IP5000 eighteen months later

[Trigger 37]

Hello to all,... just a word of caution on the cleaning solution. I saved a printhead the other day by installing an ink tank that I had filled with commercial head cleaner and it worked great. Took a little time and several prints but it finally worked. I was so impressed with the results that I tried it on another machine that was very clogged. The mistake I made was that I printed half a page of data before I ever got decent results from the nozzle pattern. I had no luck with any black ink at all when I tried to print half a page of full black,... not a drop of ink. Tried it again and "Bang", the printer came up with error message, "Please Wait,... Printhead is Cooling". Well it never cooled off. I'm afraid I burnt it. The obvious problem is that the printhead was totally clogged or the purge unit could not prime the printhead. In either case ( and I still don't know which) there was no ink in the printhead when I tried to print half a page in solid black,.. and I did it twice.

So you can't just use an ink tank with cleaning solution until you are getting some kind of ink flow and have the printhead primed. Otherwise, you could have a big problem. I will be really sad if I have "Fried" that printhead. The printer in question is an MP730 and I suspect that the purge unit is so clogged that it can't prime the printhead. I still have a lot of work to attempt to clean out the purge unit and retest. If that doesn't work,.. there is a big job ahead to take the MP730 apart and get at the Purge unit.

 

[jackson]

After six days of passive cleaning I have no output (zero) from any of the nozzles.The cleaning solution goes down, so it's either the head or the logic.
It's now a coin flip as to whether I buy a new printhead and hope that is the problem.

 

[bompaboy]

I have a Canon ip5000. Everything fine until updated drivers downloaded. Now nothing prints. I receive an error message that the Abrasion setting must be turned off, however, going to the maintenance section > custom settings, everything in the Prevent Paper Abrasion area is grayed out.
Any help is appreciated.

Mr. H.

 

[Trigger 37]

bompaboy,... I think you have to go first to the control panel, select "printers & Faxes", then select your printer, open the "properties, then the maintenance tap, then "Custom Settings". It should not be grayed out in this mode. You can not do it will you are at the maintenance tab from some other program.

 

[Trigger 37]

Jackson,... I have worked on dozens of printers and printhead, and sometimes I get the same results and I have still not isolated it 100%. However, a couple of times I was able to resolve the problem by cleaning the gold contacts on the back of the printhead first with a very good eraser and then with a tissue and rubbing alcohol. I also cleaned the contact in the Carriage assembly.

One other thing that fixed a similar problem was that the Purge unit was not sucking the ink out of the ink carts and therefore it could not prime the printhead with ink,... so for sure it could not print. You can try and clean the Purge unit by placing drops of Windex on the ceramic pads where the printhead is parked and cycling the printer on and off. This should suck the windex down through the purge pipes and into the waste ink pads. Then do some deep cleaning cycles and print the nozzle test. I would not print anything more complex than the nozzle test as if there is no ink in the printhead (and since you cleaned it for several days it should have nothing in it at all) and if you try to print with it like that, it will over heat the printhead, and this is not good. Some people say this will burn out the print nozzles.

One last item that could cause the same effect is if all of the ink tanks were dried up and could not flow ink, or if the air vent holes in the back of the ink carts are covered with tape.

Just to show you how crap happens, I had a printhead that was working fine in all colors except the Cyan was missing at several nozzles. I took it out and did my normal cleaning and put it back,.. no improvement. I then made a full set of cleaning carts using home brew cleaning solution, 90% Windex + 10% Isopropal Alcohol and ran about ten full color pages through the printer. There were still quite a few nozzles that would not fire. So I took out the printhead and soaked it in cleaning solution for 2 days. Blew it dry and reloaded it. Made sure I did deep cleaning cycles and clean the contacts. Now it won't print anything. I went to remove it while power was on and the carriage in my MP730 decided to move while the lever was up and jammed the carriage. Now the printer won't do anything except it keeps trying to cycle the carriage back to home but it won't move and now I'm afraid I will have to take the entire printer apart to get at the main carriage asm and see what the problem is. If you have ever taken a MP730 apart, you know what kind of a job that is.

Give your printhead a try, what have you got to lose,...

 

[KnightCrawler]

Considering a new IP4300 cost $60 after rebate maybe just buy a new printer ?

 

[Trigger 37]

Knightcrawler,... Save us some time looking and let us know where you saw the iP4300 for $60.

 

[KnightCrawler]

Knightcrawler,... Save us some time looking and let us know where you saw the iP4300 for $60.

Staples and Fry's have them on sale quite often. The last Staples deal was $99 - $50MIR = $49. Fry's deal is usually $79 - $20MIR = $59.

 

[Trigger 37]

Just to update my last post and get rid of the "Crap". I removed all the ink cars and the printhead and then powered on the printer without anything installed. It reset the internal error and gave me the "Install ink cartridge" message. That was a great sign. Then I cleaned the contacts on the printhead and resinstalled the ink and printhead and it went back to where it was, still printing but with many missing nozzles not firing in all the colors. The black has always been great. Not one nozzle missing.

So now I'm back to running cleaning carts that have about 90/10 Windex/Isopropal Alcohol. That has not had any effect over about 10 pages of purging. Now I'm trying the "heat" method of microwave water which did nothing. The ink that is left must really be clogged as I did not see one speck of color come out of the printhead and I re-heated and soaked it about 5 times. Next I will use Professional Cleaning solution. As the above posts direct, I will not use more than 1/8" of cleaner.

At least I'm very happy that the cartridge jam did not break anything. I believe what happen is that once the printhead contacts loose connection via a jam, the error signal is locked up in the main logic board and won't go away until the entire printhead is removed and the printer is turn on and off to clear the error.

If I get some success on this cleaning I'll let you know, because in my last 15 printers, this has been the worst printhead clog.

 

[rtsy]

Hi Jackson,

Grandad35 directed me to this thread as I have a similar problem with a very similar nozzle check to yours. Please see http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=12854#p12854 if you are interested.

How did you finally resolve your problem? Did you get any success at all? Did you fix it with cleaning cartridges, or give up and get a new printhead/printer?

Thanks much,
Robin aka rtsy