Magenta suddenly very, very faint on 9000-2 nozzle check

[irvweiner]

Lynn, it's quite obvious that you are experiencing an 'infant mortality' failure, this occurred with my first s9000--after a few months, thankfully, I did not have repeat performances from my subsequent 9xxx's.

I strongly recommend that you take up Canon's offer and install a new printhead, even if you were to succeed in clearing this head. It has already alerted you to its impending doom.

The 'hands on' experience you gained and the excellent support and advice from the members of this site will serve you well when you face this 'task' again (in the distant future!!). I must admit, though, it seem like yesterday when we talking about your purchase of P9000 and OCP inks.

good luck irv weiner

 

[l_d_allan]

Lynn, it's quite obvious that you are experiencing an 'infant mortality' failure, this occurred with my first s9000--after a few months, thankfully, I did not have repeat performances from my subsequent 9xxx's.

Agree.

That fact that you have seen magenta ink flowing through the print head and yet it won't print very much magenta is evidence that the print head has an unfixable electrical problem. I would take Canon's offer and get the print head replaced.

After two deep, overnight out-of-printer cleanings of the print-head, it did start working fine. Solid magenta rectangle from the nozzle check, and excellent alignment. Prints looked very good.

... past tense above ....

For about 18 hours, and then the nozzle check for the Magenta is once again flawed. Drat. About 20% of the nozzles appear clogged, as those rows don't appear in the rectangle. Some of the Magenta nozzle rows appear "mottled" ... with perhaps 10 pixels/points, then 2 or 3 missing pixels/points.

Uncle. I'm more or less satisfied that Canon support is willing to exchange the print-head as a warranty repair. I was concerned dealing with them would become an ordeal.

 

[l_d_allan]

Well, I thought I'd keep wrestling with it, and try to get back to an acceptable/solid-rectangle nozzle check. I put the set of 8 cleaning cartridges back in the printer (windex + alcohol + distilled water), and ran about 4 deep cleanings and nozzle checks with "invisible ink". There were long pauses for semi-soaking between cleaning cycles as I had "other duties as assigned".

I didn't take the print-head out of the printer carriage, but left it in. No rinsing with tap water this time.

Then I put the real CLI-8 carts back in (with ink) and did several regular cleaning cycles and nozzle checks. Success ... at least for now. The nozzle check rectangles are solid.

We'll see. Again, thanks for the encouragement and assistance.

BTW, I wonder how my waste-pads are holding up? I suppose most of the contents of the cleaning carts will evaporate, but the printer may report it needs maintenance sooner than later.

 

[on30trainman]

Don't waste your time. I spent at least two weeks trying to clean out my Magenta clog and never got it fixed. Take up Canon's offer of the replacement. They just sent me a new one - didn't want the other one back. I would recommend calling them. The only thing that delayed me was that the Pro9000 printheads were out of stock. But my new one came this past Tuesday so hopefully they have enough stock. Get the new one and play around with the old if you must. Actually you can then take the ceramic head off and see what is behind it. Did that with a ip4000 printhead that was being replaced (had to buy that one since the printer was several years old). Since you and I both had Magenta problems and are both using OCP ink, I hope there isn't some connection. I am certainly going to keep an eye out for a recurring Magenta problem. I also had a problem with the Black (dye only in the Pro9000). Sure hope I don't need to change inks again - have used Hobbicolors, IS and now OCP. I liked all three but like to experiment I guess.

Steve W.

 

[ghwellsjr]

BTW, I wonder how my waste-pads are holding up? I suppose most of the contents of the cleaning carts will evaporate, but the printer may report it needs maintenance sooner than later.

In my experience, the liquid that is deposited in the waste-pads does not evaporate because they are essentially surrounded by plastic housing on all sides.

 

[ghwellsjr]

That fact that you have seen magenta ink flowing through the print head and yet it won't print very much magenta is evidence that the print head has an unfixable electrical problem. I would take Canon's offer and get the print head replaced.

After two deep, overnight out-of-printer cleanings of the print-head, it did start working fine. Solid magenta rectangle from the nozzle check, and excellent alignment. Prints looked very good.

... past tense above ....

For about 18 hours, and then the nozzle check for the Magenta is once again flawed. Drat. About 20% of the nozzles appear clogged, as those rows don't appear in the rectangle. Some of the Magenta nozzle rows appear "mottled" ... with perhaps 10 pixels/points, then 2 or 3 missing pixels/points.

Uncle. I'm more or less satisfied that Canon support is willing to exchange the print-head as a warranty repair. I was concerned dealing with them would become an ordeal.

I wonder if you have an intermittant electrical problem. It's so unusual for such a large area of one color to not print. If you ever decide to get a replacement print head while your original is still functioning, you should purge the ink out of the first print head before storing it away.

 

[l_d_allan]

Why ? the printhead is possible the same design used in the Canon Pro 9500 with the 2 banks activated: grey and matte black. And there are the 2 unused nozzle rows revived to used these 2 extra colours.

Search on my experiment using pigment ink in the Canon i9950, which uses the same printhead as in the Pro 9000 and be amazed with the results. It worked better than I thought, but the used pigment ink in my experiment does not seem to adhere well on the used paper, so I stopped the experiment, but physically the Pro 9000 printhead is very likely able to use pigment ink.

Possible, but I'd be surprised if this was the case ... using pigment ink in Pro 9000-2 printer, and/or that the 9000-2 and 9500-2 use the same design print-head.

My speculation is that they sell more 9000-2's than the much more expensive 9500-2. They certainly can save money with common design and common parts. Maybe 30% to 70% of the pieces of the 9000-2 and 9500-2 print-head are common?

If the print-head is similar enough to be able to use both dye and the larger pigment particulates, then I'd think it would have to use a "lowest common denominator" nozzle size and other parts. I'd think that would detract from optimal dye printing. A bunch?

Another possibility is that the Pro 9000-2 could be built so a 9000-3 could use 10 dye ink colors?

With my iP4500, the nozzle check has three rectangles for magenta and three rectangles for cyan. Just one for Black and Yellow. My uninformed speculation is the extra rectangles reflect different nozzle sizes ... like 1.0, 3.0, and 5.0 picoliter inkdrop sizes? Or perhaps simulating PhotoMagenta and PhotoCyan?