Stainless Screw & O-Ring Seal Leak - Cross contamination - PICS

[Nifty]

The wife came to me last night saying, "Um... somethings wrong with the printer."

The page had lots of yellow and washed out colors. This happens time to time so I went to do a quick nozzle pattern check and cleaning. While I ran the nozzle check I noticed that yellow said it was low. Odd because I recently refilled it. The nozzle check patter was a page full of lots of yellow.

I opened up the printer and found this:

Looks like the 0-ring seal broke and the ink wiked up into the top of the cart?

Any other thoughts or ideas on exactly what happened?

Good news: I replaced the cart, ran a cleaning cycle, printed some "barbie island princess" pics for my daughter (lots of blue to get out the cross contamination from the blue) and all is back to normal.

 

[pharmacist]

Forget those rusty screws and messy glue globs and leaking cartridges with these methods, try this:

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2465

This method guarantees you no such problems as mentioned above.

 

[mikling]

Over a year of searching yields this.

100% Silicone and plugs better than the original Canon Ball.
NO DRILLING
Allows flushing when that day arrives... and that day will arrive.
Uses the original Canon ball hub and creates a mushroom plug that seals everytime PERFECTLY
No clearance issues.

Took a while to find them and these are now preferred over any other method.

I have always warned that O-rings are not ideal because they are not meant to be distorted under pressure and as they are twisted they tear. Furthermore the finish under the screwshead and threads are possibly sharp.
Grandad's method of sealing is more reliable provided the correct screws are used but I think these plugs supersede that now. Once screws are used, these plugs cannot be used as the threads will have cut grooves into the hub that will allow leaks. However, with new cartridges, I consider it ideal.

 

[tigerwan]

And where does one find these fine plugs?

 

[Tin Ho]

If you leave the original ball plug alone and drill a tiny hole next to it which is large enough to allow your syringe needle to penetrate into the tank you can use hot glue to seal it. I found it extremely simple and effective. Small hot glue guns with plenty of glue sticks at Wal-Mart are only a few bucks each. Mikling's plugs are good but he still needs to remove the original ball plug from the cartridge. I found it very hard to remove the ball plug. I would rather leave it alone and drill a small hole instead. The plastic is very soft. You can use a heated pin instead of a drill bit. It is piece of cake really. Let the glue gun warm up for 5 to 10 minutes. The heated glue will flow easily if it gets enough time to warm up. The glue will be very watery and easy to apply to seal the small hole. I have tried the method Pharmacist's post linked to. I will say the hot glue method is far easier still.

 

[mikling]

Lilla exposed how to remove the ball,...... A pushpin, an eyelet hook at any fine hardware store or dollar store is all you need. Since you need to do it once only, an eyelet hook can usually be found at the back of wooden picture frames. Remove, use, replace. Make a starter hole in the ball with a pushpin and then screw the eyelet hook into the ball till it grips the ball and pull it out. That is done in less time that a dollar store hot melt glue gun takes to heat up.

With the plugs it looks like Canon supplied the refillable cartridges!!!

 

[canonfodder]

Mikling,

Tigerwan asked, and now I do too, where did you buy the silicone plugs. They do look fine.

 

[fotofreek]

The O-rings do compress and increase in diameter a bit after several refills. I finally had to replace some after more than three years. Luckily, I/ve never had the problem that Nifty showed. I just obtained more than 50 empty OEM bci-6 carts, so I dumped all the carts I had been using, purged the "new" carts, replaced all the O-rings, and refilled three sets to rotate through my wife's ip5000 and my i960 printers. I bought the O-rings online - the cost of shipping was considerably more than the cost of the O-rings! A bag of 100 cost a total of a bit more than $6. Works for me.

If you want to go the route of an elastic plug in the factory fill hole, you can purchase very good plugs from Computer Friends. They include them in their refill kits, but if you phone them you can buy them without the kits. I've used them very successfully, but I had problems with a few carts with the removal of the "ball" damaging the edge of the fill hole. The blue plugs they sell have a tab the makes removing them very easy.

Important to note that my stainless steel screws have never rusted. We did have some rusting when we used zinc plated screws years ago.

 

[mikling]

They are now included in the Canon kits from Precision Colors instead of the stainless screws.

 

[fotofreek]

Mikling - can they be purchased separately with any bulk ink purchase?