Pro-100; No low warning when PM was (pretty much) empty

[jjohnl]

Okay, here's my refilling procedure... I'm scrupulous to the point of paranoia when I'm refilling. My procedure is slow and tedious but it leaves absolutely no room for mixing up the colors. This is what I do:

I take out the sheet of instructions that came with the kit from PC and read it. (I've read it 20 times and I do it anyway.)
I take out the box that has all the squeezy bottles of ink and place it by the printer.
I take out the far left cart from the printer.
I reset the chip.
I take out that one bottle of ink from the box.
I take the cart and the bottle into the room where I do the refilling.
I check the label on the cart against the bottle... again. (Like I said: paranoia.)
I fill the cart.
I put the cart upright into a clear plastic container (with the other carts that have been refilled, if it's not the first one) so that as the process goes along, I can occasionally lift up the container and look at the bottom, looking for leaks from the output ports.
I put that bottle of ink on another table, NOT in the box with the unused bottles.
And then I start over:
I take out the far left cart from the printer.
Etc...

It takes longer that way but there is no room for a color mix-up. (Paranoia.)
So yes, I am always sure that the right color of ink is in the right cart. And yes the scanner is crap and so the colors are never really correct.

 

[PeterBJ]

As the red colour cast disappears during printing the first photo and colours are correct in the second photo, no colours are mixed up in the refilling. Instead the problem looks like cross contamination, meaning that ink enters nozzles where it doesn't belong. It looks to me like magenta and/or maybe photo magenta is the culprit.

Could you make a nozzle check and upload that instead of printing more portraits when you think the error would occur, before doing any other prints, maybe tomorrow?

Here are nozzle checks from an iP4000 suffering from cross contamination. The first is normal, or magenta might be a little contaminated by cyan. The second shows that magenta has contaminated the regular and light cyan that are now blue and magenta has started entering photo black. The third is even worse, magenta has now also entered the dye black nozzles.

I know three causes of cross contamination, there might be more. One is a leaky cartridge maybe caused by overfilling or by a defective or not properly inserted refill plug. The second is an internal leak in the print head and the third is wicking caused by dried ink on the purge pads touching the underside of the print head.

 

[jjohnl]

This is interesting, Peter. But I have questions:

Could you make a nozzle check and upload that instead of printing more portraits when you think the error would occur, before doing any other prints, maybe tomorrow?

Isn't the nozzle check I already uploaded sufficient? The printer was idle for days, maybe a week, before I printed it on May 25.

Here are nozzle checks from an iP4000 suffering from cross contamination. The first is normal, or magenta might be a little contaminated by cyan. The second shows that magenta has contaminated the regular and light cyan that are now blue and magenta has started entering photo black. The third is even worse, magenta has now also entered the dye black nozzles.

How did the yellow manage to avoid contamination?

I know three causes of cross contamination, there might be more. One is a leaky cartridge maybe caused by overfilling or by a defective or not properly inserted refill plug. The second is an internal leak in the print head and the third is wicking caused by dried ink on the purge pads touching the underside of the print head.

Concerning ink on the purge pads, how much is too much? The photo that Hat uploaded shows pads that seem to be filthy; are they actually okay? (Compared to them mine are pristine.) Are the pads and what is around them at all delicate? I don't want to damage anything by cleaning.

Thanks

 

[PeterBJ]

.....Isn't the nozzle check I already uploaded sufficient? The printer was idle for days, maybe a week, before I printed it on May 25.

You are right, that is ideal for the purpose. But I wonder why the photo magenta looks like magenta in the nozzle check. How does a new nozzle check look after the printer has started to print the colours correctly? Is the photo magenta lighter than the magenta then?

Could some other Pro-100 owner please comment on if the two magentas normally look so similar in the Pro-100 nozzle check?

How did the yellow manage to avoid contamination?

I don't know but the print head suffers from an internal leakage and is running very hot. I think it is close to burning out.

Concerning ink on the purge pads, how much is too much? The photo that Hat uploaded shows pads that seem to be filthy; are they actually okay? (Compared to them mine are pristine.) Are the pads and what is around them at all delicate? I don't want to damage anything by cleaning.

The pads uploaded by The Hat look nice to me. In use they will quickly become more dirty, so if your pads are more clean then that is perfect, and they don't need cleaning. But if you want to you can use a lot of Q-tips, both dry and wetted with a window cleaner, to clean the purge unit. If you wipe the parts gently with the Q-tips you won't damage anything. The purge pads I have seen cause cross contamination were covered in more than a millimetre of dried ink that resembled black shoe polish.

If the problems are not caused by leakage of the magenta or photo magenta cartridge, I don't know what is causing it. Did both magentas pass the leakage test in the box?

 

[Roy Sletcher]

Could some other Pro-100 owner please comment on if the two magentas normally look so similar in the Pro-100 nozzle check?

On my pro 100 nozzle check:

The two magenta's look similar.
The two cyan's look similar.
and black plus the two gray's all look similar.

A pity really as it gives no indication of refilling with the incorrect colour. (IE LM instead of M)

I think the nozzle check is vital, but very limited. and All it tells is that all nozzles are firing and possibly shows up electrical faults. I have had a perfect nozzle check, yet still run into ink starvation issues immediately after.

Interestingly I have not had a surplus or flood of any colour and am watching this thread with interest.

rs

 

[jjohnl]

As Roy said, the M and PM do look similar, but there is a (slight but distinct) difference to me. In fact, I can see 8 unique colors on my nozzle checks.

 

[jjohnl]

You are right, that is ideal for the purpose. But I wonder why the photo magenta looks like magenta in the nozzle check. How does a new nozzle check look after the printer has started to print the colours correctly? Is the photo magenta lighter than the magenta then?

Even in the one that I posted, I see a distinct difference. They're similar but definitely different.

The purge pads I have seen cause cross contamination were covered in more than a millimetre of dried ink that resembled black shoe polish.

Yow!

If the problems are not caused by leakage of the magenta or photo magenta cartridge, I don't know what is causing it. Did both magentas pass the leakage test in the box?

At this time there is not even a slight amount of leakage.

 

[jjohnl]

So I'm puzzled. I uploaded a nozzle check that showed "black" blobs on the leading edge of the paper (and good colors on the test strips). I found blobs of ink on the bottom of the printhead and the carriage it rides in. It was a lot of ink.
But my purge pads are relatively clean (photo below) so, if I understand, the ink blobs had to have come from a leaking cart. But I've had the carts sitting in a box for 4 days and the only possible leak I've seen was so tiny I'm not even sure it was a leak (could have just been on the lip of the output port).
Could the carts leak while in the head but not while sitting in a box?

 

[turbguy]

Clean off the three wipers to the eft of the purge "pads" with Q tips and windex.

 

[The Hat]

So I'm puzzled. I uploaded a nozzle check that showed "black" blobs on the leading edge of the paper, I found blobs of ink on the bottom of the printhead and the carriage it rides in. It was a lot of ink.

@jjohnl, as @turbguy has pointed out, cleaning up the wiper blades will help stop the build of ink on the underside of the print head, and using the higher ink setting on text and small print jobs can also cause a build up to occur after a bit of time.

Now back to your leaky cartridge problem, the one thing we didn’t cover was, how you do refill ?

If you overfill the reservoir to full then a cartridge has a tendency to leak till the pressure inside reaches the correct balance on both side of the cart and it may not in fact be leaking air through the refill hole.

Remember the sponge side of a refilled cart usually fills to the top, it shouldn’t but it does, so filling the reservoir up to the same level can cause the cart to drip ink for quite some time afterwards, and on your next fill try the reservoir at 75% only and see if the cart will leak at all..

A pity really as it gives no indication of refilling with the incorrect colour. (IE LM instead of M)
I have had a perfect nozzle check, yet still run into ink starvation issues immediately after.

If you use new OEM cartridges then there can never be a conflict arising out of incorrect colours, the printer simply wont print till you correct your mistake.

The nozzle check is in fact just perfect, come Roy you don’t really expect Canon to assist you to refill their cartridges, the price you pay sometime for refilling is poor or inadequate ink flow for which you’re fully aware of, so always stay on your toes and never get caught out by it, it certainly does happen to most of us, well me anyway..
“The refillers Achilles heel”