $5 or $10 for the used printer, in theory I can buy several for the cost of one Chinese head. In reality though, IP3000s are not numerous on my local Craigslist, and the prices for them on Ebay are just plain nuts.

---

martin0reg said: "When I got my like new ip3000 for a bargain, they probably stood idle for years, with ink in the lines, and I had no cure for the cross contamination...
https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/re-glue-ceramic-part-to-print-head.7652/page-2#post-88283"

Before posting, I searched the board for cross contamination threads, but somehow missed the one you link to above. Your IP3000 problem is exactly like mine.

You say "And the heads I bought 2 years ago all have this canon sticker on the outer package"

You do mean the Canon hologram sticker was on the white paperboard box, yes?

I've read, I think on this board, that genuine Canon heads have a hologram printed on the INNER aluminum envelope. I didn't know that they also have a hologram sticker on the OUTER box. That is important information for a buyer.

Thank you for the Tinten-Shop reference and report of your experience. I looked at the website (I read a little German) and it seems that they will ship to Germany or the EU, but they don't say whether they will ship to the USA. If they do, and the shipping is affordable, that may be a good source. I will check them out.