I hate printers. Everybody hates printers, at least to some degree. They for some reason NEVER work as intended. Be it wrong colors, dried ink, unable to connect to Wi-Fi or they are just dead. As a rule of thumb You shouldn’t buy used inkjet printers, due to before mentioned problems.
Guess what I did.
I GOT SEVERAL OF THEM.
AND THEY STILL DON’T WORK!
Before that though, story time.
If You, Dear reader, went through some of my previous posts You could deduct that I LOVE retro stuff, mostly electronics, but not only. I also like collecting games. Some are unreachable for me, for example LSD on PSOne, .Hack series for PS2 consoles or even my favourite Persona series, while others are just too expensive. I own majority of these games digitally, but there is something magical about having physical copies in my hands.
There was only one, tiny problem.
My trusty Epson ET-2820 couldn’t print directly on DVD.
I didn’t want to spend huge amounts of money on new printer, so I decided to get a free one. Little did I know that this was the beggining of the end of my nerves and my wallet.
Case 1: Canon PIXMA MG7550
Back then I didn’t know much about these printers, but I knew one thing – it was free. I’d be stupid to pass on such an occasion.
Well, here we are.
It works, or should I say, it boots up.
Low ink level, no problem.
Since this printer was not used for a LONG time I decided to look on the internet for articles on how could I clean the printhead. Procedure is easy enough – take it out, heat up some water and put the head in it.
That’s exactly what I did next.
From the outside it looked fine except for the yellow channel. I proceeded anyway.
I went a little further than I initially wanted – I took the printhead apart and cleaned it from the inside. In the end it turned out to be a good decision. Look at the amount of inks that were coming out of it.
End result was exactly what I imagined – clean printhead.
Time to refill those cartridges.
This procedure was really easy – take a cartridge, make a hole in it, fill it back up and seal it.
Same was done for color carts – this is mid procedre – sponge was wet with ink, but the tank was empty, this supposedly rejuvinates the sponge a bit. After that it was high time for a test.
Uhm…
What is that?
Why is EVERYTHING screwed up?
After the initial shock I googled my problems and found out that there still could be some residue in color channels and an encoder strip problem for the bad PGBK test.
Thankfully I only had to take the side panels off to get to it. It’s spring tensioned, so no problems in taking it out and back in.
Surely enough there was a tiny blue spot on it.
I cleaned it, but it didn’t fix anything. Printout was exactly the same.
I decided to take it apart and clean the sensor on the carriage itself.
This is where my nightmare started – I had to take EVERYTHING apart – whole case and half a mechanism.
Surely this will fix it. Right?
WRONG!
Literally NOTHING changed the test page.
After some more consulting with Dr. Google I found out that cartridges refilled in my way can result in such problems, but more likely it’s a broken printhead.
I had to take my chances and bought a new refillable carts and some aftermarket ink meant for this exact printer.
As generic as it gets, huh?
With this picture You can deduct that it in fact wasn’t a ink problem.
It was a dead printhead.
Intermission – quick and dirty printhead explanation
What is a printhead – it’s an element that lets the ink through from the cartridges to the paper in a VERY PRECISELY controlled manner. Canon uses thermal technology, which uses small resistors to heat up the ink droplets that then drop onto the paper. This allows them to print in an exeptional quality, but it takes a toll on the printhead – like everything under stress it will break after enough abuse. There are ways of prolonging the lifespan of a printhead like printing often or using full cartridges, but this can get You only so far. This is the exact problem I’m facing right now – printhead has a problem with PGBK that has overheated and literally bent the PGBK nozzles in a way that simply cannot be reversed. Similar story goes for the color nozzles – they are SO far gone that I can’t do anything to fix the clogged nozzles.
There is also a different printhead technology that Epson and Brother use – piezo printhead. It has microscopic piezo crystals, instead of heating up resistors, that vibrate and let the ink through. It’s a tiny bit less precise in the “home office” printers, hence offering a bit lower quality prints, but in return a single printhead can print in excess of 30000 pages. In other terms it’s WAY more reliable and WAY more expensive.
Case 2: Canon PIXMA MG6350
Okay, so far I had a more or less working printer with brand new ink and cartridges. I found a cheap, supposedly fully working printer with same printhead as in the MG7550.
Here we are:
Missing front door, but it had a supposedly working printhead. I stole it and forgot about the rest of this printer.
I installed the printhead in the MG7550 and…
It’s semi-good?
I guess?
PGBK is broken, but it’s not used in what I wanted this printer to do.
Anyway, I strated printing.
Top is Canon MG7550, bottom is Epson ET-2820. There is visible purplish cast on the bottom printout, overall color accuracy was also leagues better on the Canon.
Everything was fine for a few pages more, but then…
B200 error.
AYFKM???
For those unaware of what this means – it’s a printhead failure. So severe that even the printer says me to stop what I’m doing and replace it.
I took it out and cleaned it like the previous one.
It printed a few pages and showed me B200 again.
I’m done with these printers.
Epilogue
I hate printers.
My next DVD capable printer will be an Epson one.
I only have to find an affordable one.
Thanks for reading!