Home Forums Peripherals & Multimedia Peripherals Printer Head Cleaning Fluids

I ran into what I diagnosed as a clogged print head on a Canon Pixma a couple of months ago. After extensive troubleshooting, innumerable head cleanings, and three print cartridges, it turned out the problem was not the print head at all, but the bargain cheap print cartridges I got from Amazon. Switching back to genuine Canon cartridges solved the "clogged print head" instantly.

…I have found that sometimes when the test pages print spottily, if I ignore that and just continue with my regular normal printing jobs, the output is good, no spottiness.

Maybe my multiple cleaning operations (above) are the same as your pressing on in spite of periodic spottiness - particularly if you do more colour printing than me.

Are you using your printer manufacturer's cartridges, or an alternate?

Why do you think the set of the Canons set things straight on your printer? Would Canon have some sort of ‘secret ingredient’ that provides a flushing action? I wonder because you had immediate results.

I also wonder if the fact that my printing needs have changed is affecting things. The bulk of my printing (and it’s not a lot) is black only. Maybe I should get in the habit of running a cleaning operation periodically just to keep fresh ink running through the heads.

I don't know if this is at all applicable, but it's worth mentioning that when my Canon imageCLASS LBP6000 laser printer began printing blurry background lines, tech support advised me the give the toner cartridge a good shaking, and while it didn't cure the problem, it did lessen it significantly.

Maybe my multiple cleaning operations (above) are the same as your pressing on in spite of periodic spottiness - particularly if you do more colour printing than me.

Are you using your printer manufacturer's cartridges, or an alternate?

Re: " . . . Maybe I should get in the habit of running a cleaning operation periodically just to keep fresh ink running through the heads."

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I would do that once in a while. May not solve the issue, but it certainly shouldn't add to the problem.

To include another data point in my "carry on" theory—I was just working with an Epson printer that had zero cyan (blue) ink. I put in a new blue and printed a test page. All the colors showed fine, but the black test pattern was non-existent. I did a head cleaning (two in fact) and each time the black was not present. Remembering the helpful posts by me in this forum I printed an e-mail with text and color and, lo and behold, crisp blacks, sparkling colors and appropriate grays. Go figure.

I have seen similar results, but then I remember when color printers were using Red Green Blue color and had no black cartridge at all yet they produced crisp blacks, sparkling colors, and appropriate greys. When manufacturers introduced the black cartridge there was a lot made about the new ability print “TRUE Black”. The “true black” was/is almost unnoticeable to most users unless the print is on very good paper and compared side by side with the old RGB black. Of course printers have mostly evolved from RGB to CMYK (and on some high end printers CMYK+BK with 5 cartridges), but when printing in color, it appears the same technique is still used of printing black and grey with CMY (or RGB) and reinforcing the darkest blacks with Black. As far as I can tell the only time the Black cartridge is used alone is if Black and White printing is selected in the print dialogue.

Next time you encounter a similar situation, you might try selecting Black and White in the print dialogue and I suspect you will get a blank, or nearly blank, printout.

After extensive troubleshooting, innumerable head cleanings, and three print cartridges, it turned out the problem was not the print head at all, but the bargain cheap print cartridges I got from Amazon. Switching back to genuine Canon cartridges solved the "clogged print head" instantly.

I don't know about your Pixma, but my IP110 and it predecessor automatically run a head cleaning routine before printing any time it has been idle for more than a few hours so periodically running the head cleaning routines would only be called for, when print problems are noticed.

I have never used Canon cartridges since the originals ran out, although mine aren’t quite as “bargain” as the Amazon cartridges.

That sounds like a lot of ink consumption so I may do a cleaning once in a while or, barring that, periodically print the Test Print page to ensure that all colours flow through the print head and prevent drying up.

I’m going to assume that I can go back to my non-Canon cartridges once this set of Canons has got to empty. My printer was bought in 2012 so I figure, if it takes that long for the printer to react, I’ll be ready for a new one by 2024 anyway.