Precision Colors and the Dye ink Magenta Issue on Canons

[mikling]

I have watched the Magenta issue on Canons and could not explain it. I was always uncomfortable about it because it the last 1 years of so, the number of unexplained clogs was totally uncharacteristic of the same ink in the prior 7-8 years. It used to be spotless as many many know.

Last fall I started a dialog with Image Specialists about this. In December just prior to leaving for holidays at Christmas, I wrote a letter to the owner of STS expressing my concern that there could be a problem. STS exports containers of inks to 150 countries and they expressed they had not had any problems. They appeared to want more clarification on what the issue is however. In late December, they requested a conference call but I was not available to participate as I was in the Carribean with family. As soon as the New Year started we had such a call. We discussed the issue and they proceeded with sampling the inks in question and kept coming up with no findings of problems internally. I have made three shipments of samples to their facility and their lab personnel is working on these samples and they have also sent them out to another external lab and they await the findings to see if there is a problem and what it might be,

At the same time as I had expressed in another post, I had realized that my Pro-100 inkset which was my creation using IS off the shelf inks needed a refresh because I felt the magenta should reach colors that it was not doing. This and the requirement for a superior Epson dye ink, had beginning a relationship with another supplier based in the USA and I felt comfortable because the owner of this company is a very knowledgeable chemist himself and he impressed me.

I had slated to start further work into the Pro-100 refresh sometime in 2015 after introducing my Epson pigment inkset. My testing of colors from IS clearly showed that their ink colors are superior some other companies in certain areas and some colors are weaker. As is expected, each house has their strengths and weaknesses.

After studying what I had observed and having no easy explanation for it, I had started to speculate on what the problem could be. It is odd, because the years preceding the onset of the magenta issue was spotless. I hardly ever had problems of any ink related things for those years. These were not new inks, they've existed for approx ten years or so. The base ingredients for the other colors are identical and the same except for the dyes. It is the excellent track record and its current issues that make made me stand up and take serious notice.

With the uncomfortable feeling I had, I accelerated the work I had planned with the new magenta for the Pro-100 immediately at the very start of the New Year....somewhat like hedging. Tomorrow, I will offer magenta inks as a retrofit to the ones I have for the Pro-100. These magentas are totally different and NOT from Image Specialists. I had started shipping these with the small quantities I had for development in the last two shipping days. In the last week or so, I was able to get close matches to substitute the magenta inks for the CLI-8 series using a totally different source. At the same time, I have started shipping a totally new inkset for 221/226 series Canon printers. I have been shipping Epson Dye inks that is NOT from IS since fall and the feedback on its performance has been excellent. I have full confidence in the new inks to match the quality that IS is known for.

I will offer retrofit kits that I highly highly recommend that users take advantage of. These retrofit kits will be very very attractively priced. I do not know what the uptake of these kits will be. However, they offer improved performance as well as avoiding the possibility that there could be a problem with IS current dye ink magentas. It will not be a money maker deal for me as I did not wish to put in the amount of work I have in the last week ever again. My ability to take calls and respond to emails etc. was highly compromised. I averaged less than 5-6 hours of sleep each evening in the last week. Profiles for these inks will come in time but the ink performance is so good many will not need them.

As many know I care about my customers and it is because of this, I had put in the work to offer the best alternative I know and at the same time get improved printing performance.

 

[Harvey]

It is good that you stay away from IS weakness, as you know I have had accelerated fading and odd colors in my prints. The only thing not solved here is my dead printheads and printers fighting the clogs in the magenta channel.

 

[Harvey]

A price has to be paid by using 3rd party inks, first is fade resistance. I was quite aware of this, you can never expect same fade resistance, but real stubborn clogs rendering your printhead useless is just too unfair/expensive.

Maybe time will let you know what happened with this ink, only doubt I have now is why this ink reacts that bad when trying to make a good ink flow. Something is building up internally, this is a time bomb, it is just a matter of time.

On 2 new sealed QY6-0059 Canon printheads, as soon as a I refilled with fresh ink, no magenta was seen on nozzle check, use of syringe and tubing cleared the problem, they worked "well" for a long time but this only once. The last time I suffered this problem was in November last year, I could use the printhead, but even when it was new, magenta pattern was never perfect. Second time using this method in December would render the printhead ruined.

I was unhappy to see streaks in my prints tried to cleaned it, and then the total blocking ocurred, this lead me to deal with the problem as hard as I can, outcome was 1 new printhead dead as long as my well working and relatively new IP4200 alternating 20 amber/green blinks.

Not being happy with this I took a spare IP42OO, and it got damaged too, this printer always used OEM ink, and worked well. When I tested again it seemed the printer had and apparent electriconic failure, I discarded the printhead, another printhead was involved in the game, and ended up damaged, again fighting the magenta clog, all this was a consecuence of the first IP42OO clog, as I used the spare printer to fill the void the other one left.

This printer was in wait just in case of the death of the logic board of the first one, but no for clogging of the printhead.

Now that I remembe, maybe 1 year and a half ago, a Canon IP4700 suffered the same magenta issue, resulting in dead printhead and logic board, as I involved water in the solution I was very careful not to splay the circuit board, but somehow I paid the price.

Last year same problem with magenta and QY6-0073. I still have the printhead with me, as long as a I remember it works when installed in the printer, but no magenta is printed, if someone here wants to try to unclog this printhead can contact me, also I have the QY6-0059 printhead.

I have wept so much for my printers, because they are solid built printes, large and easier to refill cartridges, no wait time before printing as seen on on newer printer, no gear grinding noises present in IP4600 post era,and more important they are a really workhorse, I used one of these to print more than 150 text pages daily and mechanism never failed, always alert to the call of duty. As you might have noticed my English is not that good as I live in Nicaragua, I have never been to the States, therefore my English is quite limited, and I try had to express myself clearly. Been a nicaraguan citizen were taxes are too high for electronics plus paying overseas shipping prices makes involves replacing these printers a lot of money, at least for me living in a third world country where money is scarce. So the beating was too hard enough to almost led me to divorce myself of the printing world.

This magenta issue scared the hell out of me me and influenced on not buying an used Canon Pro-100. I believed that was this printer in particular having issues with magenta ink, but linking my past experience with magenta clogs made me realize that the ink has pled guilty at the Royal Court of Printhead Justice.​

 

[Emulator]

A price has to be paid by using 3rd party inks, first is fade resistance. I was quite aware of this..................

Congratulations on your English, your meaning was clear.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I don't know whether it helps when you know that Canon printheads are not 'permanent' printheads, but a consumable item with a limited usage time, not time in terms of hours used but in terms of the amount of ink going through the nozzles. Canon Service manuals specify a usable time for printheads in terms of pages printed - b/w - typical text with low ink coverage, pictures 4x6 and full size for the color/dye nozzles. That's for the IP4xxx, etc models, I don't have a Pro manual, but it's the same bubble print technology. There a lots of people who don't print so much, and their printhead will last for years - 5 or 7 or... until the printer gets replaced because the newer model has new features - WLAN - Airprint etc. Please consider the usage of 20 sets of cartridges over that period, for 50$ each - 1000$ - enough money to make a decent vacation. So everybody not willing to pay that much money for ink looks for refill. And what are typical problems with Canon printers - clogged nozzles of which you can clean some away, ink flow problems from the cartridges to the printhead - seals not tight, cartridges not fitting well, foam parts shifted around in the cartridges - about everything like that does happen. And then there are persistent 'clogging' problems which are rather the end of the printhead. There are several typical failure modes - B200 errors, smoking printheads, killing the motherboard, and the defect motherboard killing the next good printhead inserted. How does the bubble principle work - ink is vaporized with a short electrical pulse to a resistor which heats up, and the vapor bubble expells some ink out of the nozzle, and that in hundreds of nozzles at the same time, at a multi-kHz frequency. You propably know metal film resistors, it's exactly the same, there is a metal resistor film in every nozzle, driven by voltage pulses of 20-30 volts for some microseconds. And the ink is in contact with that metal film resistor, otherwise it would not vaporate, but the bad consequence is that you have an electrochemical reaction across that resistor from the voltage potential, and ions in the liquid, the ink, start doing what is just chemics, as much you can deposit metal from electrolytics the reverse does happen here - electrochemical erosion of the resistor, and after some time the resistor is gone, no bubbles - no ink drops - and all looks like a clogged nozzle, but the bubble mechanism does not work anymore, the printhead is at its end. HP Printheads are just listed as a consumable together with the inks in the pricelist for the office series printers, and everybody accepts that. So if your magenta ink usage is higher then the magenta nozzles will fail first, regardless of the ink manufacturer. But as I mentioned earlier, there may be other reasons of 'nozzle' problems, it could be that minute amounts in the ink slowly start coalgulating and slowly building up a clog in the ink channels, that was a problem with some inks for Brother inkjets, where a gel plug was building up at micro-mesh filters , and purging cycles were just pulling that stuff tighter into the filter.
I have observed such reactions as well in refill cartridges with some pigment inks for Epson. Those cartridges contain a very fine wire-mesh filter in the ink flow where some ink residue was building up and blocking the ink flow. It all looks like a nozzle problem but actually it was an ink problem in the cartridge, normal cleaning cycles don't help, but reverse flushing such cartridge with a cleaner fixes that problem immediately. So, missing nozzles, a simple as it appears can have lots of different reasons, some are easy to fix, or only by replacing the printhead.

 

[jtoolman]

A price has to be paid by using 3rd party inks, first is fade resistance. I was quite aware of this, you can never expect same fade resistance, but real stubborn clogs rendering your printhead useless is just too unfair/expensive.

Maybe time will let you know what happened with this ink, only doubt I have now is why this ink reacts that bad when trying to make a good ink flow. Something is building up internally, this is a time bomb, it is just a matter of time.

On 2 new sealed QY6-0059 Canon printheads, as soon as a I refilled with fresh ink, no magenta was seen on nozzle check, use of syringe and tubing cleared the problem, they worked "well" for a long time but this only once. The last time I suffered this problem was in November last year, I could use the printhead, but even when it was new, magenta pattern was never perfect. Second time using this method in December would render the printhead ruined.

I was unhappy to see streaks in my prints tried to cleaned it, and then the total blocking ocurred, this lead me to deal with the problem as hard as I can, outcome was 1 new printhead dead as long as my well working and relatively new IP4200 alternating 20 amber/green blinks.

Not being happy with this I took a spare IP42OO, and it got damaged too, this printer always used OEM ink, and worked well. When I tested again it seemed the printer had and apparent electriconic failure, I discarded the printhead, another printhead was involved in the game, and ended up damaged, again fighting the magenta clog, all this was a consecuence of the first IP42OO clog, as I used the spare printer to fill the void the other one left.

This printer was in wait just in case of the death of the logic board of the first one, but no for clogging of the printhead.

Now that I remembe, maybe 1 year and a half ago, a Canon IP4700 suffered the same magenta issue, resulting in dead printhead and logic board, as I involved water in the solution I was very careful not to splay the circuit board, but somehow I paid the price.

Last year same problem with magenta and QY6-0073. I still have the printhead with me, as long as a I remember it works when installed in the printer, but no magenta is printed, if someone here wants to try to unclog this printhead can contact me, also I have the QY6-0059 printhead.

I have wept so much for my printers, because they are solid built printes, large and easier to refill cartridges, no wait time before printing as seen on on newer printer, no gear grinding noises present in IP4600 post era,and more important they are a really workhorse, I used one of these to print more than 150 text pages daily and mechanism never failed, always alert to the call of duty. As you might have noticed my English is not that good as I live in Nicaragua, I have never been to the States, therefore my English is quite limited, and I try had to express myself clearly. Been a nicaraguan citizen were taxes are too high for electronics plus paying overseas shipping prices makes involves replacing these printers a lot of money, at least for me living in a third world country where money is scarce. So the beating was too hard enough to almost led me to divorce myself of the printing world.

This magenta issue scared the hell out of me me and influenced on not buying an used Canon Pro-100. I believed that was this printer in particular having issues with magenta ink, but linking my past experience with magenta clogs made me realize that the ink has pled guilty at the Royal Court of Printhead Justice.​

No te trates tan mal. Tu Ingles es excelente! Suenas como cualquier Americano aqui en este foro in en muchos puntos, te expresas mucho mejor.

Jose ( Joe )

 

[mikling]

Initially I had thought that some clogs were circumstantial failures. One common element appears and that is the ink that gives problems is usually older.
The ink properties when new looks perfectly normal and works perfectly fine. I have some customers who go through 16 ozs of magenta per month in the printhead and nothing is wrong. However some problems start occurring when the ink has aged a bit from what I had been gathering. If you understand that all colors are principally the same components except for the dye and there is no such issues with the other colors, you quickly surmise that it is likely the dye. The dye is causing premature breakdown of the ink as it ages and this did not happen for many many years before. This is the reason why it is behaving like that.

Let us suppose it is the dye for a second. The ink manufacturer doesn't make the dye. They purchase it from a supplier in the USA. Perhaps the supplier purchases from somewhere else as I know that the dyes are not made in the USA. That second somewhere else is the likely a place called Ch__a. They are a major dye and pigment supplier to the world today. Even to Inktec and Cone....possibly everyone. We don't know.

I am Chinese descent. I can tell you that I can reliably state that the spices and sauces and even fermented black beans are no longer the same as they use to be 10 years ago. Today, you can instantly grasp the lack of flavor even with the same brand. Preserved eggs are now not the same anymore. Poor products are passed off easily nowadays in the foodstuff area. We are always now very careful when food products come from that region now. Is there a linkage. No. Am I off the edge. Maybe. Somehow Apple does it but Apple has a big stick.

What could cause breakdown? I don't know. The only thing that makes sense is if the dye is contaminated to a large degree that the included biocide in the ink is now insufficient to kill off all the increased number of microbes that is introduced by the specific dye. Or if there is a new microbe that is resistant to the currently used biocide. Initially the surviving microbes are low in numbers but slowly multiply in the ink. The reports of problems is spotty..at this point.

Now let's suppose it is one of the two "suppositions". Can it be rectified easily....only if you know the exact source of the problem and the dye is from afar. It will take a while to nail down. When I came to this conclusion in my head, I knew I had my work cut out for me.

Could I just purchase Magenta from another source and sell it? Yes, but when you sample the other sources magenta colors, they are not correct especially for the CLI-8 series. IS had some of the better color matches out there. I wanted to replicate that in the other source.

Please note that the above is at this point speculative and my changing magentas has two fronts. Improved performance and a precautionary move on my part.

 

[Harvey]

No te trates tan mal. Tu Ingles es excelente! Suenas como cualquier Americano aqui en este foro in en muchos puntos, te expresas mucho mejor.

Jose ( Joe )

Muchas gracias por tus palabras José.

 

[mikling]

First is the pro-100 revision that no longer uses the Image Specialists magentas completely.
http://www.precisioncolors.com/PC42R_Upgrade.html

Next to be listed will be the Magenta and Photomagenta substitutes for the Cli-8 series.

 

[Emulator]

Has anyone done a microscopic examination on the old magenta to determine the presence of bacteria or fungal contamination? Or is it a material change in the magenta dye itself?

Grazer5's post in the other thread might suggest that it isn't old ink, at the rate he is using it.

The print head from my 9000 II showed a partial obstruction of the magenta slot on the output grid. Not having a microscope, I cannot determine what form it takes.

http://www.printerknowledge.com/attachments/nozzles-3-jpg.1209/

Third slot from the left. Looking at the image again there seems to be another slight obstruction on the second from right slot.