Urgent help Canon ip4920

[stratman]

There is no possibility whatsoever of overheating the nozzles if you follow Canons' own advise when confronted by a clog, nowhere in there does it say to run continues deep head cleaning cycles one after the other till clear.

In the User Manual for my MP830, the directions are fairly clear with respect to cleanings and deep cleanings:

If you perform cleaning and nozzle check twice and the result does not improve then perform Deep cleaning.

After performing one Deep cleaning and printing a nozzle check:

If the problem remains, then turn off the machine's power for at least 24 hours, and perform deep cleaning of the Print Head again.

If the problem remains then the print head may be damaged and contact Canon. No more deep cleanings advised beyond these two times.

 

[PeterBJ]

The instruction regarding deep cleaning of the print head might be the same for all Canon printers. This is copied from the iP6600D on screen manual:

Print the nozzle check pattern to check the ink output.

If the nozzle check pattern does not print out properly, ensure that there is enough ink.

If there is plenty of ink and the printer does not print, clean the print head then print the nozzle check pattern to ensure ink is ejected properly.
If the problem is not resolved after performing print head cleaning twice, carry out the print head deep cleaning.

If the problem is not resolved after performing print head deep cleaning, turn off the printer then perform print head deep cleaning again 24 hours later.

If the problem still persists, the print head may be damaged. Contact a Canon service representative.

For details on how to print the nozzle check pattern, how to clean the print head, and how to perform print head deep cleaning, see "Routine Maintenance."

I don't understand why you should wait 24 hours before performing a new deep clean. I would think that one hour would be sufficient? Maybe it is not related to letting the heat dissipate but is related to giving the fresh ink time to dissolve clogs?

I think the instruction does not tell if repeated deep cleaning stresses the print head too much thermally, because of nozzle firing, but better play it safe and follow Canon's instructions.

So instead of stating as a fact that deep cleans stress the print head thermally, I should in the future mention that Canon warns not to do another deep clean until after 24 hours?

 

[martin0reg]

...Maybe it is not related to letting the heat dissipate but is related to giving the fresh ink time to dissolve clogs?..

I think it is for sure giving time to let the ink sink.

With an old epson r800 I had similar experiences: several cleaning ciycles one after another were not only useless, the nozzle check even became worse. And epson has "cold" piezo PH's...

I still think cleaning cycles with the canon driver are executed "passive" only with the pump ... but there is no proof of this assumption or the other yet ..

So wether it stresses or not, my advice would be:
- With a potential clog stop printing and do nothing except cleaning and nozzle checks
- Avoid several cleaning cycles one after another without improvements in the nozzle check
- Let the printer rest between cleaning cycles, especially when using cleaning cartridges
- If internal cleaning (within the printer driver/menu) does not help external cleaning of the PH is recommended

 

[turbguy]

UPDATE:

I have an old i960 Canon that had stubborn clog issues with the Print Head. I became frustrated and performed multiple deep cleaning cycles (perhaps 8 or 9) in a row. The printer was disassembled sufficiently that I could observe the entire print engine during the process.

At the last cleaning attempt, SMOKE arose from the printer (I could not determine from where). That was the last time any ink was spit onto paper...she died!

This leads me to believe that nozzle current was flowing during deep cleaning cycles.

 

[mikling]

The instruction regarding deep cleaning of the print head might be the same for all Canon printers. This is copied from the iP6600D on screen manual:


I don't understand why you should wait 24 hours before performing a new deep clean. I would think that one hour would be sufficient? Maybe it is not related to letting the heat dissipate but is related to giving the fresh ink time to dissolve clogs?

I think the instruction does not tell if repeated deep cleaning stresses the print head too much thermally, because of nozzle firing, but better play it safe and follow Canon's instructions.

So instead of stating as a fact that deep cleans stress the print head thermally, I should in the future mention that Canon warns not to do another deep clean until after 24 hours?

Since deep cleaning draws a lot of ink from the cartridges in a short time one needs to be careful of the physical limitations of what is happening.
If the cartridge reservoir is full, there is a liquid feed channel at the bottom of the cartridge that would assist in quickly getting ink to the outlet bypassing most of the aborption areas. This feed channel was NOT present in early BCI-6 cartridges. On later BCI-6 manufacture, this was added and is present in all CLI-8 and to the current CLI-42. Without this feed channel, ink would have to migrate towards the outlet slowly. Now this is where you need to put on your thinking cap. Ink by itself does not know to migrate towards the outlet. So that means that when the reservoir is empty, any sort of cleaning would have to come from the sponge area completely. So when any type of cleaning is involved and especially deep cleaning the sponge area surrounding the outlet will be depleted of ink after a deep cleaning and the areas furthest from the outlet will not be depleted as much or if at all depending on the saturation of the sponge because the time interval or length of time for a cleaning function is short. I will touch on this short aspect later.

You need to understand the above. Then it becomes obvious that ink will disperse itself so that it is uniformly distributed within the sponge. Ink will not migrate from the furthest area and completely leave it to park itself at the outlet. It only redistributes itself so that the sponge will approach uniform saturation again. This takes time especially if the reservoir is empty. If the sponge saturation is only half of what it is normally, it will take much longer. Hence why Canon recommends to wait. It is principally a physical thing.

So I will get back to a couple aspects I mentioned above. The liquid feed channel was added and I will speculate that Canon discovered the weakness of the design without the channel in the field and made revisions. This channel is NOT present in compatibles. Legal reasons? I don't know for sure.

Duration of cleaning function. Both Epson and Canon have evolved in the later models towards a much longer duration of a clean cycle for perhaps different but obviously required reasons. One will logically conclude that based on the above, time taken in a cleaning cycle is a parameter that will be important. In the early printers, the cycle was short, in current printers, the cycle is much longer. This does NOT mean that more ink is extracted. Get that. Because the cycles are longer, many THINK that the printer is guzzling ink which is not necessarily the case. It needs to take its time to allow a clean to be more effective. With Epson, it is because short and violent cleaning create a high negative pressure within the printhead. This can potentially create more foam inside and/or the negative pressure causes air entrapped inside the printhead to expand and the cleaning is not as effective if the cleaning is done slowly with a lower negative pressure.

The engineers at Canon and Epson, did not initially figure out all of this correctly many years ago and likewise with the refill community. Over time, they figured it out and also the refilling community as well.

 

[stratman]

@mikling - Interesting post on deep cleaning, especially your remark on the channel in the bottom of latter Canon cartridges.

Canon does recommend maximum deep cleaning cycles per unit time. Did this number change between older and newer BCI cartridges or the more recent CLI-8 or CLI-42 to represent the ability of the cartridge to provide a more sustained ink flow?

Duration of cleaning function.

You hypothesized on Epson's longer cycle time. What about with Canon?

 

[mikling]

@mikling - Interesting post on deep cleaning, especially your remark on the channel in the bottom of latter Canon cartridges.

Canon does recommend maximum deep cleaning cycles per unit time. Did this number change between older and newer BCI cartridges or the more recent CLI-8 or CLI-42 to represent the ability of the cartridge to provide a more sustained ink flow?


You hypothesized on Epson's longer cycle time. What about with Canon?

I don't have the manuals and likely they would not have bothered. Maybe someone can dig up their old manuals.

To allow ink to migrate and redistribute itself within the sponge.

BTW, I scored a hardly used iP4300 on the street left for recycling to pick up. Sat there in the sun for 3 days. So how could I resist. Carts were empty and a little cleaning and it is fine. I guess it was not wireless so that means it is obsolete these days.

 

[stratman]

To allow ink to migrate and redistribute itself within the sponge.

You wrote about negative pressures and more with the Epson deep clean cycle that were the reason behind the need for a longer cycle. If the ink channel on the bottom of the Canon cartridges resolves ink flow issues during a deep clean cycle as you said, then what is happening as the reason for Canon's longer deep clean cycle?

Congrats on the iP4300. Quite a find!

 

[PeterBJ]

BTW, I scored a hardly used iP4300 on the street left for recycling to pick up. Sat there in the sun for 3 days. So how could I resist. Carts were empty and a little cleaning and it is fine. I guess it was not wireless so that means it is obsolete these days.

Congratulations with finding the nice little iP4300.

A couple of years ago I salvaged an iP4300. I lost the print head to the fungus, but I got the probably last new QY6-0061 print head from a German company. The iP4300 is now my default printer after my MP800 lost its print head. For scanning I use an Epson V33 CCD scanner, but I am looking for a genuine new print head for the MP800.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

This feed channel was NOT present in early BCI-6 cartridges.

That's interesting to read indeed, I remember the BCI-3 cartridges - i550 , and I was trying to acheive exactly that - with a thin 1mm drill along the inside bottom of the cartridge , it didn't work very well, the foam was elastic etc. The feed problem was more prominent with cheaper 3rd party cartridges and refilling them, the ink flow was not consistent all the time.
Maintenance manuals of some Epson printers, I don't recall anymore which ones, are listing the ink amount per cleaning cycle, something like .25/.5/.75 ml per nozzle row with the remark, that multiple starts of a cleaning cycle would step up the cleaning intensity, when repeatedly starting the cleaning cycle within a period of 5 min or so. I don't know whether that's still the case, I'm not typically reading the user manual very much before starting up a new printer and even less the maintenance manual first I must admit....