Pixma Proo-100 Color Issues

[Sammickk]

OK, I'm hoping someone out there can help me out of my printer nightmare, here is my story thus far.

I bought this printer over a year and a half ago, and once the genuine inks ran out, I switched to precision inks refills, buying the yellow ink cart and relocating the yellow chip, then drilling and setting up the rest of the colors. All worked great for about a 3/4ths of a year, then the first issue struck. All of a sudden, my prints seemed to be greatly darker, and a little over saturated, when I had changed NOTHING about my print process. I print on the SAME type of paper with the SAME settings always. (this printer gets used at least 4 or more times a week) Suspected a clog, printed a nozzle check, all colors printed, got desperate, looked up cleaning process with warm water and a tiny bit of alcohol diluted in the water, did the syringe flush and cleaned it out nicely, let it dry and put it back in next day. STILL EXACTLY THE SAME. After toying in color/intensity management option, I fixed it by adjusting the intensity to -25 and the contrast to +15 I don't know why this worked, but it did....for quite a few months, i'd say 6 months or more. THEN a few days ago I printed out a plain GREEN image. Not dark green, not light green, just a plain green, and all of a sudden the green goes from normal green to a VERY dark and slight blue-ish green?!?! I have attached a pic of what it used to print and what it does now,
(see attached image) WHAT in the world is going on? again tried a nozzle check, appears fine?? is photo-cyan suppose to be darker? But anyways doesn't appear to be any clogs.

So, I bought a brand new printer from ebay for 25 bucks that was never used but had been robbed of its print head and inks, and after puling off all that orange tape and setting it up, put in my print head and inks and prints exactly the Same problems. So nothing is wrong with my old printer, so i suspect my ink has went bad? Is this possible? I'm still on the same 4 oz bottle set that I bought so long ago, though its almost out. the only one I bought more of was black (BK).

Or if my print head is bad, wouldn't I have some visual problems in my nozzle test print? like stripes or chuncks missing of color? (again see attached pics) you can see that there is no inks smeared or missing.... its just the wrong color now, when NOTHING was changed with my print process. Tried Various Versions of drivers (i save old drivers for things because of issues like this) and this changes nothing.

I'm open to any suggestions to try or any help that you can give! I want to identify this problem and WHAT caused it so it doesn't happen again. Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any help.

 

[PeterBJ]

As green is made from printing both cyan and yellow, the darker more blueish green could be caused by yellow being too weak or cyan being too strong. I don't own a Pro-100 so I am not familiar with the nozzle check, but to me it looks like photo cyan is stronger than the regular cyan. Could you accidentally have filled the photo cyan cartridge with regular cyan?

 

[Vorkolor]

Try printing a test sheet, for example this one: http://cream.sourceforge.net/ColorCard.pdf

It's easier to judge if the colors are messed up from a sheet like this.

I'm not familiar with the Pro-100, is it possible that a cartridge is leaking onto the printhead and the ink gets into the wrong channel?

 

[The Hat]

Hi @Sammickk and welcome, lets start from the beginning and before you pull all your hair out, most of us have been where you are now.

When you have problem with your output (Colours) the last thing you should check is your print head, because 99 times out of a hundred it’s a problem with your cartridges, the only real check you can do with your print head is a nozzle print and it was fine, or was it. ?

Both @PeterBJ and @Vorkolor have been spot on with their diagnosis, it’s caused by a colour shift, now there are only two ways that can happen, one of your cartridges is leaking or you have filled one of the cartridges with the wrong ink. !

A leaking cartridge would have showed itself when you did the maintenance on the print head, now back to the second cause, if you examine your nozzle check again you’ll notice that the PC colour is darker than the C colour is, Ops..

Its possible that you have filled the PC cart with CYAN ink and the Cyan cart with PC ink, your not the first to do that, I’ve filled my PM cart with Magenta ink, so I know how easy it is to make a mistake like that.

It’s not the end of the world, just purge the effected carts with soft water, dry the carts and just refill, and your printer will be back to its old self on the very next print.

Tip:- when you first set up your printer, it’s a good idea to print and keep a nozzle check safely stored away for future reference in case of a rainy day..

 

[Sammickk]

Thanks for your help guys, to begin to answer some questions, yes I'm sure the ink is in the right color carts, because i thought that I had mixed them myself. I even checked twice because i thought i was going crazy. So i know this is not the issue, i have to go to work I will write more when i get there.

 

[mikling]

Looking at the nozzle I know EXACTLY what you did wrong at the time of problems. You refilled the PC ink with C ink. How do I know?
In the nozzle check, the PC should look very close to the C. In your nozzle check, the PC is distinctly a darker shade than that of the C. This only occurs if you filled the PC with C and the prints come out darker. If you had filled the C with PC something similar would have occurred BUT the prints would have been lighter.

You need to either flush the PC cartridge out or restart with a flushed one.

Always print out a set of reference images to be stored away for comparison as Hat has suggested. This way you can determine what has gone wrong when you do something wrong or to determine if the printer is behaving differently. The nozzle check can tell you a LOT of what is actually going on if you know what to look for.

I note that in the prior repost, you are "sure" that no error was made as Hat suggested might have occurred. This will cause you to do a host of other things any one of which might actually cause a real problem. Fortunately, I hope you have not done so yet.

You are NoT the first the first one committing this error and I can assure you it probably will not not be the last time either over the years. But in the future, equipped with a reference to go back to, you will quickly find a solution.

 

[PeterBJ]

@mikling posted while I was searching the Canon forum. But I also think the photo cyan cartridge might be filled with regular cyan ink because of this question:

is photo-cyan suppose to be darker?

No, photo cyan is a lighter version of regular cyan and photo magenta is a lighter version of regular magenta.

As mentioned by mikling using a photo cyan or magenta instead of regular cyan or magenta or vice versa can cause seemingly inexplicable colour cast problems. Here is a long thread about wrong colours. It seems that the problem was caused by filling a regular magenta cartridge with photo magenta, see this post and following two posts.

 

[Sammickk]

Ok well, i think my next move is going to be to grab a new pack of all 8 ink carts and give that a go, since these originals have been used over a year now, it may be time to replace or refresh them anyways. Should i do another print head flush with warm water? Or would just a deep clean nozzle purge be enough?

 

[jtoolman]

You can always wash the print head out but why bother.
Load the printer with the correct carts either a new set or after flushing out the CYANS and refilling them with the correct versions of C and PC. After the initial ink purge and possibly one cleaning you should be back in business.

Washing the Print Head could always cause some unsuspecting problems to develop so why push your luck!
Joe

 

[jtoolman]

OK, I'm hoping someone out there can help me out of my printer nightmare, here is my story thus far.

I bought this printer over a year and a half ago, and once the genuine inks ran out, I switched to precision inks refills, buying the yellow ink cart and relocating the yellow chip, then drilling and setting up the rest of the colors. All worked great for about a 3/4ths of a year, then the first issue struck. All of a sudden, my prints seemed to be greatly darker, and a little over saturated, when I had changed NOTHING about my print process. I print on the SAME type of paper with the SAME settings always. (this printer gets used at least 4 or more times a week) Suspected a clog, printed a nozzle check, all colors printed, got desperate, looked up cleaning process with warm water and a tiny bit of alcohol diluted in the water, did the syringe flush and cleaned it out nicely, let it dry and put it back in next day. STILL EXACTLY THE SAME. After toying in color/intensity management option, I fixed it by adjusting the intensity to -25 and the contrast to +15 I don't know why this worked, but it did....for quite a few months, i'd say 6 months or more. THEN a few days ago I printed out a plain GREEN image. Not dark green, not light green, just a plain green, and all of a sudden the green goes from normal green to a VERY dark and slight blue-ish green?!?! I have attached a pic of what it used to print and what it does now,
(see attached image) WHAT in the world is going on? again tried a nozzle check, appears fine?? is photo-cyan suppose to be darker? But anyways doesn't appear to be any clogs.

So, I bought a brand new printer from ebay for 25 bucks that was never used but had been robbed of its print head and inks, and after puling off all that orange tape and setting it up, put in my print head and inks and prints exactly the Same problems. So nothing is wrong with my old printer, so i suspect my ink has went bad? Is this possible? I'm still on the same 4 oz bottle set that I bought so long ago, though its almost out. the only one I bought more of was black (BK).

Or if my print head is bad, wouldn't I have some visual problems in my nozzle test print? like stripes or chuncks missing of color? (again see attached pics) you can see that there is no inks smeared or missing.... its just the wrong color now, when NOTHING was changed with my print process. Tried Various Versions of drivers (i save old drivers for things because of issues like this) and this changes nothing.

I'm open to any suggestions to try or any help that you can give! I want to identify this problem and WHAT caused it so it doesn't happen again. Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any help.

You have switched your CYANS!!!! That is the problem!
Joe