Is the printhead the most failed part on these printers?

[turbguy]

This is an interesting thread. I, like many others, have suffered with printhead failures but have recouped the cost, many times over, by refilling rather than purchasing OEM carts.

However, reading grandad's post in another thread, about not letting an ink cartridge run to empty before refilling, makes me wonder whether this may have contributed to some printhead clogging I have experienced in the past. Certainly, in future, I will make sure that I refill before I get the empty warning.

Are Canon printheads more liable to failure than Epson or Brother printheads? Certainly they're easier to replace but do these other printers have more robust printheads? Anyone have any experience of these printers?

Canon Print heads are "thermal" prints heads, which means they actually flash boil a small amount of ink behind the nozzle to eject a small liquid droplet. This is a VERY violent and powerful action, which erodes the material of the nozzle when repeated again and again. Also, if there is no ink behind the nozzle to be flash boiled (by a microscopic heating element), overheating can result, and that microheater can burn out (fail). The wear-out (erosion) issue leads to these heads being considered a consumable part, and are typically user-changable.

Another issue with thermal print heads is the alarmingly high current densities in the micro-conductors involved with the nozzle plate "chip". Failures of these microconductors can cause full BANKS of nozzles to cease firing. Using "night mode" or "quite mode" in the driver slows printing and reduces the duty on these components, potentially extending print head life. Increasing ink drying time in the driver can also reduce print head heating when printing multi-page docs.

Epson print heads are "piezo" print heads, using piezoelectric micro-elements that change shape when a voltage is applied across the piezo element. This is used to abruptly reduce the volume of a chamber behind the nozzle, and "spit" out a controlled amount of ink. Current density levels are far smaller in this design (although voltages are slightly higher) and they have an issue ejecting ink if the chamber between the nozzle and the piezo element is not completely full of an in-compressible fluid (ink). Any air in the chamber can cause a "mis-spit", which is can be indistinguishable from a "clog". This design tends to be inherently more robust (much less erosion), and thus are not "user changeable".

 

[martin0reg]

Totally agreed, turbguy..
..so the precise answer to the title question is "Yes it's the most failed part on these printers!"
I use to have around 5 canon and 5 epson printers in the last 5 years. In this period I had to change around 10 canon heads and one epson. Maybe (at the most) half of these damages goes on my account, because of experimenting with refilling etc... so one defective bubble jet in one year and 1/2 defective piezo in 5 years is my personal average. Thermal printheads are not "permanent" as advertised by the manufacturer, they are consumables, almost like combined printhead-cartridges. At least in small home printers... I'm curious to hear about the pro models, if their heads are lasting longer...

 

[palombian]

My first PRO-9500 (received clogged) failed after a few 100 prints.
But it took 7 years and 20.000 pages before the printhead of my MX-7600 died from error B200.
Both pigment, first with genuine Canon ink, started refilling 2 years ago (with some experiments too).
No other casualties in my (pigment and dye) printer park since then (avg 1000-2000 pages and/or photos per printer/year).

 

[The Hat]

I found it didn’t seem to matter whether I heavily used the Canon printers a lot of just used them casually with a normal amount of prints over a month.

The print heads seem to be set to some sort of time count, rather than usage, they work one day perfectly but the very next day you turn it on after start-up, you get the 5 flashing orange lights. (Expired)

But yet I don't ever remember getting this message in the middle of a print run, it always seem to be after the printer had finished or a period of inactivity.

I am quite capable of destroying the print head my stupid self without any help, I have damaged more heads while testing than have died from neutral causes, and no 3rd party inks do not damage heads, that’s usually down to the refillers themselves, whether they care to admit it or not..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I think it's not so much the number of pages printed but the amount of ink passed through the nozzles and and causing there the wear effects by whatever means. But that's difficult to count for in total, and impossible by nozzle row which have different diameters for different droplet sizes. And it's the paper selection and driver/quality settings defining how the printer is using them - fast and coarse with bigger drops, or finer photo prints. And on top of that the ink coverage per page will vary very much by user, so one user can report 20 000 pages and more, and another user gets smoke from his printhead much earlier. And if we would assume on top of that that refill inks may differ by some properties accelerating the wear or not there are no reliable numbers possible at all.
When it comes to piezo printheads there is a piezo crystal fatigue failure mechanism for nozzles to stop working. And I have seen some numbers in the Brother and Epson service manuals that the nozzles are good for x billions of ink shots. And the number of ink shots are counted in Brother printers and can be read out via the service mode. But this does not tell me either how many pages I can print since ink coverage, driver settings can vary very much. And on a large format printer like my old 7600 I don't know how many meters of paper are left which I still can print. So I just will continue to print as long as the nozzles let me to. But back to the starting question - yes, Canon printheads have a limited usage overall, but that cannot be easily specified in number of pages or some other easy parameter

 

[The Hat]

One day I got the 5 flashing orange lights and a message saying your print head has expired, in other words it has printed enough and its time to buy a new one, which I did, but the story doesn’t end there.

This print head was working fine till I received this message and I reckoned it was a joke but the joke was on me, so I cleaned the head and put into the box that came with the new print head when it arrived.

Two years went by and I then got the dreaded B200 error with this replacement head and no matter what I did I couldn’t get the printer to respond, it just sat there, the head for this printer were now no longer available, so it was time to dump my beloved first ever Canon printer in the trash can.

Now wanting to I decided to put the old head that was declared expired that had been stored away in the current print head box, this original old head had printed over ten thousand sheets and was laying dried up for the past two years.

I installed the old head in the printer and dribbled quite a few drops of pharmacist solution into the ink inlets and let it sit for five minutes, to my surprise the b200 error was gone and I was able to print a near perfect nozzle check, but not quite good enough to use.

I immediately replaced the old head with the one that had given the error and it started to work perfectly and now many years on its still working perfectly, so guys take it from me, don’t throw away that old head it may save your printer from the dumpster..

 

[martin0reg]

Congrats, The Hat.. there seem to be one out of hundreds canon, which would outlive a B200 error for longer than one day..
Mostly this sort of error affects the printer board too. And as canon experts know: on top of that this printer board will probably damage the next print head you put into this "burner".
That's why canon service would always renew both the printhead and the printer board; if the printer is worth it..

 

[turbguy]

Hat,

Your B200 error experience implies that internal firmware keeps track of print head duty and triggers a error when a preset "duty level" is reached after the last print job competes. Sort of like a Toyota dashboard light that says, "Your car will not start until you change the tires".

If that is indeed how Canon printers operate, they could be in for a VERY hefty legal wrangle concerning planned obsolescence, with the resolution requiring them to support supplying printer parts WELL into the future.

Anybody know how the firmware operates? Time to hack the firmware??

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

or the cause creating the B200 error notification was temporary, and was gone after a while, after cooling down whatever

 

[The Hat]

OK guys I only get the B200 error on the second print head when a cart popped out and jammed the carriage from moving, once I had reset the offending cart, that’s when I got the error message and had to turn the printer off.

I had to release the print head from the capping station manually (Power off) so I could then take the carts and print head out to see if I could clear the error message, but no it kept returning once I had put the print head back in minus the carts.

The much older print head had never gotten a fatal error message so in effect it was ok to reuse it in the same printer, because I knew it wouldn’t cause any damage to the logic board.

The effect was that it cleared the error message and reset the EPROM chip again, like inserting a new print head would have done, I also did the same trick on one of my 9500's.

I don’t know what the duty cycle on a print head is but that one had come with the printer new and was ten year old and had printed about 10,000 sheets, but it’s still a shock when they expire for no apparent reason..