iP3600 nozzle check not clearly showing electronic failure

[PeterBJ]

Normally an electronic print head failure will show in the nozzle check as pigment ink ink pattern totally missing or missing the upper or lower half or show a picket fence pattern. If the failure is in the dye ink section, the dye inks may be missing completely or one or more bands may show an upper or lower half that is considerably lighter than the other half. Here is a nozzle check from a Pixma 3600 that at first glance appears to show only clogged magenta nozzles:

But at a closer look you see some vertical lines in the normal magenta band. A test print from service mode reveals what I think is an electronic print head failure, and then no amount of cleaning will save this print head:

I think a nozzle check like this, in case of an electronic print head failure, has not been posted before. At least I had not seen it before.

 

[ghwellsjr]

That is a strange one. Did you remove the print head and clean the bottom? There may be either dried ink deposits or an accumulation of wet ink. It probably won't fix all the problems but it may remove some of the weirdness.

 

[PeterBJ]

Yes the underside of the print head is clean.

But studying your "Anatomy of a Canon print head" thread makes me wonder if this is clogged nozzles, even if I didn't think so, as the the print heads have two nozzle sets for each colour to allow for bidirectional printing, and maybe only nozzles for one direction are clogged? This may be a bit far fetched, but I have not given up on cleaning the print head yet.

The print head is from a printer I gave to some friends some time ago, and they didn't print since May when the printer was used for a large job. When they wanted to use the printer again a few days ago, they thought it was just out of ink and asked if I could refill it. Sadly another set of cartridges did not improve anything. I brought the Canon printer with me home and lent them an HP AIO and told them that they could keep the HP if I was not able to repair the Canon.

 

[The Hat]

PeterBJ
The nozzle print on my iX4000 have similar missing segments on it as your magenta has
and I do plan in the new year on replacing the print head,
however it still prints pretty good on high quality but less so on standard.

 

[PeterBJ]

An update:

I have had no success with unclogging the print head, but this stamp of the underside of the printhead on a piece of soft tissue paper makes me think that the problem is caused by clogged nozzles:

This part of a service mode nozzle check from this thread: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=8906&p=1 made me first think of an electronic print head failure:

Note the difference from this, which does not show a perfect symmetry, but includes some nozzles firing in the bands with the errors. Click to enlarge:



I have not given up on this print head yet, but maybe I will have to. Buying a new print head is out of the question, as the price of the print head far exceeds the value of the printer.

 

[Tudor]

Peter, how and what did you use to clean the printhead?

 

[turbguy]

The pattern of the black portion of service print you copied (and Hat's yellow) reminds me of "nozzle wear". With nozzles worn but still firing, the ink droplets are mis-directed, printing in uneven spacing, or even atop other nozzle spray lines. This produces very fine "streaking" in photos (as opposed to much wider banding).

I wouldn't give up on your magenta, looks like it still is just some nozzles not getting ink reliably.

Wayne

 

[The Hat]

PeterBJ
With encouragement like that who am I to argue with these guys, keep it up..

 

[barfl2]

PeterBj when I had my quite long running saga with Magenta on my Pixma 620 I tried the usual head cleaning methods with some sucess, but the banding or complete loss of the Magenta kept coming back.

I then remembered an old post by I think Grandad which advocates putting a 50/75mm piece of plastic tubing on the relevant input( I use a rigid needle scabbard with the closed end cut off) then using a syringe filled with Windex or similar pushing and pulling the fluid which I assume is applying pressure. In my case I was cleaning the head in a small container with water in, and I saw a momentary flash of colour.

I then filled the tube with cleaner and it ran through very quickly in a few seconds. I then attached another tube to the next colour Yellow, filled both and they both emptied at the same rate.

Then got a perfect nozzle check and the printer has been fine ever since. I think that I had had a partial blockage in Magenta for a long time and Grandads suggestion cleared it.

 

[PeterBJ]

Update2:

I started the cleaning attempts by first blotting the underside of the print head with a soft tissue paper moistened with a window cleaner with ammonia, "Ajax" from Colgate-Palmolive. This didn't bring any improvement. I then soaked the print head in the same window cleaner overnight, I had less than a cm of liquid in the tray to avoid wetting the backside of the circuit board. I also dripped the window cleaner onto the ink inlets.

After being sure that no liquid had entered behind the circuit board and the ribbon cable I reinstalled the print head and did a few print head cleaning and a nozzle check. The printhead had not been damaged by the soaking, but there was no improvement either. I repeated the soaking, this time with pharmacist's cleaning solution. This had no effect either.

I then made this adapter to try the cleaning method suggested by barfl2:

I placed the print head in a cm of window cleaner and pulled and pushed liquid through the nozzles, ink channels, and ink inlets using the adapter attached to a 50 ml syringe. I noticed a much higher resistance to flow at the magenta ink inlet, than at the other ink inlets. After this I cleaned the print head with demineralised water and after blowing away the water with a can of compressed air and drying under a desktop lamp and keeping the temperature of the print head around 45C/130F. After a couple of hours of drying I reinstalled the print head and tested again. This brought no improvement, instead there were now also clogged nozzles in cyan and pigment black. I have a supspicion that this last cleaning attempt forced dirt from the ink channels in the upper part of the print head into the nozzles.

Even if is not recommended I took the print head apart, to clean the ink channels in the upper part of the print head. There are two channels for magenta and both were still almost clogged. Forcing water through the channels finally unclogged them. I submerged the ceramic plate in window cleaner and left if for a couple of hours, cleaned it in demineralised water, wiped it dry and finally submerged it in denatured ethanol to absorb water residues. After reassembly the print head still worked, there was no further nozzle clogging, and no cross contamination of inks, but there was no improvement either.

I remember a thread about a bad batch of yellow refill ink that caused severe clogging in the ink inlet and ink channels. The remedy was a hot solution of dish washer powder in probably demineralised water, to avoid problems with Calcium hydroxide precipitating in an alkaline solution. This will be my next cleaning attempt. I will report the results.

The cleaning methods with pressurizing and dismantling the print head are not recommended, there is a high risk of damaging the print head and possibly also the logic board making the printer a total loss. If your printer is more valuable than this Pixma 3600 that is already considered a write-off, I strongly recommend using only the recommended and much more gentle methods for print head cleaning. If these more gentle methods fail, it is better to give up and order a new print head, in my opinion.