I have a Canon pixma ip4000 printer. Lately it has printing with regularly spaced stripes of uneven color along the width of the paper. I have tried cleaning heads, deep cleaning heads, and head alignment options in the maintenance software, but nothing helps. The test pattern looks fine except that the top band for 6C ink has the top half lighter than the bottom half, and the top band for 6M is lighter than the bottom band for 6M.
Any ideas? With printer prices what they are it probably isn’t worth the cost it would take to repair it, but maybe this is just an adjustment of some sort.
My experience with Canon printers is that the print heads need to be manually cleaned eventually or such problems happen. I remove the ink tanks and tape them up. Then I carry the print head to the sink and wash it with hot water as much as possible. This probably does little beyond make the job less messy. Then I connect a tube to each ink inlet and use a syringe to pump hot water through the head until I can see all the nozzles spraying. Of course you concentrate on the ones that show a problem. Expect it to take some ink to refill the system. I buy ink separately so this is not a problem to me.
The print head is part of the cradle the tanks are secured to. After you remove the tanks there should be some type of clamp visible. Swing the clamp aside and remove the head.
I have a Canon i9900. I’ve never run the head under water; I just use a damp cotton swab to clean off the contacts and parts where the tanks sit.
Canons also have an ‘ink reservoir’ where excess ink is collected from printing and cleaning. Basically it’s a sponge at the bottom of the unit; if this is completely saturated you can have problems similar to what you describe, and usually requires a visit to a service center for removal and replacement.
OK, took a second look. The component that holds the ink tanks pops out and the head’s on the bottom. But this thing has electronics it in and I’ll be damned if I’m going to run it under water.
That’s why I just wipe down the pertinent parts that look inky, i.e., the metal part with the tiny thin lines, and the little round nodules that the ink tanks fit into. (I don’t know what model Al Bundy has that he runs it under the tap.)
That’s an older model Pixma, isn’t it? Poking around the web, it looks like it came out around 2006. Have you had it that long? As I mentioned earlier, the ink reservoir can cause problems, too. My last printer was the i9100; that ink reservoir filled up after about three years or so, and wound up damaging one of the boards. Repairs were going to be too much to be worth it, so I junked it and got the 9900.
Are you using third party ink cartridges? I was having a similar problem with my Canon MP640 and went through the head-cleaning program a couple of times without success. All of a sudden the black cartridge started showing empty instead of half full. I replaced it, then had to replace it again, and now it works fine. I have never had problems with this retailer’s cartridges before, but I guess some are going to be defective along the way.
Third party is perfectly appropriate. The printer manufacturer is one party, the consumer is another party, and someone who makes compatible ink cartridges is the third party.