Need info on refilling Canon MP620 cartridges

[ghwellsjr]

It appears that during the entire course of this thread, you have never had any yellow print out, is that correct?

If so, it may be that whatever contamination was in your previous yellow cartridge has gotten into the print head and caused a major clog. The other possibility is that there is an electrical fault that is prohibiting the yellow to print.

Here's my suggestion: remove all the cartridges and then remove the print head from the printer. Take a piece of paper towel and fold it in quarters. Put some Windex or other window cleaner or just plain water on the center of the thick folded paper towel. Place the print head on the wet paper towel and press down gently. Look at the inlet ports on the top of the print head. You should see some movement of liquid as you press down. See if you can see this movement for the yellow inlet.

Put everything back together in your printer. Let us know what happened.

Also, you haven't indicated what the prior history of this printer was except that it was refurbished. Can you state that the yellow did work properly at some time in the past?

 

[stratman]

ghwellsjr:

The initial posts were about his ink levels getting low and wanting to try refilling. I take that to mean ALL colors were printing as expected. The first mention of problems with yellow was after the OP did his first refill, resulting in the oddest looking filled cartridge I've seen. As the cartridge looked bizarre and not performing properly - with probably sponge mangled and floating in the spongeless side like a deranged afro, it was suggested to purchase a new OEM cartridge. That led to the possibly fraudulent purchase on eBay.

Because we cannot know the condition of this eBay opened cartridge, we still cannot know if the print head, the printer or the cartridge is the problem. We also do not know if the OP left the yellow cartridge out of the print head for an extended period of time and caused a clog.

 

[balloonshark]

History: I bought the refurb printer new from newegg last year. The cartridges are the new unopened original OEM set that came with the printer. This was my first attempt at filling them. Everything worked fine prior to the refill attempt but the printer had been sitting idle a month with the cartridges installed. Three of the tanks were showing the red exclamation point (I think) and the other 2 were yellow somethings. The printer was left empty one day during the refill. After I messed up the yellow cartridge there hasn't been anything in its slot for around 9 days as I was afraid that it would leak since it had two holes in it from the german method fill and a top fill hole from the purge attempt.

* Update: I did another nozzle check followed by a cleaning and another 3 nozzle checks that are producing yellow (woot!). Now the bottom of the PGBK is a little messed up.

 

[stratman]

1) Print at least a nozzle check every week (or so) to use all the inks and keep the print head from clogging from dried ink.

2) Keep the print head filled with cartridges, even if the cartridges are marked as empty, and installed in the printer at all times except when doing a refill, cleaning or troubleshooting.

Not printing for a month may create clogs. Leaving a cartridge out for a day may cause a clog. Then there is that monster cartridge you created during your first refill attempt.

You have committed many rookie errors, but, you are rapidly becoming an expert in identifying and fixing problems. Hopefully you have gotten your printing yips out of the way early.

The PGBK nozzle check shows the extent of certain clogged pigment black nozzles. This is a partial clog. Compared to your nozzle check in post #38, the clog is extending. Not good. If you can do a deep cleaning of just the Pigment Black ink cartridge, then do it. Then run another nozzle check. This might clear the clog. For my MP830 printer, Canon recommends no more than 2 regular cleanings followed by a deep cleaning at a time (which might mean in a day?).

Soaking or flushing the print head may be needed. Or, you could just continue printing and hope it clears itself. Try the above suggestion first. Then you might try filling a PGBK cartridge with Windex (Original Ammonia D formula) or isopropyl alcohol and run just Pigment Ink cleanings to see if that will clear the clog. Or you could do a number of other techniques found on this forum.

Worst case scenario is you will need a new print head. I'm betting that since the PGBK was OK before the problem with the Yellow that you can get it to work again.

What can I say - I'm an optimist.

 

[balloonshark]

I also hope the worst is behind us. Your optimism payed off as I did a deep cleaning of pigment black and everything looks good!

It will take a while for me to adjust to the fact that I don't need to pay a ton of money to print something. I'll follow your advice and try to print more.

Thank you all very much. I'll leave you with a pic of our success .

 

[ghwellsjr]

The clogging on your pigment black is a little unusual in that it is not just random nozzles scattered all across the print head but rather all of them at the bottom that are clogged. This suggests that the problem could be dried ink on the bottom of the print head or it could be dried ink on the inside of the print head. The first case would be the easiest to solve by removing the cartridges and then the print head and cleaning the bottom of the print head with Windex or other window cleaner or just water. If this is the problem, you will probably see it before you clean it. If it is the second case, stratman's idea of putting Windex in a cartridge might help. You don't have to actually fill it with Windex, just dribble some into the outlet port of an empty cartridge. The mixture of the remaining ink with Windex will let you see if you are making progress with the cleaning.