The trouble with my Canon i850 printer started about a week ago when
the photo print displayed a pattern of vertical lines all along the
print with an interval of 1/8 of an inch. The lines are more evident
on a pale, uniform background and the stripe between the lines is
occasionally different in shade from the adjacent stripes. I have
clean and deep cleaned the head and performed the alignment of the
head and nothing seamed to appreciably improve the print. Does anyone
have any suggestions on how can I correct this problem? Thank you in
advance. Ignis
If you find you need a new print head and you don't want to spend the
$55.00 U.S. or so it will take to buy one, please offer your printer up for
sale on eBay or something. That printer uses cartridges without chips.
Quite a precious thing these days.
The head is easy to replace. Just read the manual. Before replacing the
head, I'd try manually cleaning the head and manually cleaning the head
wiper. This has relieved many problems around our house.
Got to wear some disposable gloves during the manual cleaning operation.
You also want to do it on some sort of easily cleaned floor. Don't do it
on the carpet. Ink jet ink is absorbed right into the fibers of carpeting.
There's nothing that can remove it. Nothing!
We've got a Canon i560 here at the house. (Actually an i560s where the
"s" stands for Sam's Warehouse Club <Sam as in Sam Walton as in WalMart--a
lot like CostCo.>)
I think the i850 is quite similar to this i560s as best I can remember.
Gather some good lintless cloth. Lintless shop rags sold at automotive
stores work well. Sometimes they're marked as being approved for automatic
transmission service. Those are the best. Automatic transmissions don't
like lint in the valves and printers don't like lint on their heads. Or,
you can go to a fabric store and ask them for "no-pill" fleece. I use the
no-pill fleece because it's cheap and when I cut it to size, there's no
threads and lint released at the cut.
Or, you can always use some good quality paper towels. Again, automotive
parts stores sell special paper toweling that is suitable for automotive
transmissions. Or ... as I used to do when I first started playing with my
printers, just some high quality paper towels from a grocery store will do
if you're too lazy to go to an auto parts store or a fabric store.
For this i560s, I pop out the ink cartridges and place them on a food plate
because they can leak ink while sitting there. Then I raise the lever that
allows me to remove the print head.
I soak a cloth or paper towel with ammoniated cleaner (like Windex) and I
gently drag the cloth across the print nozzles of the head. You'll see the
longer "black" spray nozzles and the shorter wider "color" spray nozzles on
the the underside of the head.
I wipe gently all over the bottom of the print head to remove the gummy ink
residue.
I am careful to avoid getting ink on the gold electrical contacts of the
print head. If you soil those contacts accidentally, just wipe them with a
cloth moistened with isopropyl alcohol. While at the store someday, try to
get 99% isopropyl alcohol and keep it stashed for this purpose. Don't use
that which is known as "denatured alcohol" usually located in the paint
department of hardware stores. Just use "rubbing alcohol" from the
pharmacy region of most stores. There's 70%, 91%, and 99%. The higher the
percentage, the less water in the mix. Any pure rubbing alcohol is good
enough, though. It doesn't have to be 99%. Just don't get the "scented"
stuff and don't get any of the alcohols that have other chemicals in it.
Some rubbing alcohols have wintergreen or witchazel in them. Avoid all but
pure rubbing alcohol. Or, if you're too lazy to get alcohol, just use some
of your Windex to clean the contacts and give them time to dry. Alcohol is
a bit nicer because it can remove vaporized food oils, vaporized candle
wax, cigarette smoke, and other deposits that settle into the head contact
region from ambient air.
You use the alcohol only on the gold contact rectangles of the print head
and on the springy gold contact points of the head holder (the part of the
printer that goes back and forth).
After I've cleaned the bottom of the print head using ammoniated cleaner
(Windex), I then fold a a paper towel so it's a 4-fold thickness. I soak
this with ammoniated cleaner. I sit the print head on that folded towel
for a few minutes so that some of the ammoniated cleaner will be wicked
into the print head nozzles while I do some other Canon cleaning. While it
sits on the soaked towels, some ink will wick onto the towel. This is good
and you should see a black stripe region on the towel and you should see a
multi-colored stripe on the towel representing the cyan-yellow-magenta
colors. If you're seeing all 4 of those colors weeped onto your Windex
soaked towelette, it's looking good!
While the print head soaks on that towel, I clean the "head wipers." In
this i560s, there are two clear plastic (maybe mylar) wiper blades found on
the right side of the printer. They periodically wipe the print head. I
suppose your i850 is similar. If you don't clean the wipers, then on first
power up, you're going to soil your nice clean head with gummy ink that has
collected on the wipers.
As long as I keep the i560s cover open, the head holder remains centered so
I can access that wiper region. I suppose your i850 will behave similarly.
You could unplug the printer while the head holder is centered but I don't
think that's really necessary.
You do want to be careful to avoid closing the printer cover while that
head lever is flipped upward. If the head holder tries to move to home
base while that lever is up, it's going to jam and sometimes those kinds of
jams can throw off the calibration of the little stepper motor that moves
the head holder.
I use ammoniated cleaner on a piece of towel to clean those wipers.
There's two of them close together. The wipers are somewhat flexible but
I'm sure that too much downward pressure could crease or break them.
You've got to use your tactile senses in your fingertips to detect that you
are gently separating them to wipe them longitudinally. Or, maybe it's
best to play it safe and wipe them with cotton tipped swab sticks? Just
touch some adhesive tape to the regions to remove cotton fibers if you see
any left behind.
You'll also see two square or rectangular sponge areas. I thoroughly soak
a small portion of towel and saturate those sponges with the cleaner.
Those sponges have to allow ink to be "sucked" from the print head during a
head clean cycle. The Windex soaked towel piece will wick some of the
gummy ink from those sponges. Clearing the sponges will improve the
ability of those sponges to drain ink from the heads during an automatic
cleaning cycle. You'll also be cleaning gummy ink from the rectangular
rubber seals that run around the periphery of each sponge. Clean rubber
seals will help to maintain an air tight seal between your print head and
those sponges when the printer is idle or powered down.
Once I've cleaned the wiper and sponge area, I put the head back in and
install the cartridges and print some stuff. I usually run a nozzle check
and then run cleaning cycles if necessary. Then, I run the head alignment
program to get it fine tuned.
I have to do this about every 9 months on my kids' i560 because it sits
idle for weeks or months at a time.
This 30 minute manual cleaning routine has never failed to return it to
normal functioning.
I hope it works for you.
If not, you can drop in a new print head and away you go without any of
those annoying integrated circuit chips on the cartridges.
//rus\\
