Dealing with Nozzle Clogging on Photo Printers

[ajax]

Nozzle clogging has become a major problem on my Canon Pixma Pro 100 printer.

Probably should start by saying that overall I've been extremely pleased with the quality of the prints produced. I bought the printer for a surprisingly low price in June 2017. As photo printing goes I suspect that the overall amount of printing that I've done is quite low when compared to others with such a printer. I am an amateur photographer who still prefers paper prints to digital pictures that I think very in appearance based on the screen being used to view them. Also screens tend to be small whereas I like big.

For several years my Pro 100 was very reliable even though there were relatively long periods of time that could normally occur between uses (i.e., printing anything). How long is a bit uncertain but after 3 or 4 years I experienced some nozzle clogging which resulted in poor quality prints along with wasted photo paper. I did discover and use the maintenance operations included in the Canon driver software. These operations included something called Nozzle Cleaning along with another called Deep Cleaning. They also provided test printing that shows the present status for each individual ink tank. These maintenance operations were quite effective in resolving problems for a pretty long time.

However, I've now come to the point where I have one group on ink tanks that won't print anything even though some are new or recently replaced whereas the other group looks normal. Even Deep Cleaning does nothing to even allow something to print for the problem group of tanks.

I've posted this topic on Canon's Community Forums and the responses seem to suggest that such problems are common or maybe even normal and that the printer is at end of life. Given that the Print Head (which contains the nozzles) is removable one might think it would also be normal to replace such parts that are known to wear out with new ones but apparently Canon does NOT sell such parts.

First question would be, is there a solution to this problem? What about the solution proposed in this video which seems harmless if alternative is to trash the printer?

Next question would be, if my printer is at end of life are there better options available when it comes to this issue that do not significantly sacrifice print quality? Note: Interestingly I've never had such a problem on various all-in-one (office) printers that I've owned and used for much longer periods of time. Given that the cost (both purchase price and supplies) look to be much more than what I paid in 2017 this becomes more important.

Next (possibly unrelated) question would be, is it possible to find a printer capable of printing even larger (than 13x19 - A3) prints without sacrificing quality? This would include preserving the quality for smaller size prints as well.

[LenR]

Hi David, sorry to hear about your print head issue. Unfortunately this does occur and infrequent use can contribute to this. I had an issue with my Canon printer (Pro10) last year which required a head replacement and the part was obtained directly from Canon. It is easy to replace. Have you contacted Canon to enquire whether a replacement head can be obtained?
Original Canon heads for your printer (part # QY6 0084)can be obtained from other sources:
Allprintheads.com in Anaheim has one listed for $319
PGTech in Montreal has one listed for $297
I would be sceptical about cleaning the head by soaking in boiling water (there are electrical contacts on the head) I have not tried this but it seems from from various online videos it can be done.....

[DanK]

Sorry to hear it. Dye-based printers like that one are pretty resistant to clogs. I've had several Canon multifunction printers and two dedicated photo printers, a Pro 9000 II and a Pro 100, and I never had a clog on any of them, even with long periods of disuse. However, it can happen, particularly if it's unused for a long time. However, it's possible that the problem isn't the head, but something else, like a clog in the line between the cartridge and the head. Unfortunately, heads are so expensive that it's a big gamble to replace one.

Yes, you can go bigger than 13 x 19 without sacrificing quality, but expect to pay a lot more. I use a Canon Prograf Pro 1000, which prints up to 17 x 22, which is the next size up for both Canon and Epson. However, that printer runs more than $1200. Moreover, the larger printers all use pigment ink. This is much better in terms of print longevity, but it increases the risk of clogs because the ink has suspended particles of pigment, rather than dissolved dyes. I've never had a clog with mine, but it sometimes consumes a lot of expensive ink cleaning the head if I haven't used it for a while. It has a disposable waste ink cartridge, and you can watch it fill.

The ink cartridges are much bigger, and it uses 12 of them, so a replacement set costs a lot, currently $640.

I noticed that there are a lot of heads for this on eBay, which might be cheaper.

re lar

[ajax]

Interesting feedback even though no solution for my problem is apparent.

There is something else I find strange which I did include in my post on the Canon forums but did NOT mention here. When I print the test page (attached) one whole group (Group 1) of ink tanks print absolutely nothing. This causes me to think that there might be some problem other than nozzle clogging at play here.

Might anyone know something about such a possibility?

[DanK]

The postings on the forum suggest it could be clogging, but it seems possible that it's anything physical or electronic between the cartridge and the paper.

Have you contacted Canon support?

It seems to me that you don't have much to lose by trying cleaning with a solvent. I would never use windex, but isopropyl alcohol in small amounts should be safe.

The fact that that model has been discontinued for quite some time seems to be reflected in the price of heads online: some very expensive, and some cheaper but with less clear provenance (eBay).

Sorry you've had this problem. Canon sells a lot of printers, so it's not surprising that you found other people with a similar problem, but I think it's probably very rare (not that that is any comfort). I don't think I ever even had to use the print cleaning function on my dye-ink canons.

[ajax]

Yes I think those prices mentioned for replacement print heads are almost as much as I paid for the printer. Absent some measure of certainty I don't think I'd want to try that.

Another thought is that there might be improvements in the design of newer printers regarding nozzle clogging. For example, looks like the Pixma Pro 200 is the current model that is similar, in capabilities, to my Pro 100. The product description does NOT mention any such thing and it would NOT surprise me to find that the print head is exactly the same. While I have been pleased with the prints produced by my Pro 100 I wouldn't be opposed to trying another brand if there were real reason to think it were less prone to clogging without sacrificing quality.

Would appreciate advice based on real experience.

[pnodrog]

I saw a youtube video on cleaning printheads a few years ago. The demonstrator who did repairs used windex and commented he had never had any issues with it but that there were printhead cleaning solutions available.

The video showed starting to printing a test page and turning the printer off when the printhead was in the middle. Then placing paper hand towels under the head that made contact with it and then keeping it dampened with a cleaning agent (windex ). From memory he left it for 24hrs keeping it damp by adding more cleaner and then ran the printers nozzle clean routine and check. Sometimes he had to repeat the treatment but he said he had a very good success rate for unclogging print heads.

[inkista]

My Pro-100 is 10 years old, and I've never had a clog and never needed to run a cleaning cycle (well, other than the one that gets crud off the rollers). I only print once every 2 months or so. But I always make sure to top up my tanks (I do the PrecisionColor refill thing) regularly every other month as well. I never let the tanks go dry.

Because my other hobby was collecting and restoring vintage fountain pens. And I learned a number of things from this:

1. You lose more ink to evaporation than you do to writing (printing). Even if the tanks sit there unused, the ink level will go down, and the pigment can get more concentrated. Refilling helps dilute the ink and keep things wet.
2. Clogs happen from dried ink filling up the tiny spaces between parts so capillary action cannot happen and the ink won't be drawn through to write/print on the surface of the paper. Repairing a pen could often just involve flushing it with water. I'd assume the same is true with a print head, only with even smaller spaces.

Upshot, what may have caused your clogging issue is letting empty cartridges sit in your printer for long periods of time, so that air could reach the printer head and dry out the ink in the nozzles.

Other pen knowledge I apply to inkjets:

1. All fountain pen inks are water-based dyes. The Pro-100 inks are also dye-based and fully water soluble.
2. Soaking water-based dye clogs with water releases them...but in tiny tiny spaces without capillary action it can take a long long long time for the water to penetrate if you can't disassemble things or force a flush from the supply side (how cleaning cycles work).
3. Some cleaners are corrosive or solvents. You may not want to use them (e.g., ammonia) at high concentration unless you can be sure you can rinse it all out. Just me? That cleaning solution in your video doesn't need the ammonia. You could probably get it done with just distilled water. Or a 50/50 mix of the water and IPA, and it would be safer. Most printer guys clean print heads with Windex, which has ammonia at a lower concentration level. But I think you might want to eliminate it altogether, since ammonia corrodes metal, and can rust the electrical contacts and metal parts of the print head. Particularly if you're soaking for a long time.
4. The "wet pad made from paper towels below and drop water from above" method encourages capillary action to pull the ink out and declog. This runs less risk of corrosion of the electrical contacts and metal parts you'd have with soaking.
5. If you are going to soak, I would not do what's in that video. After 12 hours, I'd probably discard the inky cleaning solution, clean the bin, and add more fresh cleaner, and soak again. And repeat it ad nauseum until things ran clear.

Stuff I get from watching printhead cleaning videos/reading posts in printer forums, the main care you have to take is to make sure you don't damage the nozzles. To me, that final waterpik-ing of the printhead? it's a tad foolhardy. And for flushing cartridges, I prefer the octoinkjet clips and syringe. No waterpik required.

[loosecanon]

The Canon pro photo printers should always be left connected to power. The printer monitors use/non use and does maintaince. The printer will do a flush cycle at time intervals. Between if you dont use pprinter much every few days print a nozzle test pattern, uses very little ink. If not used for a long time printer will do a cleaning cycle. If you know you are not going to use printer for months then you could remove the head and store in a sealed box with a small amount of water/iso propyl alcohol in it to stop drying out. Don't immerse the contacts.

I am using a old Pro 9000 II which I have replaced the head of once, using cheap generic inks. Often I don't print for a month, but on turn on after the auto clean it works well.

One issue I have found is that the cartridge breathing hole can become blocked, in which case the ink does not flow and it looks like a blocked head. Suspect this if a whole ink nozzle check gives a blank for a colour.

[ajax]

Many thanks for responses. Some good information depth of knowledge that all fits my experience quite well. I just posted a reply to the topic I opened on the Canon forums as follows:

Guess what! Having pretty much exhausted all other options I decided there was nothing to loose by following the instructions in this previously mentioned video. I was astonished by the results. The cleaning fluid turned pitch black. Couldn't see anything below the surface. After reinstalling the ink tanks the first Nozzle Check printed something for both groups of ink tanks unlike the prior state. The result was NOT perfect but doing several subsequent Nozzle Cleanings resulted in progressive improvement until getting a good result.

I'd definitely agree with the idea of refreshing the cleaner one or more times during the period the print head is soaking. The no ammonia idea is definitely worth a try. I definitely came to think my low volume of printing was part of the problem but I had been trying to make it not more than a week without printing something. The problem came along right after allowing 2 weeks. I hadn't thought about the idea that the ink evaporates whether you use it or NOT. Also, I've been using genuine Canon ink where the ink tanks seems to need replacement quite frequently. I think that means NOT much ink in them and this does motivate trying to use it all up. I might need to consider refilling.

[DanK]

Delighted to hear that you solved the problem, and I'll keep this in mind in case disaster strikes here.

I still think it's weird. I often left my Canon printers that use dye based inks idle literally for months at a time, and the worst that ever happened to me is that the auto cleaning cycle seemed longer than it should be. I used only Canon inks and never refilled cartridges.

What's also weird is that you might expect this to be more of a problem in dry environments, which Florida ain't.

[ajax]

...

I still think it's weird. I often left my Canon printers that use dye based inks idle literally for months at a time, and the worst that ever happened to me is that the auto cleaning cycle seemed longer than it should be.
...

I've been using the printer for about 6.5 years. The first 4+ was as you described and I wasn't paying any attention to frequency of use. Pretty sure there were months at a time without printing.

[inkista]

... I hadn't thought about the idea that the ink evaporates whether you use it or NOT....

Yup. This is where my fountain pen knowledge helped. I should have explained a little more in-depth. The main principle to understand is that for any kind of inkflow to happen, there has to be ink/air exchange. If your ink/liquid chamber is completely airtight then nothing can flow out of it. It's like when you're a kid putting your finger over end of a drinking straw to create a vacuum: the liquid is held in place and can't flow. Air has to get into the chamber to replace the liquid. So, these cartridges cannot be hermetically sealed if they're going to do their job. If air can get in, evaporation can happen.

If you look at the CLI-42 cartridges, up above the label, you'll see an "X" pattern cut into the plastic. That's sealed off when you get a new one, but you have to unwrap and unseal it to put it in the printer. And that's the air intake.

In fountainpens, the head of the fountain pen consists of three pieces: the nib, the feed (the black plastic thing that goes against the (usually) underside of the nib) and the section, a hollow ring that the nib and feed are friction fit into to hold them together. Inkflow is controlled by the fit of the nib against the feed. And that hole at the top of the slit in the nib is your air intake. If your pen skips, the nib is too tight against the feed. If it blots and leaks, it's too loose.

With inkjet cartridges, the nozzles are so tiny and the flow of the ink has to be so precisely regulated, that Canon uses a two-density sponge to control the inkflow. The smaller chamber that's all liquid ink is basically feeding the sponge in the larger chamber to control the flow of the ink. The sponge itself comprised of two separate densities: I think the one at the bottom is denser (slows the flow) and the top is lighter to keep the bottom one saturated. A lot of bad 3rd-party cartridges can cause issues by having only a single/wrong density sponge in that chamber. But the key thing here is to not let the sponge get more air in it than it should hold; i.e., the liquid ink chamber on the right should never go empty and you should never see uneven streaking in the sponge in its chamber, because that additional air will eventually get to the nozzle and cause clogging.

Also, I've been using genuine Canon ink where the ink tanks seems to need replacement quite frequently. I think that means NOT much ink in them and this does motivate trying to use it all up. I might need to consider refilling.

I have fun doing it, but as I said, I'm used to getting my fingers coated in ink and playing with syringes and making sure everything's water/air-tight where it should be and not where it shouldn't be. YMMV. But the fact that you never use all the colors uniformly tends to mean that refilling on a regular basis can keep all the cartridges at the same level most of the time, something that's hard to do if you're only using OEM cartridges.

The refill procedure with the CLI-42s is doable, but a little more complex than most folks anticipate because Canon wants you to keep buying their cartridges. I'll describe the basic procedures and a few gotchas I've run into with the PrecisionColors refilling. I'm assuming Octoinkjet has a similar solution for anyone in the UK.

With the PC inks, while they do provide custom ICC profiles for their ink sets? I've never needed them. They've always worked just fine with the Canon Pro-100 ink ICC profiles.

Your first foray won't be cheap, but it's roughly the same cost as a full set of CLI-42 cartridges. It's $97 or $140 for the basic refill kits. But this is an initial expense, not one you'll be paying repeatedly. In it, you'll have all the tools and parts to convert your cartridges to be refillable, rather than single-use, as well as the electronic chip-resetter. As aforementioned, Canon really doesn't want you to be able to do this. That chip on the front of the cartridge is how the printer communicates the ink level to your computer. If you empty the cartridge, you can't just squirt ink into it and pretend it's a new one; it will still electronically read as empty and your software will keep telling you to replace it (facepalm).

Step 0 [optional but recommended]: put on some nitrile gloves whenever handling cartridges if you don't want inkstains on your fingers.

To prep a cartridge, I first use the electronic chip setter. Doing it while the cartridge is empty/less full, means less possibility of ink coming out the port while you do it. You simply use a USB cable to connect the resetter to a power source (I use an AC/USB-A adapter that came with an old Fire tablet), then put the cartridge in the cradle, and hold it in place until the red LED in the cartridge lights up continuously, to indicate the chip has been reset.

Then you put on an orange storage clip (in the kit) to block any ink coming out the port on the bottom, so you don't end up making (more of) a mess. The clip will also let you stand the cartridges up on a flat surface.

One-time-only prep: you have to create a way to refill the ink chamber. You remove the ball plug that Canon put in there when they filled the cartridge. It's a small plastic ball, kind of like the glass ball seal in a Japanese soda bottle. PC gives you a pushpin (to pilot hole in the ball) and a screw hook to screw in and have enough purchase to pull it out, but I've also used a ball bit on a Dremel tool (have done many a Parker Vacumatic resac in my day, which has a similar "get a little round plastic pellet of of a fragile plastic cup without damaging anything" step :-). You then have to increase the size of the hole with a 5/32" drill bit you simply twist with your fingers, so the provided silicone rubber plugs fit perfectly.

Then, you use the provided syringe(s) to draw up ink and fill up the chamber about 1/3 of the way to where the line between the two sponge types is. Then you cover up the air intake with a piece of tape to avoid saturating the sponge too heavily. Then fill up within 2-3mm of the top (if you try to go all the way to the top, ink will spill out the drilled opening, so don't try to go to the brim.

When it's full, fix the plug in the hole. Repeat for all the cartridges (if you only have one syringe you're going to have to flush it with water and dry it between each different color).

Couple of gotchas: most 3rd-party ink refill cartridges don't come with the chips on them. Keep old cartridges, even if they're broken so they can't be refilled. They can still provide chips for any replacement cartridges you might have to buy. And yes, the chips also indicate which color the cartridge is, so you can't, say, swap the chip on a magenta cartridge onto a cyan cartridge.

Another issue I want to mention (that PC solved in 2021 with a new version of Yellow ink), the Canon Yellow ink if mixed with the older PC Yellow ink would form a gelatinous sludge (Octoinkjet guys call this the "yellow jello" :-). So Yellow was the one cartridge you had to start with an absolutely clean replacement cartridge and you'd probably have to transfer the chip over; and the basic starter kits would include an empty clean yellow cartridge. You couldn't just top off an old Canon Yellow cartridge with the ink still in it. You apparently don't have to avoid mixing the inks any more but feel this issue should be mentioned just in case you're topping up an OEM yellow cartridge. I can't tell you for sure it won't cause an issue because I switched to the PC inks a long time ago.

Just in case your cartridges do end up with an issue, you may want to know how to flush a cartridge and dry it.

Of course, you can also avoid all this weirdness by just buying a new OEM cartridge to replace the screwed-up one as to opposed to being a stubborn cheapskate.

After I've gotten all the tape off the air intakes, and the cartridges tested for leaking (blot on a paper towel), and reinstalled in the printer, then it's just cleaning up the clips and syringes in the sink. I typically use some kind of strainer over the drain so I don't lose small parts like syringe needles, and leave everything on a paper towel-lined tray to dry out overnight.

Hope that gives you an idea of the difficulty level and whether or not you want to go there.