Refilling Canon Pro-10s

[The Hat]

For refilling I used both methods.

I am surprised that no one mentioned shaking the carts before installing them into the printer, nor shaking the refill bottles before use either this is very important when refilling with pigment inks.

The possibility of getting air into the print head when using A PGl-72 cart is 100% impossible, That’s (Another Myth) air will go to the top of the cart when the cart is in use and stays there till empty, if a cart has ink flow issues, then spend a little more time purging , it will come good.. The best ingredient is patients..

Another tip for you:- reset the chips every time you remove any cart from your printer and never change just one cart, change all ten together.. (Regardless)

P.S. I have advocated over the years that filling your carts using a syringe and refill tip is as safe as the dribble method, but much faster and more controllable because you can put the exact measure of ink into the syringe, but hey not all suppliers stock the refill tips…

 

[stratman]

In order of appearance...

Jose recommends the syringe-clip refill method.

Palombian recommends the dribble method.

Mikling recommends the dribble method.

The Hat recommends the syringe-clip method.



Life has enough headaches, like the one I'm having at the moment. If a cartridge is having flow issues then shake it to dissolve/distribute pigment, +/- adding ink as needed. If that doesn't work, consider flushing the cartridge. If that doesn't work for you then get a new or another cartridge. Having a second set available to be used is key to best avoid headaches.

 

[palombian]

If refilling was easy everyone would do it.
I started last year with the PRO-10 after many years with the PRO-9500 and despite my experience I had to pass through the issues you experience now too, as other members on this forum.
Ink feed issues always existed with 3th party pigment ink, in particular in the magenta's and reds, but I remember always having "good" cartridges, so I think it is linked to the history of the cart. That I never ever had a problem with Octoink PM, while @Artur5 warned for it illustrates this too.
Of coarse these kind of issues should be solved first for reliable printing, but you will have to decide also if you are satisfied with the strength of the blacks and the red, and the gloss of the CO.
Some don't care, others replace certain colours by other brands.
It took me some time to find what I needed.
I've spend my day by standardizing my ink set and make new profiles (and answering posts here while the charts were drying) for my most used papers, and certainly not by worrying if the ink should come through.
Happily enough I can use the leftovers from my experiments in the 9500 for less demanding A3 office prints, posters on matte paper or cardboard.
The PRO-10 is a reliable printer and anyway one of the last you can refill, up to you to decide if you want to do the effort.

 

[Artur5]

......

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.

Totally agree..

I confess my use of the fast and "rude" system for refilling, with a syringe and refill clip. Sure @palombian's suggestion is far more reliable but I'm a lazy old man and my hands are a bit shaky. I tried the drip system and ended making a mess spilling ink out of the pad over the scale.
Notwithstanding, the only times I had slight problems weren’t because of a clogged cartridge pad. No ink flow problems in real life prints but slight banding in nozzle checks, always in the same area of the color stripes -> some nozzles were clogged. That's why I said in my former post to check red, magenta and also, to a lesser extent, photomagenta and grey. Those colors are the usual suspects. As @mikling says, using an OEM cart solved the issue

 

[tomd283]

Hi all,
Bit of an update here. I managed to sort most of my issues after replacing a couple of carts which addressed the minor ink flow problems with cyan and magenta.
Where I still see an issue is with gray which gives consistent banding, but only on lustre/gloss paper. With matte everything is perfect. Change to a canon gray cart and banding is gone, so not the head.
I’m also doubting it’s cart related - I’ve tried two different carts, including refilling a canon cart that was just emptied then fully flushed (drip fill, shook the ink ). Will be testing some new carts in due course from supplier just to be sure.

As a test I tried my matte paper with the ‘photo paper pro lustre’ media setting and problem was there still. Then tried the lustre paper with the ‘other fine art paper 1’ media setting and it printed ok! So problem follows media setting and not the paper. Suspecting pbk I also tried photo paper > matte photo paper (which should use pbk) and it worked. Hmm. I then tried a pbk cart filled with mbk on the lustre media setting, just to be sure, it also failed, so not the black.

I then tried a custom clear coating ‘form’ to just use CO on half the image, to rule out CO as a delta, not that either.

Which leaves me thinking it’s media setting related and due to differences in ink flow demands between settings. I should stress I never see the issue with nozzle checks. I did notice when using plain paper with the ‘pro lustre’ media setting the paper was well saturated suggesting it uses more ink than matte settings. The problem I have is that to use a lustre or glossy paper with pbk and co you have to choose one of photo paper settings!

Of course I could just stick with matte papers or I can go with 9 refill inks plus oem gray. But from what I see it doesn’t seem like others have this issue with gray. So my question, which lustre / glossy papers are working ok for you with octo gray? For info I’m trying fotospeed lustre and also tried canon pro platinum.

Thanks.

 

[palombian]

Hi all,
Bit of an update here. I managed to sort most of my issues after replacing a couple of carts which addressed the minor ink flow problems with cyan and magenta.
Where I still see an issue is with gray which gives consistent banding, but only on lustre/gloss paper. With matte everything is perfect. Change to a canon gray cart and banding is gone, so not the head.
I’m also doubting it’s cart related - I’ve tried two different carts, including refilling a canon cart that was just emptied then fully flushed (drip fill, shook the ink ). Will be testing some new carts in due course from supplier just to be sure.

As a test I tried my matte paper with the ‘photo paper pro lustre’ media setting and problem was there still. Then tried the lustre paper with the ‘other fine art paper 1’ media setting and it printed ok! So problem follows media setting and not the paper. Suspecting pbk I also tried photo paper > matte photo paper (which should use pbk) and it worked. Hmm. I then tried a pbk cart filled with mbk on the lustre media setting, just to be sure, it also failed, so not the black.

I then tried a custom clear coating ‘form’ to just use CO on half the image, to rule out CO as a delta, not that either.

Which leaves me thinking it’s media setting related and due to differences in ink flow demands between settings. I should stress I never see the issue with nozzle checks. I did notice when using plain paper with the ‘pro lustre’ media setting the paper was well saturated suggesting it uses more ink than matte settings. The problem I have is that to use a lustre or glossy paper with pbk and co you have to choose one of photo paper settings!

Of course I could just stick with matte papers or I can go with 9 refill inks plus oem gray. But from what I see it doesn’t seem like others have this issue with gray. So my question, which lustre / glossy papers are working ok for you with octo gray? For info I’m trying fotospeed lustre and also tried canon pro platinum.

Thanks.

Your experiences confirm mine.
Flushing carts before switching ink seems to resolve most issues.
I can confirm the occasional GY banding on gloss/lustre.
This is an ink feed issue not related to the paper but to the printer driver media settings.
It depends also on the print (occurs mostly on medium to light zones after the printhead passed a dark patch).
You can experiment between several ones (try Platinum PRO) and between quality settings Standard and High.
Print full GY sheets to see if they are even.
I did not pursue cart flushing as with Magenta.

Sad GY is the most used ink (as is CO where OEM is more performant too).
But this makes a large format cart a more viable alternative (ex PFI-1100 is about €75 for 160ml, that's 47ct/ml v 77ct for PGI-72). Prepare for an eventual custom profile for the GY (IMO almost mandatory with an ink cocktail).

Nothing forbids you to replace the GY with a 3th party cart for matte or other less demanding prints.
Same has been advised by Octoink for the PBK (and by Precision Colors for the R).
This is the big advantage of a printer with small carts on the printhead as the PRO-10 (and a reason why I never considered to refill a PRO-1000).

 

[tomd283]

Thanks @palombian, great to get feedback that seems to align with what I’m seeing. I think I’ll just switch between oem and refill GY depending on the paper. I have an i1 studio so it’s no trouble to profile for both scenarios.
I have to say, when using the matte paper with all refill ink the results are really excellent. And even mixing in an oem colour or two the savings are still significant enough to be worth it IMO.
I think you mentioned previously Pgi-29 DGY as an option for gray. But are you suggesting that Pfi-1100 ink could be used in the pro-10 with profiling? Is that something you’ve tried?

 

[palombian]

Thanks @palombian, great to get feedback that seems to align with what I’m seeing. I think I’ll just switch between oem and refill GY depending on the paper. I have an i1 studio so it’s no trouble to profile for both scenarios.
I have to say, when using the matte paper with all refill ink the results are really excellent. And even mixing in an oem colour or two the savings are still significant enough to be worth it IMO.
I think you mentioned previously Pgi-29 DGY as an option for gray. But are you suggesting that Pfi-1100 ink could be used in the pro-10 with profiling? Is that something you’ve tried?

Nice you solved most of the issues, having your own profiling tools is a big advantage.

According to Jose Rodriguez @jtoolman you need the PRO-1 PGI-29 DGY.

Lucia PRO inkset only has PGY and GY so I would choose GY.
According to Mike from Precision Colors @mikling the PRO-1000/2000/... Lucia PRO inkset does not match with PRO-10 but Red does (he sells it to complete his latest inkset). PRO-10 lacks Blue.

The PRO-10/PRO-1 ink seems to be an intermediate between the first (large format) generation Lucia ink (also used in the PRO-9500) and the second generation Lucia EX - or maybe a parallel development. Lucia EX and the latest Lucia PRO contain pigments encapsulated with resin (according to Canon) for better gloss. Based on the difficulties to clean dried cartridges (and printheads) PRO-10 ink has resins too.
Since the same printhead is used in the PRO-300 (with Lucia PRO ink) there can't be technical obstacles to use these inks in the PRO-10.

When in doubt ask Jose Rodriguez, based on the cartridges he shows on youtube he fills his PRO-10 with whatever Canon OEM (pigment) ink he can get.

 

[Artur5]

In more than 2 years, not a single issue with Pro-10 Octoink grey (touching wood), neither nozzle checks nor real life prints. Maybe this is not very significant because I never used glossy paper on this machine, but prints on Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl and Epson luster papers were flawless. No banding at all.

My troubles (not many) have been confined to M and PM. Also a CO cart where the bladder leaked. It didn’t burst but it was unglued a bit at one corner from the plastic frame. That must be a very rare occurrence, I never heard about similar issues from other users.

Anyway, the issue with Octoink M and PM was not seen in real life prints, but only in nozzle checks. There was a faint banding in some areas of the color patch, always in the same place. Flushing the carts and/or cleaning cycles didn’t help. I fixed the problems instantly by switching to an OEM cart and afterwards to Prec, Colors or OEM inks.

 

[tomd283]

That's good to hear @Artur5 , I will certainly try a few more papers. I will check out Ilford and expect at least 50% of the time to be printing on matte anyway, which works well with the octoink GY.

Good point about the PRO-300 printhead @palombian, I hadn't thought of that! Certainly makes me curious to try some of the bulk sources of OEM as options.