Pro-100 Cleaning Page

[kdsdata]

There are a number of function available from printer maintenance, to print check pages. What I don't know is whether those pages, or in fact other sample print pages posted in this and other forums, exercise all pins/nozzles.

The Pro-100 has some 6400 pins/nozzles, and I would like to be able print a page every 3-4 days to exercise those pins/nozzles. This is from recommendations in this and other forums, in order to prevent the ink consuming cleaning cycles when the printer is not used very often.

I have not found a way to do this via Google searches. I have tried to find out if the Pro-100 is PCL5 or PCL6 programmable, or if PCL can even be used to address each of the pins/nozzles, to print a few dots during the exercise print. Cannon is very secretive about the programming references.

I welcome discussion on this and will appreciate any help offered.

 

[The Hat]

Hi @kdsdata and welcome, there are no known test sheets that will use all the colour nozzles on your pro 100, with one exception, and that is A Standard Nozzle check, and this can be run every two days and will prevent the unnecessary cleaning cycles that can happen after 60 hours’ duration.

There is also another test sheet that can be used to check the colour performance and ink flow of your refilled cartridges precisely.

https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/green-cast-on-photo-prints.11081/#post-92961

 

[kdsdata]

That is interesting, that the Standard Nozzle check does all the nozles. I wish Canon would make this sort of info "easily" available. On their website there is not a preliferation of info. I get the feeling that there is deliberate effort to not provide this sort of info. Perhaps it's only availably to the insider elite.

I have asked what programming platform I could use the address the nozzles (to print a few dots) and where to find the technical info to do that. But no reply yet.

Thanks for your answer @The Hat.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

no printer manufacturer releases such information to the general public, no way, these direct printer interfaces are a well kept secret. Large format printers can run on RIP software which bypasses the driver, and those RIP software companies get that information under a non-disclosure agreement. You only could create an image file with appropriate pixel patterns and print such file in the genuine printer resolution e.g. 300 or 600dpi for Canon, and Qimage has an option to print with the embedded dpi of an image file e.g. in tiff format.

 

[ninj]

There exist open source drivers (foomatic and gutenprint) for a large number of printer models, though not yet for the Pro-100 AFAIK. The output from propriety drivers has presumably been reversed engineered to produce them, so such things are possible in principle.

If all you want to do is automate a nozzle check, I have prepared a simple shell script (for Linux) that sends a file to the printer containing the instruction @TestPrint=NozzleCheck. It can easily be automated as a cron job to run a nozzle check every couple of days. I have tested it on my iP8750 and MG5770, but don't know if it works on the Pro-100 (I think it should).

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

None of the printer manufacturers make their maintenance software available to the public either e.g. for resetting the waste ink counter although some of such software is available via secondary sources.
The printing software Qimage/Windows offers as well a function to set up a timed unclogging print to keep the printer busy.
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/may-2015-confessions-of-a-chronic-clogger/

 

[The Hat]

There exist open source drivers (foomatic and gutenprint) for a large number of printer models

Only Canon print drivers can be used to control every aspect of colour and mechanical output on their printers, these print drivers are highly protected from all outside competitor, so it’s pointless waiting for a company to write RIP, it simply won’t happen.

Canon owns the drivers and internal software that runs your printer, and if you read the terms and conditions it’s there in black & white, its stinks to high heavens but we have no choice, because we all love to print.

Sure, look what happened to the standard Service Mode, owners can no longer avail of this very useful tool that many used to prolong the life of their precious printers, but we fought back against their Domino Effect..

 

[ninj]

True, and this is not just restricted to printers. The Colormunk Photo, for example, has propriety software for profiling printers and monitors - full, I'm sure, of trade secrets - but the open-source Argyllcms arguably produces better results, though is less easy to use. There are a lot of clever people out there reverse-engineering devices to unlock them with free software. I guess it's just more difficult with printers, not least because of the proliferation of models. Older models tend to be better catered for with the likes of Gutenprint. For those models that they do support (sadly not my printers), to my mind they do a good enough job. To quote from the Gutenprint website:

Gutenprint is a package of high quality printer drivers for Linux, BSD, Solaris, Macintosh OS X, IRIX, and other UNIX-alike operating systems. In many cases, these drivers rival or exceed the OEM drivers in quality and functionality. Our goal is to produce the highest possible output quality from all supported printers. To that end, we have done extensive work on screening algorithms, color generation, and printer feature utilization. We are continuing our work in all of these areas to produce ever higher quality results, particularly on the ubiquitous, inexpensive inkjet printers that are nonetheless capable of nearly photographic output quality.​

All I can say is that I'm printing what I regard to be good quality photos without a single piece of Canon code on my computer. It is not through choice - Canon (unlike Epson) simply has no real support for Linux so I had to pay for the closed-source Turboprint driver, there being no adequate open-source alternative at present (it's rather perverse, incidentally, that a Linux user has to pay for something that Windows users get free - it's usually the other way around!).