Printhead problem on my ipf8300

[Johnny_Boy]

I know there is a thread over here saying which is most reliable printer and many replies to ipf8300. I would have said the same thing, until last night! :-(

It is asking me to do head cleaning and if the error message does not go away, replace the R print head. Well I tried Cleaning A twice and Cleaning B once. The problem is still there. I can't even print nozzle check pattern. Too bad I am not done printing for my show in 2 weeks so I am in a tight bind.

I think the failure came on too early. The printer is 2 years old, but I've only installed it in my studio roughly 1  year ago. (it sat in a storage for a year in its container while I was building out the studio).

It looks like I printed total 1665 sq. ft of media with 1375 ml if ink. So not a lot. I was printing probably every 2 weeks in a batch. Printer left on all the time, so it does its 24 hour maintenance.

I think my photo inks (not matte inks) might have caused issue. For 6 months I only printed on Lyve Matte Canvas (therefore not using any photo black, photo magenta, photo cyan etc). I was trying out Epson Gloss canvas last week and I noticed that the printer was making some funny noise that I did not hear before. Then this week a head failure. I wonder 6 months of not printing any gloss medium caused those ink to dry up on the head and causing issues?

I guess I will give the Canon support folks a call tomorrow morning and see if I can get them to help me fix it. Considering my first print on this machine was on 12/19/11 I wish it was still under warranty, but the warranty is going by the date of purchase and not date of first use, so I am not keeping the hopes up.

Who would be a shop that I can purchase the replacement head and ship it overnight? I am afraid now I will have to replace the other head as well very soon.

[bill t.]

When you get that "replace" message you had better believe it.  No amount of cleaning will fix it, so don't waste inks.  It is a problem with the electronics in the head, rather than a nozzle clog.  In Service Mode (which allows head checks under any circumstance) I have gotten perfect check patterns from heads in that condition, but as Canon explained it the heads simply weren't able to interact with the printer controller in ways required for calibrated printing.

Don't know what the time limit is on the warranty, but of the several heads I have replaced on my 8300, all but one were supplied for free via overnight shipping by Canon tech support, which is the best tech support I have ever encountered.  1375 ml is extremely low use, had my first head problem somewhere around 4000 ml.  I've had at least one head go over 10,000 ml, but most will go much less.

Somewhere in the Canon dialogue box you can download a lengthy status report as a text file containing error codes and so on, I recommend you do that just before you call tech support since that will save some time for both you and the support guy.  In particular there are error codes that track how many spare nozzles are available for automatic swap-out on each head, wish I knew how to read those better.  The tech guy should be able to tell you about where the other working head is in terms of remaining life.

What I do now is stock one replacement head, the first one of which I had to buy.  If something happens (usually on Friday evening!) I have that head available and will use the Canon supplied replacement head as a stock replacement.

Don't really know what Canon's replacement policies are, but I have indirectly inferred from Canon tech support is that the heads are guaranteed for about 1 trillion dots.  I know that helps a lot.

As an extreme long shot, I know some people have cleared head clogs by removing the heads, wiping them down, and then replacing the same head.  I think there is an article on the Canon Wiki page about this, and I know someone else for whom this has worked.  But I believe you are experiencing another sort of issue, so best practice is probably just to contact tech support.

And I'm still printing for a show that starts on the 9th!  Fingers tightly crossed.

[Nigel Johnson]

I think my photo inks (not matte inks) might have caused issue. For 6 months I only printed on Lyve Matte Canvas (therefore not using any photo black, photo magenta, photo cyan etc).

Johnny

For your info the black ink is the only one with different versions for photo (glossy) versus matt papers, ie photo black and matt black. All the other colours are used for both photo and matt papers. This is also true for Epson and HP printers apart from some Canon and HP models that also have a gloss optimiser 'ink', which is effectively a varnish.

Regards
Nigel

[Johnny_Boy]

Johnny

For your info the black ink is the only one with different versions for photo (glossy) versus matt papers, ie photo black and matt black. All the other colours are used for both photo and matt papers. This is also true for Epson and HP printers apart from some Canon and HP models that also have a gloss optimiser 'ink', which is effectively a varnish.

Regards
Nigel

Thanks. Talk to support and it looks like it does not matter what media I use. If I leave it on, every 24 hours it will clean all the nozzle shooting off all colors, so even if I do not use any photo black for long time, it will take care of itself.

BTW, if you hold down the Load+Navigate and then Power button (and hold the Load and Navigate for a bit longer), then it will put the printer in the special mode where it can test print. It looks like the Photo Gray on the right printhead is causing an issue. It came out very slightly fainter on a small part of it. So, it seems to be printhead problem and not something else.