ip5000 Printhead

[l_d_allan]

I'm a little hesitate in buying a used printer.

I initially felt the same way. I happen to live in a fairly large metropolitan area (Colorado Springs ... 500,000+ SMSA) with an active CraigsList. I had my choice of BCI-6, CLI-8, and 220/221 based printers. Many were available pretty cheap because the owner didn't have a full set of carts to demonstrate that the printer worked ok ... so I could base my offer on the reasonable assumption that it had problems since I wouldn't be able to simply do a real "gold standard" nozzle check in person. "Trust but verify" when the seller tells you "it worked fine the last time I used it, before the ink ran out."

Based on ghwellsjr recommendation for my situation ... yours is different ... I found an excellent iP4500 CLI-8 + PGI-5bk printer with no power cord and several empty tanks. I really wondered how the seller expected to get much for a non-operational printer that 90+% of possible buyers couldn't check out. I took along my power cord from the 9000-2 and some spare ink tanks, and was able to confirm the nozzle check was perfect. Sold! As near as I could tell from an extended service mode nozzle check, it may have done mostly text printing, and not that much of that .... 1200 pages or so, IIRC.

I would be very reluctant to buy a used printer that wasn't local, had to be shipped, and I couldn't check it out in person. A N.I.B. like the proliferation of 9000-2's ... maybe if the 13x19" capability was justifiable.

As you tell by the signatures on many of the forum members, there is some serious printer accumulation that can happen. I haven't yet been bitten, but I can understand the temptation.

Once you can deal with clogs, you can find non-operational printers for free or $5 at most that probably need nothing more than an overnight soaking to be good as new. I suspect that once you know what you look for, you can sort out a super buy from merely a good buy in 5 minutes or less ... take out the carts, take out the print-head, look it over, and decide.

I suppose if you were really hard core, you could take along a dish pan, cleaning carts, ink carts, ask to run warm tap water over the clogged print head, and maybe get it working right in front on the seller. Then buy it for $5 and sell it back to them for $50 to $100+. That would be a good war story.

The other issue is that from a refiller's point of view, Canon printers have steadily become less and less desireable, imo. Harder to refill and lower ink capacities. My impression is that BCI-6 based printers were best for refillers for a period of time, but with resetters readily available, CLI-8 based printers are preferred for refillers ... imo.

 

[mccoady]

These HobbiColors cleaning cartridges http://cgi.ebay.com/Hobbicolors-New...t=BI_Toner&hash=item3a63fefb2d#ht_2815wt_1139 only come in BCI-6 but they may be worth a try.

Even though these http://cgi.ebay.com/BCI-6-Cleaning-...ccessories&hash=item2eb3dc1bf0#ht_1378wt_1139 are more expensive cleaning cartridges than the above would they be better since they already include a cleaning solution and you could use them over and over again?

 

[l_d_allan]

Wow my head is spinning

Welcome to the club. It really is disorienting to try to absorb info about dye and pigment printers, Epson vs Canon vs Hp, etc. The most acute problem I remember is that "best practices" from several years ago has sometimes changed ... perhaps 180 degrees.

Can you even refill the ip4820's carts PGI-225 + CLI-226?

Again, consider the source as I "only know what I read on the Internet" ... which is notoriously unreliable. My perhaps uninformed impression is that a resetter for the 225/226 family is "real soon now". The first generation resetters may be quite expensive until the I.P. is stolen by our eastern "friends" ... don't get me started.

At some point, you should be "pulling the trigger" and getting on with it. This thread started over a week ago. As former Sec of Defense Rumsfield used to say ...
"there are known knowns, unknown knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns." It can be expensive in time and/or treasure to turn unknowns into knowns.

As several have advised, you can use an existing BCI-6 or PGI-3 cart as a simple cleaning cart. You really don't need dedicated cleaning carts, and Windex dripped into a nearly empty cart has advantages. I've kind of lost track of the nitty-gritty of this thread, but I think you are relatively close to getting the iP5000 to work, iirc.

Here is a preliminary draft of guidelines to tackle clogs with Canon printers . Caveat ... drafted by a de-clogging newbie (me) with some feedback from more experienced de-cloggers (especially see #19 ). Consider the source and proceed at your own risk. Much is a summary of info I encountered, but any errors are mine.

 

[stratman]

As former Sec of Defense Rumsfield used to say ... "there are known knowns, unknown knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns."

Never in a billion years would I ever expected to see Rumsfeld quoted on a printer forum. Then again, no truer words have ever been spoken.

An apropros quote about the art and science of refilling, LDA, which at times does resemble warfare, including enhanced interrogation techniques performed on clogged print heads.

 

[l_d_allan]

see Rumsfeld quoted

Didn't realize it was spelled Rumsfeld ... thanks. Just the other day, I. Weiner expanded my literary awareness of Pandora's Box.

An apropros quote about the art and science of refilling, LDA, which at times does resemble warfare, including enhanced interrogation techniques performed on clogged print heads.

Clever ... good start to a long day with a grin on my face.

And another off-beat, possibly unexpected quote from L. Schlessinger ... "Now go take on the day!".

Ooops ... OT? ... my apologies to the OP who is probably hoping fresh replies have useful info rather than punchy curmudgeons amusing themselves.

 

[mccoady]

You have one pigment black nozzle that isn't printing so you should do cleanings on it as well as the others until you get it working.

I would make a set of cleaning cartridges. If you have a set of empty cartridges, especially Canon originals, I would turn them over and dribble Windex into the outlet port until the sponge is saturated. Try not to let the mixture of ink and Windex dribble into the area between the sponge and the top of the cartridge (which is now on the bottom). Remove all the cartridges from your printer and close the cover. This will make the printer think you have just put full cartridges in the printer. Then put your cleaning cartridges in the printer and the printer will now report that all your cartridges are low.

Next you want to do a deep cleaning followed by a nozzle check and repeat until all nozzles are working or until your printer says that one or more of your cartridges are empty, at which point you want to start from the top (remove the cartridges, close the cover, dribble more Windex, put cartridge back in, and continue doing deep cleanings and nozzle checks. Hopefully you'll see some improvement with each cleaning. If you don't see any improvement after several repeats, then let the printer sit with the power on until the next day.

Post another nozzle check after each day of work.

By the way, my instruction for making cleaning cartridges is assuming that you are not already refilling your cartridges. If you are already refilling them then just refill them with Windex using whatever method you are using, but you want to have some ink in them just so you can tell when your nozzles are getting cleaned.

And also, what cartridges/ink are you using?

I've spent the last couple of days following these directions over and over again. I've lost count how many times I've ran cleaning cartridges through the printer followed by reinstalling my ink carts and running cleaning cycles but still no difference. Actually after running nozzle checks it looks pretty normal to me but when I try to printing a picture it starts printing normally until halfway through the print and then the color goes screwy.

Before giving up I'm in the process of soaking my print head overnight one more time and I'll follow up tomorrow running cleaning cartridges...if this doesn't work I'm done.

Up until now I never seriously entertained the idea of spending $200-$300 dollars on Ebay/Amazon Market in order to get a NEW older Pixma but tonight I successfully bid on a ip4300 so I now have another printer if my last ditch effort with the ip5000 doesn't pan out.

 

[l_d_allan]

Actually after running nozzle checks it looks pretty normal to me but when I try to print a picture it starts printing normally until halfway through the print and then the color goes screwy.

I would think that if the nozzle check is ok , that would indicate that the nozzles of the print-head aren't clogged, and cleaning isn't the issue to resolve. Could be electrical or ink flow?

What happens if you really slow the printer down, and only do several light colored 4x6" prints? High quality will be slower, and my printer has a setting for drying time between prints. I would think that would put a lighter demand on ink flow. Maybe try ghwellsjr's test gradient, but lighten by a stop or two to reduce the amount of ink used.

 

[ghwellsjr]

After you do a cleaning and you get a good nozzle check, instead of printing a photo, what happens if you do several more nozzle checks, like maybe ten waiting a minute between each one. Does the nozzle check change in any way? Have you also had this problem with the pigment black on plain paper? What if you print a page of text on plain paper?

 

[l_d_allan]

That seems like a very valuable diagnostic test to try. ghwellsjr suggested a similar test with an erratic problem I was having with a CLI-8 based 9000-2. See my question #7 and his reply #8 on that thread.

If you do this test, here are some things to consider also doing (and ghwellsjr may "correct the error of my ways" ... and mccoady and myself would both learn from "Saint George" the clog slayer )

* Note: this only applies if the first nozzle check seems ok, and later ones seem flawed.
* Don't print anything other than nozzle checks if you have a flawed nozzle check!

* On my 9000-2, I can do 2 check per page of plain paper ... top and bottom. Your printer may or may not allow this. You are only interested in the rectangle reflecting the suspect cart color.
* Date the first nozzle check, and also number it #1 so you can keep track
* Number each nozzle check so you can keep track of the progression if it changes.

* If you detect deterioration, then

* Give the printer a "rest" ... hour or more??? ... so ink has longer to migrate from the reservoir through the sponge/foam/filter to the nozzle inlets to the nozzles themselves. Also, do a regular print-driver initiated regular cleaning so the nozzles have a chance to be "primed". Once a nozzle is dry, the partial vacuum that draws the subsequent ink isn't there.

* Retry series of nozzle checks.

* Another thing to try: swap in a non-low retail Canon cart with real Canon ink that has never been refilled, and preferrably hasn't been sitting around too long.
* It's expensive, but you might want to actually purchase a brand new cart of the problematic color. This is a "base-line" that had darn well better perform perfectly to best reduce the number of variable involved. Yes, I know ... ouch $$$$$.
* The printer will probably do a clean/purge cycle when it detects a different cart, and that the cover has been opened. However, it is possible that there will be a few nozzle checks that reflect a mixture of Canon ink and non-Canon ink for an inderminate number of nozzle checks.
* I really don't know how much ink there is between the nozzle inlets and the actual nozzles. I am astonished at how much ink there is when I've run warm tap water in a print-head to de-clog it ... 5+ minutes of flipping it right-side and then upside-down ... over and over ... and I'm still seeing ink on the mesh filters of all the colors of all the nozzle inlets when I flip it right-side up. It STILL ain't empty!
* For thoroughness, you might want to do another print-driver initiated regular cleaning, and then more nozzle checks. Yeah, that much more expensive Canon ink wasted, but you want to "drill down" to just what is happening when real Canon ink from a known-to-be-good cart is flowing through your print-head. I doubt that a deep-cleaning cycle is justified (ghwellsjr?)

* If after all that, you are getting a series of excellent nozzle checks from the Canon retail cart, but not your refilled carts, then the refilled cart perhaps has problems and/or perhaps purge your carts and/or perhaps some other aspect of your refilling technique could have room for improvement. In other words, "look in the mirror" for the probable source of your problems.

* If after all that, both your refilled carts and your retail Canon cart have an initially excellect nozzle check, but subsequent nozzle checks deteriorate, then .... my speculation is possible electrical problems and perhaps you need a new print-head .... but ghwellsjr is much more qualified than myself to comment on that. Perhaps there is so much dried grunge in some of the nozzles that it might be equivalent to "hardening of the arteries" with built-up plaque? Or minerals in your tap water have accumulated within the tiny nozzles?

* Also, something I do that may or may not be ok ... (ghwellsjr?) ... I got a package of 250 letter sized 8.5x11" card stock pages from Sams .... quite inexpensive and much closer to the thickness of photo paper. When I've done repeated nozzle checks, I use this thicker paper and use front and back. That way I get 4 per page and I can see the progression a bit easier. With plain copy paper, you can do front/back, but they interfere with each other. On my iP4500, the nozzle check takes more of the page, so it may or may not be appropriate to try 2 nozzle checks per paper side.

 

[mccoady]

After you do a cleaning and you get a good nozzle check, instead of printing a photo, what happens if you do several more nozzle checks, like maybe ten waiting a minute between each one. Does the nozzle check change in any way? Have you also had this problem with the pigment black on plain paper? What if you print a page of text on plain paper?

I guess I shouldn't have said the nozzle checks were fine because they might print somewhat normal looking for a couple of checks and then they go back to looking like this:

The nozzle checks are very inconsistent but more times than not they look like the above everything faded with Cyan really faded and Magenta basically so faded you can barely see the outline. This is after multiple printhead soakings, running cleaning cartridges several times, and changing ink carts multiple times (3rd party G&G cartridges) and running a lot of cleaning cycles. I don't have any Genuine Canon ink cartridges to see if they would help and I hate to buy any (due to the expense) just as a wild shot that would fix my problem. In fact if there was a 80% chance of Genuine Canon ink cartridges fixing things I would spend the money but I'm not convinced anyone thinks it's a likely resolution. Had I been able to find a new printhead I would have given that a shot since everytime I've had printer issues in the past like this I've replaced the head and that solved the problem.

I would like to thank everyone for their help mainly ghwellsjr & l_d_allan but I'm giving up and moving on with a new printer.

I do have some questions about refilling so should I start a new thread?