Refilling Canon Pro-10s

[tomd283]

Hi,
Hoping someone here can help. I have a new pro-10s that I'm trying to get set up on refill inks (octoink) and I'm not having much luck.
Nozzle checks are fine, however when trying to print test charts from i1 studio for profiling I am getting all sorts of problems with banding on some colour blocks - see photos.

I started by using a set of pre-filled carts and only managed to get a clean print when going back to oem carts for magenta, photo magenta and grey.
Thinking it might be the carts at fault I decided to refill my nearly empty oem grey but then I got the same banding I was getting with the prefilled cart. This makes me think it's the ink / paper / driver combo and not the cart. Strangely I get an ok print on matt paper, but using fotospeed lustre or canon pro platinum the banding is there.
I've tried 2 x nozzle check (clean), 1 x cleaning cycle, follow by chart print, but the problem remains. Repeating this doesn't help.

Now I did print a few test prints before trying to start the profiling and didn't notice issues. Maybe it didn't manifest at that point, or maybe it's the stress or printing solid blocks of colour for test charts.

Are any of you using octoink and i1 studio and did you see these issues with test charts? Any suggestions on what to try next?
I'm wondering if it's related to media settings or driver issues, but I'm very wary of damaging the print head by doing repeated experimental prints.
What I do know is that if I switch back to all OEM carts the chart prints perfectly.

Any help appreciated!

 

[stratman]

Welcome to the forum, tom.

I am getting all sorts of problems with banding on some colour blocks - see photos.

I started by using a set of pre-filled carts and only managed to get a clean print when going back to oem carts for magenta, photo magenta and grey.

What I do know is that if I switch back to all OEM carts the chart prints perfectly.

Your last comment answers your riddle. It's the cartridges!

Banding is typically due to an ink flow problem either due to lack of ink or poor flow of ink, or, an electrical problem with the print head or logic assay board. It can be due to a reversible print head clog or an irreversible burned out nozzle(s).

If the problem resolves using a new or known working cartridge then the issue is caused by ink flow or lack of ink in the cartridge(s).

What cartridges are you using - OEM or aftermarket?

You say the cartridges are "prefilled"? What does that mean - new store bought or refilled by you? How old are the cartridges? How old is the ink? Have you ever refilled the cartridges? Have you ever flushed the cartridges?

Please answer these questions and print, scan, crop and post a nozzle check using the "prefilled" cartridges if possible.

In the meantime, here is an 8+ minute video on how to perform a 5 second refill of your PGI-72 cartridges. Note the first step is sucking out residual air and ink to fully collapse the internal bag that holds the ink. Also, not the brief instruction on how to flush a PGI-72.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szUoFxMZmI0

 

[palombian]

I verified the i1Studio charts I made a year ago when I started with the octoink set and do not see what you show here.

May I first notice that the small artifacts won't impact the profile.
You won't damage the printhead as long as the nozzle checks are pristine (inspected with a magnifying glass I suppose you will do ).

I would test ink flow afterwards with specific cartridge stress tests, or simply print a page full of the suspected colour in standard and high quality and compare.

There have been problems with the magenta that only could be solved by extensive flushing of the carts.

 

[tomd283]

Hi all,
Thanks for your insights. I took a deep breath this morning and tried again and seem to have made some progress!

Firstly on the questions -

You say the cartridges are "prefilled"? What does that mean - new store bought or refilled by you?

These were bought 'remanufactured and filled' from Octoinkjet. I was planning to switch out my oem set with these and start refilling the empty oem ones.

How old are the cartridges? How old is the ink?

Brand new to me, but obviously cleaned and refilled by Octoink. My OEM carts are the first set that came with the printer, never previously refilled.

Have you ever refilled the cartridges? Have you ever flushed the cartridges?

No. When I posted last night I had only refilled my OEM grey once, that's it. I didn't flush it with cleaning solution, but did use a bit of the new octoink ink to rinse it. The new inks are all fresh bottles from Octoink.

This is the process I followed before posting -

1. Installed the remanufactured carts in as a set and tried printing.
2. Noticed banding. Through a very long process of trial and error - switching carts one at a time and reprinting - I found that I could get a good print with 7 octoink carts plus my oem M, PM and GY. At this point I suspected the carts.
3. I tried on advice to remove and add some new ink with a syringe into these 3 problem carts to try and dislodge any blocking ink. That didn't help, and I did notice the grey was v slow to drip fill.
4. I then refilled my empty oem grey expecting it to resolve things fine but still got the issue. This was the point I posted, thinking how can it still be happening when it's a first refill of a known good cart?

Then this morning, I watched the video @stratman posted and had another go to empty and refill the oem grey cart.
(side note - I then got caught in the horrible domino effect of each cart running empty, had to refill all of them.....but this was interesting as I noticed that the other remanufactured carts filled so much easier than the grey. Cyan also hard to refill and surprise surprise this also showed bad ink flow once reinstalled)

Finally, I got to what I think is a decent result. Still a tiny bit of variation in grey, but I'm being really picky.

So....it does look like it was a problem with some of the remanufactured cartridges, made more confusing by my poor technique on refilling my own grey cart. What made this also challenging was that I could never see the issue on nozzle checks, only by printing on lustre paper.

As it stands I have Octoink in all carts now except M and C, using a mix of my original carts and the 'reman' carts. I will refill the M and C when they are empty and hopefully all will be good.

@palombian what solution do you recommend to flush the M with?

Sorry for the long post, but hopefully may help someone else down the line.

Thanks all.

 

[palombian]

To start, it is known PGI-72 carts can be difficult to clean once the ink has dried (that's why refillers are shouting from the rooftops you never should throw away your empty cards and CLIPS, but no avail ).
Since Octoinkjet doesn't know what happened with the empty cards he gets (they are rare, see above) chances are he was unable to clear all previous content.

Even when refilling a fresh OEM cart with some colours unwanted reactions can appear. This was observed by several members of this forum with M.
It takes repeated flushing with warm water with some washing liquid (Fairy) and a few drops of ammonia (or Windex) and leaving this overnight until the sponge is 100% white. Rinse with demineralised water, suck out to the max (about 16,5 without clip), and rinse with a few ml ink to avoid dilution with the remaining water.
To be honest I never had any clog issue with C or any other octoinkjet color, but as you say GY can have slight variations in density with banding in demanding large prints with an even mid-tone background. Maybe this could be cleared too by intensive flushing.
Please report.

As you already observed, the phenomena disappear by changing to OEM ink so there is no immediate danger for the printhead..
An easy source for OEM ink are PGI-29 carts for the PRO-1. The inks are the same except the PRO-10 has only 1 GY.
Attention: PGI-72GY = PGI-29DGY.
The inks for the PRO-1000 (PFI-1000) are not an exact color match but R seems to be the same. Also a good source for CO. You could try GY too but no experience.

So when you are picky, by replacing a few carts by OEM you are still way cheaper.
3th party providers Octoinkjet and Precision colours mention the weak points in their ink set, you can't expect 100% the same quality for 20% of the price.
Harvesting ink from larger carts is not only (slightly) cheaper but by refilling the whole set you avoid the domino effect.

Welcome to the club and good luck.

And do a nozzle check before you start to print.

 

[Artur5]

From my experience, I'd say print also a nozzle check after every long printing session, checking carefully Magenta, Photomagenta and grey stripes. Red as well, if you're not using OEM red.

 

[stratman]

These were bought 'remanufactured and filled' from Octoinkjet.

Do you mean these are OEM Canon cartridges?

I tried on advice to remove and add some new ink with a syringe

...

I did notice the grey was v slow to drip fill.

Exactly how are you using the syringe? It is to just drip ink onto the cartridge or do you use a modified clip that allows you to attach a syringe, making an air tight seal with the cartridge, so you can not only inject ink (not drip) into the cartridge but also suck out air and ink from inside the cartridge? This was demonstrated in the video I linked.

 

[palombian]

Do you mean these are OEM Canon cartridges?


Exactly how are you using the syringe? It is to just drip ink onto the cartridge or do you use a modified clip that allows you to attach a syringe, making an air tight seal with the cartridge, so you can not only inject ink (not drip) into the cartridge but also suck out air and ink from inside the cartridge? This was demonstrated in the video I linked.

I DRIP ink from the squeeze bottle while the cartridge is on the scale, passing over the entire sponge to flush eventual pigment accumulation, in my experience it is very fast on a GOOD cartridge (maybe an early warning if not).
I am sure there are videos about this.
When full, cart still upside down, squeeze it gently until no foam comes out anymore, this removes remaining air (again a reason for malfunctioning).
I really have zero problems with refilling PGI-9 and PGI-72 cartridges.

 

[tomd283]

For refilling I used both methods. For the empty carts I used the clip and syringe method as per the video. For the less empty carts I used the dripfill method. As you say palombian, it was very quick for the good carts. I should clarify, all the carts were Canon oem, it's just that some were the ones that came with the printer that I refilled, the other set I bought 'ready filled' with octoink.

I can live with the slight variations in colour as long as it is consistent and I don't have banding. It looks like this was caused by the cartridge condition and/or my refilling technique (not removing all air) and not the ink itself. I killed my pro9000ii head so being overcautious with this one!

I will now profile to get the best result I can, then may consider using oem for one or two colours if it seems worth the extra. As you say, for the price they are amazingly close, and still cheap if mixing in a bit of oem.

Thanks all for sharing your expertise, lots of great knowledge on this forum

 

[mikling]

There are two areas you should investigate carefully. First is the flow aspect of the tanks. Last week on Jose Rodriguez podcast towards the end of my session I mentioned one of the " Thou shall nots". This pertains especially to Ebay tank purchases. I have over 40 Pro-10 tanks that are junk. OEM ink on the Pro-10 if it is allowed to dry will not redissolve easily or ever sometimes. Thus when purchasing tanks that are recycled I mentioned one thing you should never do. Next it you are using the pressure syringe it is NOT a wise thing to do, especially on unknown condition tanks. Why? Well you might be the victim of its weakness. You will not be able to judge how well the pad performs when you force the ink into the tank. This is automatically averted when using the stream method. As Palombian has mentioned, the total time requires is really not that much more but there are more benefits to it than some might think and disagree with. Well to each his own.

I have already mentioned about two to three years ago what problems I ran into. Some aftermarket pigment ink for Canons will behave inconsistently and slowly develop print issues and the ONLY way to restore it is to print using OEM ink only because that was the only alternative at the time. (Red and Magenta in particular). If caught too late, it will not be a good situation for your printhead. The OEM ink or good ink for that matter has a scrubbing effect of some sorts to clear out deposits. Do not be complacent with imperfection with thermal heads.