How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

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jaredmizanin
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p.1 #1 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

Hello,

I have a Canon Pro9000 MK II which I love. I use third-party inks but have forgotten to write down where I bought them from in the past. I bought some new ink tanks and now I am in a pickle. The photos are waaaaaay off in the color department. I'm guessing the printer cannot read some of the tanks? I have had problems in the past in which I would say, "0h, it appears a blue tank isn't working" because the photo was perfect EXCEPT where there should be blue. But I am having a hard time determining which tanks are not firing.

Is there a test print I can run that will print a line from each tank (there are about eight: red, green, cyan, photo cyan, magenta, photo magenta, yellow, and black)?

Jan 22, 2013 at 11:55 PM

Eyeball
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p.1 #2 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

Does this help?

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PVbi5Asl2ToJ:www.canon-europe.com/Support/Consumer_Products/products/printers/InkJet/PIXMA_Pro_series/PIXMA_Pro9000_Mark_II.aspx%3Ffaqtcmuri%3Dtcm:13-645806%26page%3D1%26type%3Dfaq+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk

You will probably need to copy/paste the link into your browser. The Canon Europe link was not responding so this is a link to the page in the Google cache.

Jan 23, 2013 at 12:08 AM

gse53
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p.1 #3 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

I have the same printer and use OCP third party inks which work great.
There is a menu item in the status box for ink details. If a tank is low, it will tell you which one. If a head is clogged, try doing a cleaning on the maintenance tab of the driver. Run a test print first (nozzle check) If the test print looks off (incomplete lines) do the cleaning. Based on my experience, the printer will not work if it cannot recognize all the tanks. I had a chip go bad on me and had to buy a replacement tank, to get the printer to work. To avoid this problem happening again, now I keep two sets of all colors available. You can also buy replacement chips that stick on.
Maybe a dumb question, but did you reset the chips with a chip resetter?

Good luck

Jan 23, 2013 at 01:30 AM

Shutterbug2006
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p.1 #4 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

You have a wonderful printer. Why use third party inks? Is there that much of a savings in cost?

Jan 23, 2013 at 02:58 AM

gse53
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p.1 #5 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

Is there that much of a savings in cost?

HUGE SAVINGS!!!

For $8 each I bought 8 oz (236 ml) of ink. The CLI-8 cartridges are about 14 ml each for $17. Chip setter is about $25 and syringes about $5.
You do the math

rjettek

Jan 23, 2013 at 03:14 AM

hugowolf
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p.1 #6 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

Shutterbug2006 wrote:
Why use third party inks? Is there that much of a savings in cost?

You have to be kidding, right. The Canon 9000 II, like most small photo quality printers, has tiny cartridges, 12-14 ml each at about US$20 a piece ($1.64/ml). Compare that to say a 17 inch printer with 80 ml for US$50 (83¢/ml), or 200 ml for US$85 (43¢/ml). And the third party inks are a fraction of this.

When you buy a large format printer, a lot of the intial cost is in the ink supplied. Even with the smallest Epson 17 inch printer, the 3880, the nine 80 ml cartridges that come with it would cost you $450 to replace for a printer that you can buy for $800 (with rebates).

Brian A

Jan 23, 2013 at 03:33 AM

Shutterbug2006
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p.1 #7 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

Back in the 90's I had a few Epson printers and switched to a continuous ink supply systems. But I found the inks faded much faster than whatever Epson was manufacturing.

Now I use an HP Z3100. It's not bad with ink. I printed fifteen 8x12" last night, and the printer used 7864 microliters (7.86 ml) which cost me 60-75¢/ml or $6. In the last four similarly sized projects, ink use ranged from 5-11 ml.

I only buy real HP inks. I want to know that the prints I make will look the same each time I print them, and that they will last a long time if displayed properly.

HP and Epson and Canon's inks are tested by places like Wilhelm Research

http://wilhelm-research.com/

If you're interested, you can get Henry Wilhelm's 'The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures' for free at that site. It's 758 pages of information in PDF format.

Direct link below

http://wilhelm-research.com/pdf/HW_Book_758_Pages_HiRes_v1a.pdf/

Jan 23, 2013 at 10:00 AM

gse53
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p.1 #8 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

But I found the inks faded much faster than whatever Epson was manufacturing.

I only print for photo club competition, not for sale. But, the few prints I put on the wall have held up nicely with the OCP inks. They are that good. I make my own profiles with my colormunki, but Canon profiles work well with Canon paper and OCP. My ink costs runs about 29 cents/ml. Canon OEM about $1.20

If I were to sell my work, I think I would use a good lab like WHCC

Jan 23, 2013 at 01:37 PM

gse53
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p.1 #9 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

Oops my costs were off. Too early to do math

OCP runs me about $0.034 / ml (1/29)

Jan 23, 2013 at 01:42 PM

campy
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p.1 #10 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

To answer your question go to the maintenance screen in the driver screen and do a nozzle check or whatever test patterns are there and it should print out different color graphs. If one or more are not right you will know which cartrige is bad. You should also do a deep cleaning since you save so much on the ink. Now if the cheap ink has caused your print head or purge unit to fail that will cost a couple of hundred to fix, but that's ok since you saved that much on the ink. You can buy a printhead directly from Canon but they will not guarantee it will fix the problem.
I am being a little sarcastic but this does happen. My company is a service center for Canon and we see it all the time. I would try to do 2 or 3 deep cleanings and check it after each one. Good luck

Jan 24, 2013 at 01:03 AM

gse53
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p.1 #11 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

Campy, sarcasm aside, there are third party inks and then there are third party inks.
I learned my lesson a long time ago about ink. I had a print head go bad on me using cheap e-bay ink. Never again.
OCP is from Germany and many use their ink with no issues. Canon ink is ridiculously expensive.

Jan 24, 2013 at 02:18 PM

anthonygh
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p.1 #12 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

I use OCP ink in mine and they work out at about 10% the cost of Canon carts......better performance in my opinion.

Solving this problem should be easy. First, open the top and look at the carts.....if a constant red light is showing there is a problem....either empty, or not recognized.

If this is ok do a nozzle check.....it will show if there is a problem with any particular colour. If one shows blocked nozzles.....is it one of the new replacements?

If the nozzle check looks ok (or pretty much ok...doesn't need to be perfect) then the new ink is not compatible with the existing ink. People sometimes forget that the better inks are chemically designed to work as a set, and mixing inks can give unexpected colour shifts.

You might not clear this problem until until you have a set of carts from the same supplier.....and if it is some cheap eBay outlet...you might still have problems.

Jan 24, 2013 at 05:54 PM

Imagemaster
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p.1 #13 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

Companies that make printers earn most of their profits on selling inks, not on selling printers.

As for archival inks, most people are not interested, because fifty years later they usually don't care about those prints, no longer have them, or have died.

Jan 27, 2013 at 06:21 AM

Bifurcator
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p.1 #14 · How to determine which ink tanks aren't working??

jaredmizanin wrote:
Is there a test print I can run that will print a line from each tank (there are about eight: red, green, cyan, photo cyan, magenta, photo magenta, yellow, and black)?

Most printers I've used have a self-test which shows exactly that.

Jan 27, 2013 at 06:28 AM

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