Forcing the paper out -> nozzle trouble

[G. Hugh Song]

If you have a habbit of snatching the paper from an
inkjet printer, be prepared to throw away your printer
eventually.

My someone has such a habbit. The black nozzle of my
Canon S820 inkjet now shows smudged-out characters
all the time no matter how many times we tried to
fix it (by cleaning, by adjusting, by etc. through the
Property tab from the Printer setup software).

Is there any solution for this problem?
I wish I could disassemble the printer head
assembly and clean it.

Thanks.

Hugh

 

[Ron Cohen]

You have a few options. The first is to do nothing and live with the
problem. There is a very slight possibility it will self correct. The second
is to replace the printhead, but at around $90.00 that's a little costly. A
more cost effective way to replace would be to replace the printer. I've
purchased two additional s820's as gifts off Ebay. One was $55.00 and the
other was $65.00. That included s&h. You get a "refurbished" printer.
However, both of the ones I ordered appeared to be factory fresh. Obviously
this includes not only a factory sealed printhead assembly, but also an
entire set of new Canon ink cartridges which are worth about $70 if
purchased separately. The third option is to consider the printer as toast
and attempt a different method of cleaning the printhead. If this fails, you
can fall back to option 2. Remove the printhead from the machine. Don't
bother with running a cleaning cycle. Take the printhead to the sink and
thoroughly rinse it with hot water. Be sure to run plenty of water through
it so that water flows freely through each nozzle. Once the rinsing is
complete, carefully dry the printhead with a hair dryer or compressed air
(use a low psi). This may sound extreme, but as it stands, the printer isn't
much good anyway. I have used the above method on two different Canon
printers - an old BJC-3000 which was totally clogged from dried ink after
having sat unused for nearly a year and on my s820 for what I erroneously
thought was a clogged head. Both printheads survived the cleaning process
and work perfectly.