Pixma iP5200, brand new print head seems to have blocked up already?!?

[JonM]

Hi GHWELLSJR
The UK car window cleaning agents are definitely not ammonia based, but detergent (I think).

Your advice is that I should be patient and allow more time for soaking the purge system to work.. so I propose to try leave ammonia sitting on the purge pads, just keeping it topped up for the next week or so, and perhaps run a cleaning cycle each day. I think that I should allow the print head to return to the purge pads after each top up to prevent the bottom of the head from drying out.
Does this sound sensible?

I will post again in a week or two weeks to report on progress.

I had one other thought- the larger of the two purge pads lifts away easily revealing a very shallow tray with four small holes- I assume these are the drainage points, and also the channel through which the purge pump sucks away the ink.
I should be able to work out which drainage hole corresponds to which colour of the four photo inks by looking at the nozzle positions on the print head and figuring which one sits above each hole.
As a last resort, I was wondering about either applying compressed air or a very careful mechanical reaming of the yellow hole with a fine, flexible augur (perhaps a strand of copper wire).
Thoughts (or dire warnings) would be appreciated.

Hi LIN,
You suggest an electrical fault on the print head. But I just replaced this a few weeks ago, when the printer originally developed this problem.

Many thanks to all for the support,
Jon

 

[ghwellsjr]

If the car window cleaner is just soapy water, you could mix that with ammonia and use that.

You cannot force anything down the purge tube because the peristaltic pump will physically prevent that from happening. It is constantly pinching the tube.

I have never removed a purge pad or looked to see that there may be multiple openings in the tray it sits on but I doubt that there is a one-to-one correspondence with the colors. I would just saturate the pad with cleaner and not bother removing the pad.

I would also recommend that you put some empty or almost empty cartridges in your printer because there is a good chance that this process will cause cross contamination of the inks.

You could do a simple test to see if the peristaltic pump is working. Remove the pad, put cleaner (or water) in the tray, do a cleaning cycle and see if the water disappears. If it doesn't, then the purge line is clogged. Of course if the liquid immediately disappears, then the tube has become disconnected or is other wise damaged.

 

[ghwellsjr]

On July 12, 2009 I received the following email from Jon:

Hi, I just wanted to drop you a line to say that I am now back in
business- by being patient and continuing with ammonia on the purge pads.
Instead of running cleaning cycles each time I saturated the pads, I
simply closed the top cover to bring the print head back onto the pads,
and after, perhaps 10 cycles, I ran a nozzle check to find that the
yellow was back. Your advice has been a small source of inspiration and
has saved me ditching my printer in frustration, and I am really grateful.
I've enjoyed solving a problem, and have learned lots- very many thanks
for your time and patience!
Best regards,
Jon

I asked him to post this information here so that others could benefit but so far he has not so I'm doing it for him instead.

 

[JonM]

Yes- to summarise the eventual solution, as recommended by GHWELLSJR,..

I used a 5% solution of ammonia in water, which in the UK came by diluting 1:1 an ammonia based household cleaner called MaxAmmonia (available fromn hardware stores for about 2)
I repeatedly dosed the pads that sit above the purge unit drainage holes.
To access these, I opened the top cover to bring the print head into the maintenance position, and then simply slid it to the left to get plenty of room for accessing the pads0- no need to remove the carteidges or head, and nothing to disassemble.
I used 15 drops of the ammonia solution, placed on the pad via a syringe.
Then closed the top cover.
Now, initially, I then ran a printhead clean cycle before repeating each time, but this firstly did not clear the problem after about a dozen cycles, and secondly consumed a lot of ink.
So the next day, I repeated the dosing of ammonia, but did not run the print head cleaning. About another dozen cycles, and when I ran a nozzle check, I had a full band of strong yellow!

Many thanks to all who contributed to the solution, and supported me during a frustrating time, and most especially George, who has been great. I;m really glad I did not ditch the printer, although I must say that I had pretty much lost faith in ever being able to get it working by the end.

Finally, a question to end up on. I've flushed loads of ink and ammonia solution down the purge unit.
I'm guessing there must be a tank somewhere deep in the guts of the printer that holds all this stuff, and that this must have a finite capacity.
Q: How do you get at it to drain it when it finally fills up??.

 

[ghwellsjr]

The printer counts how much ink goes down the drain into its Waste Ink Tank. It is a tray that covers most of the bottom of the printer and has a sponge material in it. When it get 95% full (according to its counter), the printer will tell you that you need to take it to a service center to have it cleaned (or something like that) and the counter reset. You can continue to print but if it gets to 100%, I've heard that the printer will stop and be unable to recover. I'm not sure that is true, nobody wants to run a test to find out.

However, people who have actually taken apart their printer to clean the Waste Ink Tank have reported that it was no where near full and that it is an incredible mess to clean up. I suspect the service centers just put in a new sponge.

There is a way to see what your counter is currently at by entering the service mode on your printer (which I don't know how to do) and also a way to reset it. Most people just continue to reset it and never bother about cleaning it.

Here is a link with pictures of the Waste Ink Tank:

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=308&p=2

And here is a link to where Craig Ross asked the question about how many times can the counter be reset:

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=1139#p1139