Pixma Pro-100 / clogged yellow

[rodbam]

I know the Hat had success with the Fairy liquid but I soaked my pro9000 head for 4 days in it then another 3 days in Windex & there was no improvement. I did a little test on dried ink by wiping Fairy liquid, Windex & Isopropyl & the only two that moved the ink were Windex & Isopropyl so I wonder if the Fairy liquid is any good for clogs.

 

[The Hat]

If your print head has already been damaged then no amount of soaking is going to save the burned out nozzles no matter which liquid to choose to use but Fairy liquid certainly does work on Yello Gello and is kind to your hands also.

Next time you do your test then leave the Fairy liquid on the dried ink for a little longer, even fairy’s have their limitations..

 

[ibanezfrelon]

Ok, update..
Success!!!
I've soaked the head whole day, even changed the water/detergent few times (replacing cold with hot water).
I did not use windex or fairy, i used Čarli, the one detergent that my wife uses for washing dishes, i assume it is all in the same ballpark with popular windex.
Besides soaking i flushed the nozzles using a big syringe and warm water/Čarli mix a couple of times until all the ink was flushed.
Today i rinsed the head with clean water and let it dry for a few hours, first nozzle check was ok , a big relief
Thanx again foe your help guys!

 

[PeterBJ]

That is a nice success story. It seems that dish washing liquid + water actually is a good print head cleaner, and that the brand is not important. It also seems that patience is very important, maybe even more so than the actual chemicals used for cleaning.

 

[ibanezfrelon]

Hi folks! Well, here we go again, after one year it happened again and this time it seams there's no cure. The photo magenta nozzle is clogged, 50% of it, it is very visable on the prints. I have tried soaking it whole day and nothing.
It broke down on me when i needed it the most. I was lucky enough that i've had an old pixma 7250 that i didn't use last two years. I switched it on and it worked great so it saved me with the prints that i needed finished.
Where do you recomend i should buy a new head for pro-100? Or maybe there is some new discovery in cleaning the nozzles that i am not aware of?

 

[berttheghost]

Hi folks! Well, here we go again, after one year it happened again and this time it seams there's no cure. The photo magenta nozzle is clogged, 50% of it, it is very visable on the prints. I have tried soaking it whole day and nothing.
It broke down on me when i needed it the most. I was lucky enough that i've had an old pixma 7250 that i didn't use last two years. I switched it on and it worked great so it saved me with the prints that i needed finished.
Where do you recomend i should buy a new head for pro-100? Or maybe there is some new discovery in cleaning the nozzles that i am not aware of?

@ibanezfrelon ,
How old is your ink?

Check out this thread:
http://www.printerknowledge.com/thr...and-the-dye-ink-magenta-issue-on-canons.9694/

It sounds like there might have issues involving microbial contamination eventually overwhelming the biocide being used in the magenta ink. Once the biocide is exhausted, the microbes flourish and eventually clog the (magenta) nozzles. I would try replacing your magenta ink before blaming the printhead.

 

[Emulator]

Has anyone tried sterilising the bulk ink by carefully controlled microwave oven heating, say to 50C? Or perhaps better, pre-heated water bath immersion? Would this damage the ink?

Perhaps more important would it kill the contamination?

 

[PeterBJ]

My guess is that 50C/122F is not hot enough. I think 80C/176F or even hotter would be much better, but what temperature will the ink bottles withstand? And for how long should the ink be heated? Maybe someone with a professional knowledge of microbes could comment?

 

[Emulator]

May be we should take a leaf out of the milk industry's book:-

"The process of pasteurisation involves heating milk to 71.7°C for at least 15 seconds (and no more than 25 seconds). Because of the nature of the heat treatment it sometimes referred to as the ‘High Temperature Short Time’ (HTST) process. Once the milk has been heated, it is then cooled very quickly to less than 3°C. The equipment which is used to heat and cool the milk is called a ‘heat exchanger’."

 

[berttheghost]

I like the microwave idea. It's a good way to apply a precise amount of heat. (Depends on microwave.)

One problem, though, as @PeterBJ mentioned is that you need to heat the ink sufficiently to kill off any of the likely contaminants. Identifying all of the likely contaminants probably isn't feasible so you would have to go with general guidelines.I hope that someone comes up with a better answer than 20 minutes at 121C.

Another problem is that different inks will respond differently when heated. Each ink color would need to be individually qualified for the process. You might want to consider what sorts of tests you could reasonably conduct on the inks before trying them in a printer. I would at least run the ink through a filter to check for 'junk'.

I'm hopeful that this could work for at least some inks. Thermal inkjets, after all, do heat the ink in the nozzles.

I wonder how thermal stability of ink dyes might correlate with fade resistance?

Has anyone tried microfiltration using syringe filters as an alternative means of detecting and removing microbial contaminants? It may be a more practical approach than heat sterilization for the end user. A 220nm pore water compatible filter should readily pass dye inks (and maybe pigment inks as well).