Old ink?

[sneezer2]

Does ink get old? Yes, I know all the cautions, etc., but here's a weird one.

Last night I copped a used ip3000 for free. Guy from Craigslist says he just got married
and now had two printers, so gave me the Canon. Wonderful. I appreciate it and will
surely find a use for this.

So, today I plug it in, etc., run a test print and nozzle check. Everything's fine; all jets are functioning.

Except the yellow is orange. All the carts are genuine Canon, BCI-6, nearly full, never refilled.
The ink in the 6Y, when held up to the light, is opaque and brown, not at all like the normal
appearance.

I have no idea how long this printer has been idle but I guess it's been a while, though it
works just fine. Except the yellow is brown/orange. I suppose the dyes can change in storage
but I've never had one around long enough to experience that.

Anybody seen this before?

 

[Grandexp]

Don't worry. Just use it. I have used very old unused OEM BCI-6 cartridges and never had a single problem. It may be the contamination from the purge unit that caused yellow to turn orange. If the print head sat on the purge unit for a long time the contamination could happen. It's relatively rare though.

 

[sneezer2]

Well, I'm not worried as everything else looks OK.
And if I really want yellow, I have some on hand.

@Grandexp - If you have an "old" unused 6Y, has it changed color?

I appreciate your suggestion that the purge unit could cause contamination though it
is really mysterious for me to imagine how anything could creep up from there into
the cart. Anyway, I'm not worried or concerned, just darned puzzled about what
would cause this.

Eclipsing everything else is my delight in having this unit for nothing. Actually it looks
so little used that I may not even open it to see about the waste ink pads. Not for
a while anyway.

 

[Grandexp]

I don't know why but the yellow ink in the cartridge does look a little orange always. It prints correct yellow colors though. If you suspect you have magenta ink in the yellow cartridge that causes the ink to turn orange maybe your magenta ink cartridge is leaking?

 

[sneezer2]

No. No reason to suspect any magenta. This thing is just plain BROWN. And opaque.
Of course, my yellows have always looked orange in the cart, as have yours
and everyone else's. But they print yellow and, when diluted, look yellow, so no worry there.
Also, as all the other colors are "transparent" too, I'm mystified over how contamination
by any of them could cause the opacity.

I suppose the previous owner could have put this cart in the wrong slot and thereby
gotten it contaminated. But the opacity!

I suppose it really doesn't matter. Nonetheless, I am mystified>

 

[Grandexp]

From a good point of view the printer appears to be completely healthy and lightly used. Perhaps it's not a bad idea to dip into a set of Canon cartridges and give it a completely new life now.

 

[Grandad35]

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=9003#p9003

 

[sneezer2]

Pretty sure now I have a definitive answer. Not cross-contamination. I don't wish to disparage anyone's work and
do appreciate the comments as it means I'm now aware of another possibility that, after all, could occur sometime.
In this case, though, I feel the evidence doesn't indicate that. For one thing the color printed on a nozzle check is
what I would expect from what I actually see in the cartridge. I said before that it printed orange but probably a
better description would be a darkish peach color, certainly not yellow. Also, the printed color is consistent
throughout and does not change, even after a couple of pages of graphics. For another, I've run an EEPROM dump
and find the printer has done only 445 pages. Hard to believe cross-contamination would occur in a printhead
with so little service on it. Not impossible, just hard to believe and when I look at the printhead inlet ports I see
no other evidence of colors mixing.

But now I've found another old printer (ip4000, so about the same age) with cartridges in it and found the yellow in
exactly the same condition, i.e. brown looking and opaque when viewed in the cartridge. It won't print so I can't
confirm whether on paper it would be peach colored or not.

I conclude that Canon OEM ink can indeed get old and discolored, particularly the yellow and on a time scale of
4 or 5 years. I guess I'll flush these carts and see if I can re-use them with fresh ink.

 

[Riffle]

From a good point of view the printer appears to be completely healthy and lightly used. Perhaps it's not a bad idea to dip into a set of Canon cartridges and give it a completely new life now.

 

[PeterBJ]

Canon ink cartridges have no use before date, but the user manuals for the printers recommends that the ink is used before 6 months once a cartridge is installed, and thus have its sealing opened. So it seems it has a finite lifetime once it is exposed to air. For some strange reason yellow ink seems to be most sensitive to aging.