Why are the newer Canon printers executing so many clean cycles?

[irvweiner]

Yes, I did read your post recently, and like granddad my paper usage covers the same 3 paper media choices plus Ilford and Epson; hvy matte and glossy. I don't print professionally or in large quantity but the ratio is quite high.
Let's return to mikling's comment: "given the amt of times the heads of the Pro9000 I have makes motions and sounds I would expect that a serious amount of ink would disappear but I don't find that to be true". I just typed a letter, maybe 150 words, immediately after printing the print head went gymnastic. I notice this behavior to be typical with the MKII, this surprises me each time, just can recall this experience with my s9000 or the i9900 over the last decade of usage.
Is this behavior a new phenomenon or has it occurred since the intro of the MKII?

irv weiner

 

[pharmacist]

Do not choose: "Other Photo Paper" or you will NOT get advantage of your R & G inks. Choose paper setting: Photo Paper Pro or Glossy Photo Paper Extra (II) and the print quality high.

 

[mikling]

Irv, I had an earlier i9900 and when I upgraded the firmware as recommended by Canon to protect the heads, it seemed like it was making more sounds and motions than before. Now I had not paid attention this before the upgrade so I can't say for sure but it did seem odd after the upgrade.

Another side thought to ponder, in tbe profiling software by Datacolor, their patch design was redesigned so that black bars are present ( but not used) even when black was not being used. I suspect this is to prevent clogging as the printer will have printed with no use of black for a while. Now another aspect is to look at the Red and Green, as mentioned by others we know that depending on media it will not be used, if this is true then the printer must flow some through the nozzle after printing something or else the fanning of the nozzles with the head going back and forth will dry out the nozzles and cause clogs.

So when all little tidbits are taken together, perhaps, after time Canon has determined the risk intervals with regards to clogs and taken steps to minimize the possibility with a series of mini primes.

When you consider that in other countries , printer specs with regard to ink consumption are taken seriously, it would be unlikely that Canpn could pull a ploy off just to waste ink. Now if someone could take a look at the servics manual of the same printers in respective countries then you'd see the facts. But as of now I don't know the facts.

Now would it not make sense that if the OEM ink had shorter drying times to allow rapid succession of prints as compared to the prior generation when the printer would delay ejection to ensure that the second page did not smudge the first, that the newer printer would need to be protected from faster drying ink? ....thus the need to keep it going?

Just food for thought.

I say this because historically Epson had been accused of fooling customers about empty ink cartridges and their wastage of ink. While each was indeed true I can see on a technical basis why each action was required.

I just like to step back and view things from a broader perspective.

 

[irvweiner]

mikling wrote "There is possibly a correlation between size of nozzles, and size of nozzle strip that is being accommodated and that while much sound ensues, maybe more wiping and smaller volumes each cycle are being withdrawn."

I re-thought about your comment and realized the 2 pl droplets and nozzles on the 9000 are among the smallest in present use. It is imperative to keep these micro nozzles clean and free of debris, i.e. crystallized dye particles. More effort/work/energy is required at these micro dimensions to maintain a clear flow path than for larger size nozzles, thus the printhead gymnastics I mentioned after printing a short letter.

This comment really struck home: "Irv, I had an earlier i9900 and when I upgraded the firmware as recommended by Canon to protect the heads......."
My 5 year old i9900 recently failed in a most unusual manner: I was able to print 'properly' in plain paper mode and get 'prints', nothing great but the colors were moderately true. I do not print this way except when purging inks. If I were to print using any of the Canon profiles or my own the print quality was disastrous, banding, streaking and varying color casts. The media selected had no effect except to alter the quantity of ink laid down. If I returned to the plain paper mode print returned to 'proper', thinking my profile directory was corrupted I repeated this exercise from an older backup desktop rarely used. The results were similar, I now felt that the firmware in the i9900 was 'partially' corrupt, conscious of repair costs I bought the 9000 MKII and available rebates. Could you, offline, outline how you executed the firmware update and avoided any pitfalls? I had previously downloaded the file and instructions, i9900_9950_105rev0.exe but did not get to run it, I busy setting up 9000 MKII and entertaining the Spyder Print profiler (no comments please). If this firmware refresh works, that will be great, the i9900 is too fine a printer to lose (not counting fresh OCP ink purchased in Nov '10).

thanks, irv weiner

 

[leo8088]

I don't think it has anything to do with the nozzle size and nozzle count. It is obvious that ip5200 has more nozzles and 1 pico-liter nozzles size. Ip5200 does not do what ip4700 does on power up. During the power up the printer does self checking of its electronics and mechanical functionalities including check and ID ink cartridges, ink level checking, and perhaps priming the print head which is the cleaning cycle we are concerned about. It probably also check the purge unit and make sure it works correctly. Canon probably added more checking to the ip4700 than older printers did, especially in certain area of the printer, maybe including detection of conditions that may cause harm to the print head. I don't believe it does more cleaning cycles. The ink cartridges are so much smaller. It makes you feel that the ink level goes down faster than all older printers. Because it takes longer to start up and the ink level goes down faster it really makes you feel it is designed to make you buy more ink cartridges. I think if it is the case Canon may face leal challenges in the near future.

 

[l_d_allan]

The printing newbie was getting ready to ask a similar question, and came across this post from some months back. The thread kind of wound down without any resolution, and I was wondering if there was more info that might have come to light during the ensuing months.

Based on my limited experience with my very first printer ... a Canon PIXMA Pro-9000-2 ... it prints fairly quickly from one to the next if I don't have much delay between prints. They seem to "spit out" pretty much one after another if I "keep the pipeline full" with "work" for the 9000-2 to do.

However, if I am slower about having prints for it to do, there seems to be lengthy delays before the 9000-2 gets around to the print. If I do post-processing on images to get them ready to print, it can easly be 5+ minutes between prints. In that case, the 9000-2 seems to whir and whiz and slide and clunk and whir some more and clunk some more and slide some before before the printing starts. Quite slow.

The print-head seems to be sliding back and forth quite a bit, making all kinds of less-than-healthy sounds. I recall when I first started using it, I sent a post to DpReview's printing forum asking if it was normal for the 9000-2 to be making such noisy clunks over and over. "Is this thing broken?"
It sounds like it is slamming it's print-head against the side several times quite hard. The feedback was that the clunks are normal. Whew. But is that the experience of forum members with 9000-2's?
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1003&message=35743461

My uninformed speculation has been that it is cleaning up after itself, but that is just a guess. Perhaps there is some kind of time threshold that initiates a head cleaning or nozzle check or ????

However, if I've got a series of images ready to be printed, and I have it's Win-7 print queue built up, the throughput seems much higher. There don't seem to be as much (and sometimes none?) of the whir + whiz + clunk + whir between prints.

Disclaimer ... the 9000-2 is my first printer, and I'm definitely a print newbie. I haven't really been paying all that much attention and actually doing timings to have anything close to scientific data. The info above is anecdotal based on impressions ... that the throughput seems faster with fewer whir+slide+whiz+slide+clunk+slide+whir delays if I keep the print queue full enough to keep the 9000-2 busy. I'm ignorant if that would result in more efficient/economical ink usage. (one of my favorite quotes is ... "the plural of anecdote is not data" <g>)