no printing on mp520 canon pixma

[The Hat]

I reckon at some point you must have run out of ink and continued to print and that is a death Nell for the print head in any Canon printer, the heads overheat when there is no ink passing through the nozzles causing them to burn out.

You will have no alternative but to get a new print head if you wish to use your printer fully again, but you can continue to print successfully if you set your Media setting to "Matte paper", it will take a bit longer for text to print and it wont be highlighter proof either, sorry..

 

[martin0reg]

If all colors (or the text black) stops printing i.e prints absolutely nothing "out of the blue", I would think of an electrical problem. Seems to happen quite frequently with canon bubble jets... Clogging used to make stripes first.

You can do the "stamp test":
Let the printer do a cleaning cycle (of all colors) then take out the printhead and press it gently on a paper towel.
If there is ink (usually 4 rows of photo colors and one bigger row of text black) the problem is probably electrical, chip/logic board of printhead or printer.
If there is no ink (or no text black) then it might be the purging unit... or whatever..

 

[bentobject]

I reckon at some point you must have run out of ink and continued to print and that is a death Nell for the print head in any Canon printer, the heads overheat when there is no ink passing through the nozzles causing them to burn out
You will have no alternative but to get a new print head if you wish to use your printer fully again, but you can continue to print successfully if you set your Media setting to "Matte paper", it will take a bit longer for text to print and it wont be highlighter proof either, sorry..

View attachment 2894

Thanks for all your help!
sounds bad
For cleaning I was just using the control panel on the printer, not computer software. I just found the Mac version of that screen shot and tried again. No luck. Printing with "matte photo paper" option seems to work.
Where does one find new print heads? I'm in Brussels, Belgium.

 

[bentobject]

If all colors (or the text black) stops printing i.e prints absolutely nothing "out of the blue", I would think of an electrical problem. Seems to happen quite frequently with canon bubble jets... Clogging used to make stripes first.

You can do the "stamp test":
Let the printer do a cleaning cycle (of all colors) then take out the printhead and press it gently on a paper towel.
If there is ink (usually 4 rows of photo colors and one bigger row of text black) the problem is probably electrical, chip/logic board of printhead or printer.
If there is no ink (or no text black) then it might be the purging unit... or whatever..

Thanks for this - I tried the stamp test and indeed it seems to be fine, there is black ink. So I guess electrical problem.

 

[martin0reg]

The stamp test indicates that the ink channel is not blocked..
..now the question is why it does not print with this channel..
There is a small chance that this "electrical" problem is temporary: when I once did many cleaning cycles with an old ip4000 (might be 10 in one hour - NOT recommended) while changing the refilled carts several times, there was no improvement and sometimes one or two color bars were missing completely. I thought the printhead was really dead - until all colors came back in the end, just before I would throw the PH away...
Canon OEM is best for cleaning cycle, second best "text black" (the bigger cart) for me is KMP.

PS: just saw that the mp520 has only 3 "photo" colors, and the canon text black, so there should be three lines of color and 1 longer line of black on the paper towel..

 

[The Hat]

There is one other thing you could try and it’s most certainly a last ditch effort.

You could place the print head in a bowl with about 20 cm of pure bleach in it and nothing else for a couple of hours and then dry it thoroughly, reinstall it and run a clean cycle and then a nozzle check.

Those print heads are as scarce as hen’s teeth and have gone out of stock in most of the EU and are not been made anymore, sorry.

You could try Alibaba for a refurbished one, or try here..
http://www.inkjetprinthead.com/canon_printhead_for_ip3300_ip3500_mp510_mp520_mx700.htm

 

[bentobject]

There is one other thing you could try and it’s most certainly a last ditch effort.

You could place the print head in a bowl with about 20 cm of pure bleach in it and nothing else for a couple of hours and then dry it thoroughly, reinstall it and run a clean cycle and then a nozzle check.

Those print heads are as scarce as hen’s teeth and have gone out of stock in most of the EU and are not been made anymore, sorry.

You could try Alibaba for a refurbished one, or try here..
http://www.inkjetprinthead.com/canon_printhead_for_ip3300_ip3500_mp510_mp520_mx700.htm

I took the print head out and ran it under hot water until the water ran clear, then shook it off, dried the contact plate and reinstalled.( followed a YouTube video for that - I love the internet!) Still no change.

I found printheads at Replace Direct.be, that's the next step if all else fails...
Is the bleach for cleaning purposes? If so i think I've probably gone that route enough. There is ink coming through when it has had a clean, it's just not printing.

thanks again!

 

[bentobject]

The stamp test indicates that the ink channel is not blocked..
..now the question is why it does not print with this channel..
There is a small chance that this "electrical" problem is temporary: when I once did many cleaning cycles with an old ip4000 (might be 10 in one hour - NOT recommended) while changing the refilled carts several times, there was no improvement and sometimes one or two color bars were missing completely. I thought the printhead was really dead - until all colors came back in the end, just before I would throw the PH away...
Canon OEM is best for cleaning cycle, second best "text black" (the bigger cart) for me is KMP.

PS: just saw that the mp520 has only 3 "photo" colors, and the canon text black, so there should be three lines of color and 1 longer line of black on the paper towel..

Yeah, I wish it would come back!!
Once it did, after I cleaned the bottom tray, but only partially. It may have gotten dust or something in it at that point and then gotten completely blocked. I've tried a few different things now. Not sure how to deal with a temporary electrical problem... Vielen Dank für die Information

 

[martin0reg]

Gern geschehen, schönen Abend noch..oder eher gute Nacht!

 

[Ron350]

Have you tried cleaning the contacts on the back side of the printhead with rubbing alcohol?