My MAXIFY 5350 is on refill ink

[palombian]

What's the better option for photo printing, one of the Maxify models (with PC or Octo pigmented ink) or one of the Epson eco-tank printers (ET-3700/ET7700)? Seems the OEM Epson ink is priced competitively against the 3rd party options for the Canon.

Welcome !

The Epson ET7700 has 5 colours, wich is be better for photo's, and there is an A3 model ET7750 at a relativily low price taking the ink into account.
In a thread on this forum the ink is being tested for fading and it seems to be very good for a dye ink.

If you want a pigment ink photo printer, the Pro-10 is cheaper, has 9 colours, A3+ and the ink set from Precision Colors is very good at about 20% of OEM. Easy refillable too.
But rather unusable as an office printer. ​

The Maxify cannot print borderless, not such a good choice for photo's only, also A4.

In the long run the cost per page of the EcoTanks is certainly in the same order than quality refill ink. You only pay everything upfront. But refill equipment is an investment too, and there is no guarantee.

I would avoid refilling with (3th party) dye inks for long lasting photo prints.

 

[steven.va]

Hi,

My cartridges from Alixpress have already arrived!

Some pictures.
They look identical to the others posted here.

One thing I do wonder if it's really needed to install them all at once.
Say if BK runs out. Does the Maxify work with 1 BK refillable installed + 3 remaining OEM color cartridges?

I am not yet filling them, as I am using-up the OEM carts that came with the printer.

They somehow remind me of the old HP 29A cart of HP 600 series deskjet.
(w/o the print head)
That one also had a bag inside.

Greetings!

 

[palombian]

I had these cartridges installed together with original Canon's.
But I changed the chip on the Canon's (with the ones from the Chinese carts).
So the eventual restriction (to combine them) is not for physical reasons.
No idea if it would work with different chips, but I wonder if the printer is able to see this.

In the beginning I was rather scared about cartridges being rejected, maybe this was overdue.

 

[steven.va]

A very clever trick! (changing the chips)


Will see how it goes. I can change the chips if the printer rejects a mix of arc chips and original Canon chips

 

[palombian]

Today the BK ink showed empty.
I removed the cartridge the official way and it WAS empty indeed.

Refilled with 80ml ink and replaced.
ARC chip was reset.

After a lot of noises I had ERROR B504 on my PC, suggesting to pull the power, and if this did not work the printer should be repaired .
I did this and happily enough after another 5 minutes of noises everything was OK.

B504 indicates that no ink flow is detected and seems to be a common fault after changing cartridges.
According to Canon due to non-genuine ink tanks, according to some refillers it can happen also with genuines.

>
Thank you for using Canon products.

Some replacement ink tanks sold for the Canon MAXIFY series printers which are not manufactured by Canon may cause a B504 error to be displayed, causing the printer to shut down. In such cases, even though the printer's ink supply system is working properly, the design of the non-genuine ink tank is obstructing fluid ink supply to the print head, causing the B504 error. Please be advised that the repair for this error caused by non-genuine Canon ink tanks is not covered under warranty and, therefore, charges will apply for any repairs or exchanges required. <


Page count (on the nozzle check) is 2400 sheets with 750 double-side.
Since I refilled at page count 800 I printed about 2000 pages with 80ml of BK ink.

PS: Not as the CMY who are filled with the double of the 20ml in original carts and simulated as such by the ARC's, the BK with 80ml is close to the original 70ml.

BUT since I observed missing lines in the 2 pages I printed after the emty (red cross) message, this should indicate the printer detects missing ink and triggered the empty.
The cartridge had no single drop of ink left, same as the empty originals I received (who also had exactly the same weight).

 

[The Hat]

Thank you for using Canon products.

Some replacement ink tanks sold for the Canon MAXIFY series printers which are not manufactured by Canon may cause a B504 error to be displayed, causing the printer to shut down. In such cases, even though the printer's ink supply system is working properly, the design of the non-genuine ink tank is obstructing fluid ink supply to the print head, causing the B504 error. Please be advised that the repair for this error caused by non-genuine Canon ink tanks is not covered under warranty and, therefore, charges will apply for any repairs or exchanges required. <

You’ve got to love Canon sometimes...

 

[palombian]

Hello fellow refillers, the latest news about my MAXIFY 5350;

After 1500-2000 pages happy printing the magenta autoreset chip showed empty.

Since I knew there was 40ml in the cart and supposed the ARC simulates a genuine Canon with 19ml, I decided to wait until the chips of the other colors showed empty, with the idea to spare on cleaning cycles.

I experienced also the Maxify monitors the ink supply by flow control and not by the chip count, so there should be no danger of running dry.

This was not a good idea: a few days after the yellow empty signal the nozzle check of all 3 colours was magenta.
A few nozzle checks later it was OK again.

The next morning it was again all magenta.
After a few pages of plain cyan this color was cleaned but the yellow continued to print plain red pages.
When opening the door I could see the yellow cart was filled with orange ink.

I had to rinse the yellow cartridge, and after refilling the 3 colors up to 40 ml I replaced them in the printer.
Even after the long cleaning after a cartridge change it took me another 10 sheets of yellow to remove the last traces of magenta in the channels to return everything to normal.

It seems when the ink level becomes too low, the (negative) pressure breaks down and the colour with the lowest level invades (one or several) others. I observed the same when the black was empty.
This against my first believe the highest level flows into the lower.
This "breakdown" sometimes is seen by leaking ink on the paper.

All colors where refilled at the same time and the ink levels went down together. As you can see there must have been a funneling of 5-10 ml of magenta ink to the yellow cartridge overnight.

Interesting to see is that the ink level in small channel (called the riser by @mikling) is higher than in the cart in the magenta and cyan, and lower in the yellow.
When rinsing I had to work via the ink outlet valve to clean this channel.
I do not understand yet how this works, but maybe it has something to do with the pressure regulation.

I learned something today, next time I will refill sooner .

 

[Redbrickman]

Very interesting Palombian. When I first started out with the Octopus carts I had the Yellow go the same colour as in your pic. At that time I was changing to the Ali-express carts so dumped the ink from the cart and never really really thought about how it got that colour. Seems I should check my carts tomorrow and do a top up. They are about 50% full but I think it will do no harm to top them up now.

 

[palombian]

@Redbrickman:

You can wait until the autoreset chip shows empty, my problem arose since I waited too long after this.
If not it won't reset and you will loose an indication for the ink level.
It went well this way during the previous refill.

After all, the best ink consumption is the page number.
Topping up all carts every 1000-1500 pages and do not care about the chips as has been suggested in this thread.

Is this ink contamination caused by an action in the printer or simply by hydraulics ?
It seems to me the pressure lock in the lowest level cart (the "riser" ?) breaks down by a too high negative pressure in other carts.
It is then the cart with the highest underpressure that gets sucked.
When you are attentive to printouts (or nozzle checks) you get a warning and can intervene before the contamination becomes too heavy.

I guess the printer itself has nothing to do with it and that the pressure system is an intrinsic part of the design (making it more delicate to refill - at least for a beginner).

Until now the "new Chinese carts" seem to handle this better than the old ones but nothing is perfect.

 

[steven.va]

Hi,

Yesterday I ran into a problem with my Maxify.

Wile printing, the black color started to stop printing. After a few pages I noticed something was wrong and I stopped the print job. I had a page with lots of color, but no black at all...

All black nozzles did not print.
I ran a cleaning cycle, and most of the back nozzles returned.
However the next printed page already the BK nozzles started to fade away working.
Next page it was even worse: almost no BK nozzles at all.
You can see that I have various pictures of half/total blocking nozzle checks.

You will see in the pictures almost no BK ink at all.

I am more thinking am expericiencing a ink supply problem here?
The printer does not give an error. The BK ink level is on the "low" side in the ink monitor, but no red cross or empty signal yet. Maybe the ink monitor
can have it wrong even on an oem cartridge?

What do you think? Instead of continuning cleaning cycles am am tempted to pull the BK cartridge to see if it is not empty.
I have a spare oem cartdrige and the Chinese Refillables to test with.

I have printed around ~150 pages since january mostly double sided.

Greetings,
Steven.

ps: palombian: thanks for the great post about not letting the ink levels drop too low.
Will try to remember: Follow arc chip advice or forget about arc chip and refill at x pages .printed