canon i960 help please

J

jon

hi-
my i960's nozzles keep gettting clogged to the point that i have had to
replace the nozze unit once already, and now one of the nozzles on the
replacement head is clogged already. i just replaced it about 2 months
ago. does anyone know how to clean these nozzles so they will work
again? does using aftermarket off brand ink cause this? i hardly ever
use it, is that a cause?

thanx alot
 
T

Taliesyn

jon said:
hi-
my i960's nozzles keep gettting clogged to the point that i have had to
replace the nozze unit once already, and now one of the nozzles on the
replacement head is clogged already. i just replaced it about 2 months
ago. does anyone know how to clean these nozzles so they will work
again? does using aftermarket off brand ink cause this? i hardly ever
use it, is that a cause?

Ink by design is engineered to dry very fast, and the nozzles on the
i960 are very tiny. Not a good combination. Your closing comment that
you "hardly ever use it" seems to point suspicious fingers at your under
use practice. I too only use non-OEM inks and have seen no clogging, not
even on my iP5000 whose nozzles are even smaller than your i960's. But
I do use my printers (i860, iP5000) almost on a daily basis. Is this the
best practice - frequent use? I don't know. But it works for me. You
might give it a try and see if it causes less problems. If not then you
might want to change your brand of ink. One way or the other, you will
have to change something you do. You might wait for others to respond
about cleaning clogs as I've never had that problem with Canon printers.

-Taliesyn
 
M

measekite

jon said:
hi-
my i960's nozzles keep gettting clogged to the point that i have had
to replace the nozze unit once already, and now one of the nozzles on
the replacement head is clogged already. i just replaced it about 2
months ago. does anyone know how to clean these nozzles so they will
work again? does using aftermarket off brand ink cause this? i hardly
ever use it, is that a cause?

thanx alot


AfterMarket noname printer specific UNBRANDED ink can definately cause
what you are experiencing despite what the members of the PIUS
AFTERMARKET CLUB TELLS YOU. Pretty soon you are going to get the gospel
read to you abut the i960 and MIS ink. Maybe it is OK one time and who
knows the next order because they will not tell you what BRAND they sell.

If your print load is so high you may not have a choice but to take a
risk. But you rolled the dice and lost.
 
M

measekite

Taliesyn said:
Ink by design is engineered to dry very fast, and the nozzles on the
i960 are very tiny. Not a good combination. Your closing comment that
you "hardly ever use it" seems to point suspicious fingers at your under
use practice. I too only use non-OEM inks and have seen no clogging, not
even on my iP5000 whose nozzles are even smaller than your i960's. But
I do use my printers (i860, iP5000) almost on a daily basis. Is this the
best practice - frequent use? I don't know. But it works for me. You
might give it a try and see if it causes less problems. If not then you
might want to change your brand of ink.


AND USE CANON INK.
One way or the other, you will
have to change something you do. You might wait for others


members of the AfterMarket Club
to respond


I am sure they will.
 
B

Burt

Jon - Inkjet printers have the potential to get clogged heads with their own
brand inks as well as quality aftermarket inks. Go to the following link -
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/ - and you will get plenty of information
about clearing head clogs and read of other people's successful experience
about prefilled cartridges and refilling with bulk inks. Then follow the
link to Neil Slade's site for more information on the subject of maintenance
of your printer as well as advice on inks and papers.

The two major issues are 1) the quality of the aftermarket inks and
cartridges and 2) the frequency with which you print. In addition, there is
always some buildup of dried ink on the underside of printheads that can
sometimes cause clogs with months or years of normal, regular use. Since you
are interested in your supplies beyond just going to the store and buying
Canon cartridges it would be a good idea to become more educated regarding
these printers, inks and cartridges.

Measekite is right that there are some poor quality inks out there, but he
is critical of all the vendors, small businesses that repackage other brand
inks and sell them with their own labels on the internet, and he writes
about them in a disparaging manner. Moreover, he has never used these
products and yet makes authoritative statements based on what he has
selectively gleaned from reading posts on newsgroups. Although few of the
vendors advertise which inks they are selling, you can call or email them
and ask, if you so desire. I have personally used MIS inks to refill Canon
carts and have been very happy with the product (which I have been told is
Image Specialist ink). Look through this newsgroup for posts by many third
party ink users, including Ron Cohen and Taliesyn, for info about their
personal excellent experiences with third party inks.

Sensient Formulabs inks are available bulk and also in prefilled cartridges,
and this ink has quite a good reputation with people who have used it and
reported on this and other forums. Formulabs ink is in cartridges sold by
Alotofthings (their Arrow carts, not Rainbow), Weink (carts that have the
CRU id in their product listings), and, I have been told, Wiredbeans carts
which are available on ebay. You can contact each of them to verify that
their cartridges are filled with Formulabs inks before purchasing. Do sign
in to the Nifty-stuff forum and ask any questions of them that you wish.
They are very helpful. There are also some extremely helpful participants on
this newsgroup as well. Read all info, both pro and con, and make up your
own mind.

Don't be put off by rants and invective. This post will be followed up by
Measekite. He has no experience with these vendors or the products they
sell and calls all the vendors and those of us who use their products by
names meant to discredit our statements. He will parse this post, insert
opinionated comments with no experience to back them up, call us names, and
repeat his same old rants about vendors being whores and hawkers, etc. He
calls me "parson" or "reverend" because I am tired of his infantile, obscene
comments, and his defamatory comments about good people on this NG.

Read through Measekite's past posts to see the obnoxious comments he makes
and the obvious misinformation he puts out. Check out posts by Taliesyn,
Art Entlich, Ron Cohen, Tony, and many others whom Measekite chooses to put
down and make up your own mind about whom you consider trustworthy. I don't
know any of these people personally, but they write sensible information
backed up by years of experience in the specific areas about which they
respond.
 
T

Tony

Jon
I hate to see people misled. You can rely on Burt's advice, try the links he
provided.
Some time ago I posted some information on my personal experience with faulty
printers.

I post an extract from it again as follows:
<Quote>
The following is a breakdown of repair situations (Inkjet printers only) for
the
last 12 months (to end March 2005). Total sample is well in excess of 500
faults (actual figure will not be disclosed).

The printer brands are not named since I have no desire to enter into general
discussions about the best printer and the only way to correctly recommend a
printer is to understand the customer's needs first. We are not affiliated with
any particular manufacturer. The following is for the 5 major inkjet printer
manufacturers represented in our geography. My business is located a VERY long
way from the main users of this ng so I can't be accused of touting for
business, shipping costs would exceed the value of your printer!!!! (anyway I
won't be disclosing our name or location).

Faults that were OEM printhead or ink related (mainly printhead) - repaired 21%
- not repaired 3%
Faults that were non-OEM printhead or ink related (mainly printhead) - repaired
24% - not repaired 4%
Routine service (waste ink management and cleaning) 25%
Mechanical faults 12% (most not repaired)
Other (abuse, no fault found, incorrect usage etc) 11%

Important notes:
1. Most compatible cartridge users have older printers (ie generally out of
warranty) this skews the figures in favour of OEM's.
2. Not repaired usually means that the customer decided to replace their
printer after comparing cost of repair with cost of replacement and of course
new features and the comfort of a warranty on a new printer (warranty on
repairs is less than that on a new machine).
3. The majority of our repair customers also buy their consumables from us and
therefore we can be sure that in almost every case the printers have not had
their cartridges changed in order to avoid warranty issues.
4. In the case of one OEM cartridge series, we have far more failures than we
do for compatibles. (This is a warranty issue which is nearly always honoured).
6. Where we are located there are different cost and market implications
compared to, say, North America which is a much bigger market.
<End Quote>

I suggest that you consider the facts - and listen to the people who actually
know what they are talking about. There is no credible evidence that good
quality non-OEM inks are harmful to inkjet printers. Good quality inks are
generally synonymous with good traders - you know the ones, they have been
around for years and have a good reputation; there are lots of them.

Tony
 
I

Irwin Peckinloomer

AfterMarket noname printer specific UNBRANDED ink can definately cause snip

what you are experiencing despite what the members of the PIUS
AFTERMARKET CLUB TELLS YOU. Pretty soon you are going to get the gospel
read to you abut the i960 and MIS ink. Maybe it is OK one time and who
knows the next order because they will not tell you what BRAND they sell.

If your print load is so high you may not have a choice but to take a
risk. But you rolled the dice and lost.
Although what measekite says may or may not be true (given the way
statistics of random events operate), remember that he has never used
3rd party inks nor attempted a refill, by his own admission. Any
opinions he expresses are are hearsay at best and superstition at worst.
 
M

measekite

Tony said:
Jon
I hate to see people misled. You can't rely on Burt's advice, try the links he
provided.
Some time ago I posted some information on my personal experience with faulty
printers.

I post an extract from it again as follows:
<Quote>
The following is a breakdown of repair situations (Inkjet printers only) for
the
last 12 months (to end March 2005). Total sample is well in excess of 500
faults (actual figure will not be disclosed).

The printer brands are not named since I have no desire to enter into general
discussions about the best printer and the only way to correctly recommend a
printer is to understand the customer's needs first. We are not affiliated with
any particular manufacturer. The following is for the 5 major inkjet printer
manufacturers represented in our geography. My business is located a VERY long
way from the main users of this ng so I can't be accused of touting

AH THIS IS THE REAL TONY DA TIGER WHO IS IN DA BUSINESS.

A PUBLIC RELATIONS COOP
 
B

Burt

Shooter - the real answer here is that he hardly ever uses it. I have two
i960's that get moderate use. One is on my computer and gets a fair amount
of photo printing. MIS ink refills. Hasn't clogged in nearly a year. My
wife's is used minimally for printing out a few emails or web pages a week.
She is still using the original OEM carts that came with the printer, and it
has been in use for four months. Very low volume printing, but something
is printed every week. These are very stable printers in my experience.
Jon has either used it so little that the ink has dried in the print head,
or the aftermarket ink he used is poor quality. Come to think of it, after
more carefully reading his post I wonder if he meant that he hardly uses the
printer or hardly uses aftermarket ink? Just for your own information you
might look at Neil Slade's site on printers, inks, and papers. He leans
heavily toward Canon and especially the i960. I retired an Epson Stylus 900
when I bought the Canons. I found it to be an excellent printer which
worked well for about three years. I only used OEM inks with it. On
occasion I had to run a few cleaning cycles and print head alignments during
long print runs. After a few years I started to get head clogs, and they
got progressively worse. Arthur Entlich's Epson print head cleaning manual
saved the day - I got it working almost as good as new. The cost of OEM
inks got to me, however, and the i960 has worked out to be a great printer
for me. Beautiful photo prints and easy, quick refilling of cartridges. I
tried refilling the Epson cartridges (unchipped on the ES900) but they were
much more difficult than the Canon carts to refill successfully.

I would suggest that all inkjet printers come with their own special curses.
 
S

Shooter

Valid points Burt, he has not given chapter and verse in how he uses the
printer. I have at this time a 2100 and a R300 both Epson and have not had a
single clog on the R300. The 2100 is now over three years old and it's rare
to get a clog, however I do a nozzle check every day, both use third party
ink from the same source and the 2100 uses dye ink. Never seen such good
colour with the 2100 and had nothing but trouble with pigmented and Bronzing
before changing to dye. Perhaps he will come back and give more details.
 
M

measekite

Burt said:
Shooter - the real answer here is that he hardly ever uses it. I have two
i960's that get moderate use. One is on my computer and gets a fair amount
of photo printing. MIS ink refills. Hasn't clogged in nearly a year.


My wife's is used


minimally for printing out a few emails or web pages a week.
She is still using the original OEM carts that came with the printer, and it
has been in use for four months. Very low volume printing, but something
is printed every week. These are very stable printers in my experience.
Jon has either used it so little that the ink has dried in the print head,
or the
 
B

Burt

Shooter said:
Valid points Burt, he has not given chapter and verse in how he uses the
printer. I have at this time a 2100 and a R300 both Epson and have not had
a
single clog on the R300. The 2100 is now over three years old and it's
rare
to get a clog, however I do a nozzle check every day, both use third party
ink from the same source and the 2100 uses dye ink. Never seen such good
colour with the 2100 and had nothing but trouble with pigmented and
Bronzing
before changing to dye. Perhaps he will come back and give more details.
(snip)
Interesting that you switched to dye based inks. Did you do a total head
purge first? Art Entlich, in his head cleaning instructions, indicated that
some dye based and pigment based inks are incompatable and can react with
each other to cause clogs unless everything is purged to avoid a mix of the
two types of ink. My Epson Stylus 900 immediately preceeded the photo
series, but it was regarded as one of the better printers for photos in its
day. I tried MIS inks and their technique for applying a vacuum at the exit
port to withdraw as much foam as possible after which you injected a
measured amount of ink with a bottom fill attachment to the syringe.
Fortunately, I did this at a workbench in my basement as I didn't attach the
bottom fill attachment to the syringe securely. What a mess! For whatever
reason, the color match was poor as compared to OEM inks. I had stayed away
from aftermarket inks and refilling as I had been convinced by people
negative to using these materials (like our resident non-using expert) that
they were dangerous to the printer. In the course of evaluating for
purchase of a new printer I stumbled onto Neil Slade's site. Sure glad I
did as I couldn't be happier with the i960 and MIS inks. MIS really tried
to help me with the Epson and, when I bought the Canon, they sent me a
complimentary set of inks and virgin carts to compensate for the problems I
had trying to use their inks in the Epson. I believe them when they told me
that they had several Epson Stylus 980's in their office and used the same
inks I had tried. For whatever reason, my 900 didn't respond, colorwise,
the same as their 980, essentially the same printer with some upgrades.
Even if the Canon print head has a relatively short life I have saved so
much money with refilling that I could buy three printers to replace the
i960 compared to using OEM inks.
 

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