Pixma Pro-100 / clogged yellow

[The Hat]

Wouldn’t the simplest answer be to just dump the ink and buy fresh stuff, probably safest in the long run, I would also look at my refilling procedure to see if I could stop the same thing recurring again..

 

[jtoolman]

Absolutely NOT!!!!! The ONLY way to sterilize ink, specially dye ink ( Organic ) is through filtering through sub micron. Not cheap to get set up to do such a task.
I used to filter sterilize gallons of microbiological culture media every day. It can not be heat sterilized.
When it gets to the point where you now have biological contamination such as fungus, you simply throw it out and get fresh stock. The head if blocked due to fungal blockage, it is a gonner! Buy a new one from EBAY for about $75 and start a fresh.

Joe

 

[berttheghost]

Wouldn’t the simplest answer be to just dump the ink and buy fresh stuff, probably safest in the long run, I would also look at my refilling procedure to see if I could stop the same thing recurring again..

(I'm neither a microbiologist nor an ink chemist but I'm about to play one on the Internet. Well, I spent 10 years as a professional student so I suppose that qualifies me as some sort of a general purpose expert.)

I didn't mean to suggest that either heat sterilization or microfiltration be used to remove an established colony of microbes from a quantity of ink. This won't work since the microbes metabolize parts of the ink leaving alcohols and acids in their place. It's not really ink any more. Either technique can, however, remove or inactivate traces of spores that would eventually germinate and feed on the ink. They are therefore potentially useful as preventative measures.

The syringe filter is also potentially useful as a detection tool. If the filter loads up and clogs, your ink isn't ink any more. Dump it and buy fresh stuff.

I wonder how many people replace a clogged printhead while continuing to use the old inks. How's that for a senior moment! Either sanitize or replace everything in the ink path. Including the inks.

Examine your refilling technique. Specifically, never replace potentially contaminated ink back into the storage bottles. Those Squeasy bottles unfortunately make back contamination of the ink in the Squeasy bottle all to easy.

And as @The Hat says, just dump the ink and buy fresh stuff.

 

[peter D]

When I first read about this problem on this forum a couple of months or more ago I decided to refrigerate all my PC inks including the second set of cartridges that I refill and keep on hand. Whether this will slow the growth of microbial organisms remains to be seen but I am interested in the idea of sub micron filtering especially for conducting tests for contamination from time to time. What sort of filter medium is a sub micron filter and how does this compare to the syringe filter that berttheghost refers to?
Another idea I had was to take a good proportion of the inks and freeze them in smaller bottles until closer to end use time. What do you guys think of this idea?

 

[jtoolman]

The "Sub Micron" reference is to the pore size of the membrane used on of these filters. Syringe filters are meant to be single use. You load up a solution that needs to be filtered and you shoot it into a sterile flask, tube, or bottle. You do this inside a bio safety hood under a laminar flow HEPA filtered system.
There are larger two stage filter units that will allow you to pour in whatever their volume capacity is and vacuum filter it. You need a vacuum pump to be able to perform this.
Microbiological Culture Media has a "Base" which can be heat sterilized. Usually at 120degrees C and about 20-25psi pressure such as produced by a lab grade autoclave.
Then you may have to add extra organic nutrients which in most case can not be heat sterilized thus the need for this type of filtration. You also adjust the Ph. This will aid in the specificity of the media. Everything that is added needs to be sterile filtered.
The smallest pore size I've ever used was 0.1 um.
You can filter not only most common bacteria and fungal spores with a 0.45 um filter and the 0.1 um one will filter out even pleomorphic organisms such as Mycoplasmas ( Bacteria without rigid cell walls ).

The problem we have here is that IF your inks have already reached a point where there is physical growth of enough quantities to clog a head, as it was already mentioned, the waste products of such contaminants will have already physically affected the inks.
Yes you can filter out anything "Solid" but it is now TOO LATE!!!!

Again just to be clear. If the CANON thermal head has had nozzles clogged by biological growth, and you discovered you have a persistent clog, continued to print, you can be almost 100% assured that those resistors have thoroughly, and permanently cooked that material on to and into those nozzles. The print head is Dead.
Long live the print head.
End of story!

Buy a new print head, throw out that ink batch and start fresh.
If the inks have been in use over a year, toss them out.
The mere act of opening ink bottles, inserting non sterile syringe needles, withdrawing ink, inserting said ink into non sterile carts, then re injecting left over ink back into the ink bottle can only end in greatly contaminated the remaining ink in those bottles.

And remember that IF you still insist on filtering it, you can only do this on DYE based inks and NOT Pigment based ones. After about 2-3 ml, your filter would be clogged with pigment particles.

Joe

 

[turbguy]

I reside where the mail is left in an exterior mailbox (about 1.5 miles from my home). In the winter, -20 degrees F (-29 C) is not unusual, Ink from Hobbicolors (dye based) was delivered via mail. Needless to say, upon pick-up, the ink was a solid block inside a plastic bottle. Upon thawing, it worked fine. Pigment based ink? Who knows?

 

[berttheghost]

A minor nit on Joe's last post. It may be possible to run some pigment inks through a ,48 um filter or even a .22 um filter. I understand that some pigment manufacturers mill their pigments down to less than 100 nm in order to improve glossiness. (or at least that's how this old fart remembers it ...) So it's possible that some high quality pigment inks might pass a .48 um filter, but don't be shocked when some bargain priced 3rd party ink doesn't.

 

[berttheghost]

I wouldn't intentionally freeze my inks if I were you. A high quality water resistant ink treads a balance between components that are readily water soluble and components that aren't. Those components may or may not separate upon freezing or even refrigeration. They may not readily recombine on thawing. Your results may vary depending on the specifics of your inks ...

 

[jtoolman]

A minor nit on Joe's last post. It may be possible to run some pigment inks through a ,48 um filter or even a .22 um filter. I understand that some pigment manufacturers mill their pigments down to less than 100 nm in order to improve glossiness. (or at least that's how this old fart remembers it ...) So it's possible that some high quality pigment inks might pass a .48 um filter, but don't be shocked when some bargain priced 3rd party ink doesn't.

I am only considering 3rd party pigment inks here. Yes, OEM pigments may indeed be ground to nn size particles BUT they ( in the case of EPSON K3 ink ) are then microencapsulated in resin which increases the overall size of each particle. That is the true reason for their better glossiness. The smother the surface of the printed layer of ink, the less, light is scattered so the glossier it appears to the eye.
The more "Bumpy" or rough ( due to NON micro encapsulation ) the more matte or less glossy it will appear.

So yes a larger pore size might allow a certain proportion or these particles to pass. But you know, why bother.

The damage may already be done. That why it is important to not hoard ink from 3rd party providers.
Whether or not it can be "Cleaned Up" by filtering, you can not remove the Waste metabolic products already generated by those little bugs and fungi that now happily growing there!

The bio solids are already trapped by the Print Head nozzles, thoroughly burned into them sooooo...
Time to spend money on a new head and new inks. Then make sure you use aseptic techniques when loading and use up the ink before a years end.

What? You say you do not print often enough to use up a 4 oz set of dye inks within one year? Then maybe you ( Speaking generally here ) should give up on home printing and begin to farm your printing out to local lab. Or if you really do not print but once a month, then OEM inks would be a better choice.

Joe

 

[The Hat]

It’s truly a funny reality when OEM inks can actually be cheaper to use in certain circumstances than 3rd Party inks, nice one Joe...