Pixma MP530 head problem

[Printman530]

My original print head had an electrical failure in some of the main color nozzles so I bought a new one from China. The first one was leaking ink inside the head (made my yellow cartridge black). Luckily I was refunded for that one.

Now I ordered a second one and it has a problem with the magenta micro nozzle. See picture. Btw., does the cyan has a problem too (the left rectangle has a stripe)?

The nozzle check print shows the problem, but when I print photos the weird thing is the prints look fine. Normal print, HQ print, photo paper pro, photo glossy, matte.

My questions is - if the magenta micro nozzle has a problem, how would it manifest? I don't see any stripes in the print. Which quality/paper combination would manifest the problem and which one wouldn't?

 

[PeterBJ]

Sadly the second print head also has an electronic defect. A colour band split horizontally and exactly half of the band being lighter than the other half is a typical sign of an electronic failure of the print head. the light magenta is defective. The stripes for regular magenta and light and regular cyan are not perfect either. Instead of being uniform, they appear to be made from eight pieces, and the photo black appears striped due to partly clogged nozzles.

The small rectangles on both sides of the letters CCMMYBK should be neutral grey, they are made by a mixture of all three colours. The greenish rectangles indicate a problem with light magenta.

I don't know why the defect doesn't show on photos, the error is probably masked due to multiple passes of the print head over the paper, but red is made from magenta plus yellow and blue is made from magenta plus cyan. As the problem is in the light magenta I would look for stripes in light red and blue areas, for instance in skin tones and light blue sky.

 

[Printman530]

Thanks for your reply.
So 1/2 of the light magenta nozzles are not working. That's for sure.
Do you know when are those nozzles used? Is it only when using High quality print? Or High quality print AND photo paper? Or is it also used for Normal print too but with certain types of papers only?

Or is it possible that with HQ photo print it uses only the top half of the nozzle and multiple passes therefore the problem does not manifest?

 

[PeterBJ]

I don't know which nozzles are used when, but you might find out from the service manual, which has an appendix with a table of print modes starting at page 2-4. There is a link in this post to the manual. Read the instruction for download before downloading the manual from electrotanya.

I have just checked the link and it still works. AVG Internet Security found nothing wrong in the download.

It is half of the half = a quarter of the light magenta nozzles that are not working. If you look carefully at the light magenta stripe you see two nuances of light magenta.

 

[Printman530]

Thanks for the info. The page 2-4 has exactly what I was looking for. I found out that the 1 pl nozzles are not used for Standard and Fast printing on Plain paper.

Yes, half of the half. Luckily it's half of the 1 pl nozzles so it's not that noticeable. Although now that I know what I am looking for I can see some small stripes.

Thanks. Very helpful.