Canon Printer Issue - Magenta Is Washed Out

**101RRS** · 20th February 2014, 08:31 PM

I have a Canon MX870 Multifunction Inkjet Printer - it is a mid level home printer. It has black, magenta, cyan and yellow colour inks and an additional black ink for just black text printing.

The Magenta is so faint to be barely perceptible so colour prints are an odd colour without red.

I have checked all the cartridges - all full and inserted correctly (they light up if inserted the right way).

I have done a head clean, a deep head clean and alignment to no avail (because the red ink is not printing it is difficult to determine if the head is fully aligned as the test does not print the red bits but the others seem aligned. After repeated cleaning processes, the magenta is much fainter than the other colours.

The test procedure does not seem to give any other options.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Garry

**Ferret** · 20th February 2014, 09:39 PM

I think it takes two passes of the head to produce a complete line. The first pass, the upper part of the head lays done it's bit. The second pass, the lower part of the head lays down the other bit.

One part of the magenta head is shot. Magenta is faint because only half the required ink is being laid down.

I think you can buy new heads for Canon printers but you will find it's cheaper to buy a new printer.

Just my guess.

**101RRS** · 20th February 2014, 09:52 PM

Originally Posted by Ferret

I think you can buy new heads for Canon printers but you will find it's cheaper to buy a new printer.

Just my guess.

Thanks for the advice - the printer was worth just under $300 and has not had heavy use - most recent printers I have bought have failed early in their life yet I have an old Canon S800 that is over 10 years old and it still runs OK but is just a basic printer. Because I had failures in cheaper printers I decided to spend more when I bought this one but it has turned out to be a bit of a dud as well. You don't get what you pay for.

I appreciate your input - thanks

Garry

**theresanothersteve** · 21st February 2014, 07:49 AM

Originally Posted by garrycol

Thanks for the advice - the printer was worth just under $300 and has not had heavy use - most recent printers I have bought have failed early in their life yet I have an old Canon S800 that is over 10 years old and it still runs OK but is just a basic printer. Because I had failures in cheaper printers I decided to spend more when I bought this one but it has turned out to be a bit of a dud as well. You don't get what you pay for.

I appreciate your input - thanks

Garry

What you said *2.

I had a Canon (my fourth) looked at by the authorised agent, cost me $120.00 and still didn't work properly (and I had to get them to remove all the inky fingerprints from the outer case).

I ended up replacing it with an Epson. I've just modified it with a constant ink system. I was having trouble with blocked print heads, and spent so much time cleaning it I was going through ink cartridges like they were going out of fashion. The constant ink system has been great, I've printed about 50 A4 photographs in the last week without a problem, so the continuous system has more than paid for itself.

The people who sell the ink system (online) also have cleaning solutions for cleaning print heads to save ink. Given the ink used to clean heads goes into a reservior which then overflows, causing over problems (issue I had with the Canon), it might be worth spending the fifteen bucks the cleaner costs.

HTH

**101RRS** · 21st February 2014, 08:18 AM

Thanks HTH - I have done about 6 cleans and deep cleans and the test page still shows issues.

The printer worked fine earlier in the week but somehow some of the cyan and magenta nozzles are still blocked.

I will see if I can get some cleaner and see how it goes.

Cheers

Garry

**Dizza** · 21st February 2014, 12:02 PM

If the printer isn't used often i would suggest that the relevant section of the head may have had some ink dry up inside and thus cant put the proper amount of ink on the page.

It will definitely cost more to replace the head than the cost of a new printer.

Canons are especially prone to this because of the higher quality 'photo' ink.
HP tends to be the best for irregular use.

Anything that takes the 564 cartridge is good and cheap to run.

The HP 3520 is a good cheap option for replacement ($59 at Officeworks)

**101RRS** · 22nd February 2014, 09:58 AM

Just an update.

Priced a new printer head from Canon - $160 so while it is less than the cost of the printer - new printers of similar capability, photo print, scan, fax, and photocopy, wireless are cheaper. New print head (I assume a knock off) from Hong Kong is $60 delivered so more economical but would they last?

So I went onto the net and found a couple of Youtube vids on manual cleaning of print heads - they used various solvents with conflicting ideas on whether these were good or bad - but water seemed a good alternative.

So I took the print head out and gently cleaned it with warm water and when it seemed clean I left the print head sitting over night on water soaked tissue paper. Wiped the excess water off and used a hair dryer to dry the rest. Reinserted the print head - loaded it up, did two cycles of basic head cleaning - and all is good - full print patterns are back on the tests.

Also when researching the cleaning the process I found out a few other things. Obviously the problem comes with not using the printer but also if there is an empty tank that is not changed, this can cause blockages. This is what happened with me - I have aftermarket tanks and they do not tell the system how much ink is left and my magenta tank was empty when the issue came up. Also - use the printer once a week - printing a A4 colour pic on standard quality works well - using less ink that the head cleaning function.

So the system now works

.

Interestingly my 10yo Canon S800 which was a top notch colour photo printer of the time (it was supposed to only print on photo paper and not plain paper)is still chugging along on plain paper and the photo ink for it doesn't seem to cause issues.

I appreciate all your comments - great stuff - Thanks.

Garry

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