Why 3 Minutes to Print Nozzle Check?

[PalaDolphin]

Given that Canon printers perform the dreaded cleaning cycle when not printed for 60 hours, I will print a nozzle check if I haven't printed anything else. In fact, I keep a spreadsheet log of printer activity:

So, what just happened for 3 minutes prior to the Pro-100 printing the nozzle check?
(And yes, it's pathetic that for the last week and a half I've printed nothing significant. Ya get busy some times.)

 

[palombian]

...
So, what just happened for 3 minutes prior to the Pro-100 printing the nozzle check?
(And yes, it's pathetic that for the last week and a half I've printed nothing significant. Ya get busy some times.)

Cleaning I suppose .
It is triggered when a spool file is received, not when the condition occurs (ex cartridge change).

I continue to wonder the obsession about ink consumption.
In daily practice it is very reasonable, not justifying the hassle, paper and ink for strictly planned nozzle checks.
The best refill ink is still 5 times cheaper than OEM.
It will take years before the ink pads are full, and (in the older generations of printers) you can reset the counter and add a potty.

This 60 hrs interval is described in the manual of some printers (ex the first model of the PRO 9500), but from my observation with potty's I am not sure it is exactly like that, and maybe not a general rule for Canon printers.

It is good practice to do a nozzle check when the printer is not used for a few weeks or before an important print job.

The less a printer is used, the more ink problems occur.
At the end you do nothing else than printer checking, cleaning, refilling...
I've laid up/dumped most of my printer collection and kept only 2 online at home: one for office and one for photo's (a luxury for most people).

And now I'll have to check the bathing of the printhead of my travel printer .

 

[PalaDolphin]

@palombian I don't understand "potty".

The major problem I'm trying to avoid is filling up the ink pad or waste tank. It's my understanding that once it's full it's a $400 service to empty it plus the $125 for new OEM ink cartridges required by Canon to perform any service. I'm trying to avoid cleaning cycles.

 

[PeterBJ]

"Printer Potty" is a trademark belonging to Octoinkjet UK. A Printer Potty is an external waste ink tank.

 

[The Hat]

Canon printers perform the dreaded cleaning cycle when not printed for 60 hours

I found your approach to watching what you print a bit too excessive for me, printing is supposed to be enjoyable and not a worry, I try to trust and work with my printers and don’t misjudge their every move.

I don’t believe in leaving any my printers on all the time, in fact I power down the whole lot with one main switch every night, and that causes a cleaning cycle when switched back on, but then I can trust the printer to preform properly, because I don’t like to babysit them.

I tried leaving my Pro 1 switched on permanently for six months and it didn’t make any difference to anything, it still powered cleaned on a regular basics, which is good and meant it never failed to produce a good print, the Printer Potty monitors all cleaning cycles, so that cuts out the guessing, is it or isn’t it cleaning. ?

The average printer will do what it must do, and you can circumvent this for a while and think then that your winning, but the Friggin thing will do something completely different, like putting out an anecdotal error on you.

The cheapest part of printing is your 3rd party inks, and a bog-standard nozzle check once a week on a sheet of plain paper (Turn and reuse 4 times) is all that necessary to insure your printer stays your friend.

Preventing the 60-hour cleaning cycle is all very well, but its use is to keep your printer in good working condition and not to waste ink, but isn’t that preferred over having to replace the print head, (Most expensive part) no one wants to throw the baby out with the bath water.

The only honest and true saving you can make is to replace all your carts when one is showing low, and this alone can save you big dollars and not have any serious effect on your time or your printer...

That’s just my opinion, but some will think it sucks...

 

[mikling]

Given that Canon printers perform the dreaded cleaning cycle when not printed for 60 hours, I will print a nozzle check if I haven't printed anything else. In fact, I keep a spreadsheet log of printer activity:

So, what just happened for 3 minutes prior to the Pro-100 printing the nozzle check?
(And yes, it's pathetic that for the last week and a half I've printed nothing significant. Ya get busy some times.)

Is this necessary at all? The Pro-100 can easily go weeks and months without printing and start back up with no problems given carts that are not low or near empty. Once a week with a Pro-100 I would consider the max. So print something every weekend or 10 days. The waste incurred is minimal and just enjoy the beast. Like Hat says, you're wasting some ink but with the external resetter.....and preventing the domino....who cares at that point.

The Pro pigment printers can go nearly the same time and again just enjoy the beast and be happy. If you're concerned about this cycle, chances are that your print volume is so low that gosh, something is going to break before the pads fill up. With the full group reset, the average home user of these printers will have such a long life of these printers it's laughable.

Folks treat 3rd party refilling ink like it is as expensive as OEM and get all anal about it. Let loose and enjoy. Get some affordable paper, and start improving skills at capturing images and printing skills. Yes, there are skills involved in a print....over time, you discover these. Only through practice do these come forward. Most would not be able to afford to acquire these skills if using OEM ink because they are afraid to click on Print, then OK.

 

[mikling]

Why 3 minutes? Simple. I covered this in the deep clean question before in another thread. First, understand that in this three minutes, these printers are not continually sucking ink out of the printhead. It does do that but it goes about it in a controlled slow fashion.
The benefactor is you because it performs an effective head clean and the time chosen is considered optimal between effective and not so effective.
Why do it slowly? The laws of physics. First ink must migrate. The ink travels by contact in the Canon printhead not by direct suction like an Epson. Resistance to flow is not linear. Resistance increases much faster when the speed increases. So if carts within a group have varying resistances, if a fast extraction of ink is performed, the carts exhibiting the least resistance will empty a lot more than the others. The only way to try and minimize this is to do it slowly. I think you can visualize this. As a result it must be done gently.
Early Canon printers used to perform this much faster, and it is no accident that they've decided to slow it down. Epson similarly also slowed down their cleans as well. They have other issues that required the slowdowns.

Why do it at all? Again the laws of physics. We want ink to dry immediately after printing but not dry in the printhead. Not possible. Until someone defies the laws of physics or invents smartink.

Again, stop fretting, just enjoy that GIFT from Canon. They never really meant to gift that printer to refillers so smile away and enjoy it. You snagged something really really special. Worried about the waste ink pad, then as so many clever refillers are doing, snag another printer body from Ebay or Craigslist without the printhead. They go for a pittance. Less than a potty sometimes.

The Pro-100 has become what the Canon AE-1 SLR was in the 70's. So many people have them, and they do a superb job within their price category but they were not quite a Pro SLR. Great enough for the masses. Good enough to acquire some skills. I had one., it was my first SLR and the things I was able to do with it. It gives a sip or taste of what could be greater...same for the Pro-100 and Pro-10. That is where this printer sits.

 

[PalaDolphin]

"Printer Potty" is a trademark belonging to Octoinkjet UK. A Printer Potty is an external waste ink tank.

Thanks.

 

[PalaDolphin]

Why 3 minutes? Simple. I covered this in the deep clean question before in another thread. First, understand that in this three minutes, these printers are not continually sucking ink out of the printhead. It does do that but it goes about it in a controlled slow fashion.
The benefactor is you because it performs an effective head clean and the time chosen is considered optimal between effective and not so effective.
Why do it slowly? The laws of physics. First ink must migrate. The ink travels by contact in the Canon printhead not by direct suction like an Epson. Resistance to flow is not linear. Resistance increases much faster when the speed increases. So if carts within a group have varying resistances, if a fast extraction of ink is performed, the carts exhibiting the least resistance will empty a lot more than the others. The only way to try and minimize this is to do it slowly. I think you can visualize this. As a result it must be done gently.
Early Canon printers used to perform this much faster, and it is no accident that they've decided to slow it down. Epson similarly also slowed down their cleans as well. They have other issues that required the slowdowns.

Why do it at all? Again the laws of physics. We want ink to dry immediately after printing but not dry in the printhead. Not possible. Until someone defies the laws of physics or invents smartink.

Again, stop fretting, just enjoy that GIFT from Canon. They never really meant to gift that printer to refillers so smile away and enjoy it. You snagged something really really special. Worried about the waste ink pad, then as so many clever refillers are doing, snag another printer body from Ebay or Craigslist without the printhead. They go for a pittance. Less than a potty sometimes.

The Pro-100 has become what the Canon AE-1 SLR was in the 70's. So many people have them, and they do a superb job within their price category but they were not quite a Pro SLR. Great enough for the masses. Good enough to acquire some skills. I had one., it was my first SLR and the things I was able to do with it. It gives a sip or taste of what could be greater...same for the Pro-100 and Pro-10. That is where this printer sits.

Thank you for that explanation. I loved my Canon AE-1 Programmable and did my own B&W film loading as well as built my own darkroom as a kid. In the digital world, my Pro-100 and refilling carts harken back to those darkroom days. I'm having fun!