Photo printing question

muljao

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Not sure if this is the most relevant place to post this but anyway...

I tried to print some photos the other day on my canon injet and there was banding lines and the colours were all over the place (lines of reddish/pink)

I done a clean check as per instructions and it seemed good. I ran a clean cycle anyway to no avail, photos still bad

I took out the print head, cleaned it and everywhere I could reach inside the printer itself, its still the same.

From experience do you think it just needs replacing? There is no-one local that services anything except the business type ones, so likely I'd end up sending it away. I could buy a print head but if that doesn't fix it I'm down about 40% the price of a replacement printer. Thanks for any info
 
Assuming that some of the inks haven't run out or dried up then yes it sounds a bit fubar to me if you've done the alignment and cleaning.
 
Just a thought! You do have it on the best setting and changed the paper setting to photograph paper, or similar?

I had an HP printer that I would setup for photo printing but after I had set it, it would go back to default general settings as I clicked the print button.....I got the same effect.

I have to reinstall the software then it worked properly.

Ice
 
Printers tend to be practically free when you take into account the price of the ink that comes with them. Sad in many respects, but I wouldn’t dream of trying new printheads etc on a sub £500 inkjet.
 
A couple of questions
1) Are you using genuine inks, or 3rd party?
I have found in the past that 3rd party inks can be much more liable to cause blocked nozzles, and much less likely to then clean successfully, particularly if you leave the printer for a few weeks between prints.

2) When you did the head clean, did you print out a nozzle check page afterwards?
This should show which nozzles are causing the problems - and if it's still poor after a head clean, then comparing the nozzle check print after an additional head clean will show if things are improving or not - sometimes you might need to run several head cleaning cycles to get everything back 100%.
 
Thanks all for the suggestions.

I have only used original inks. The clean page that printed out looks fine but I cleaned the head anyway. I made sure the settings were ok for printing.

I called into a printers today that sells ink and printers and explained. He reckoned that try a head alignment once more, try different photo paper as he said paper can cause an issue. If both these fail, the head is goosed and probably not worth trying to replace
 
I had a similar issue a while back with an Epson Inkjet and managed to get it cleaned/unblocked eventually using inkjet cleaning solution - a combination of using a syringe (supplied) to push some through the head nozzles where the Cartridges fitted and sheets of blotting paper soaked in the fluid positioned under the heads and cycling the printed to make the heads "wipe" across the platen width...
 
I worked in the industry for years. As has been previously said, the actual printers are often loss leaders, the consumables are where the money is.

It is worth re-aligning and cleaning the heads using the tools provided. It is also worth checking your settings. First print to plain A4 paper using the basic settings and checking the paper type is correct. If there are still signs of banding on that setting then best to buy a new printer.

While on the subject of printing photographs. If you have a Costco membership, their photo printing service is astonishingly cheap, cheaper than the cost of printing at home in many cases. 6*4 is only 4p per print for instance, and prices do not rise too much even at 36*24. So well worth looking into.
 
I worked in the industry for years. As has been previously said, the actual printers are often loss leaders, the consumables are where the money is.

It is worth re-aligning and cleaning the heads using the tools provided. It is also worth checking your settings. First print to plain A4 paper using the basic settings and checking the paper type is correct. If there are still signs of banding on that setting then best to buy a new printer.

While on the subject of printing photographs. If you have a Costco membership, their photo printing service is astonishingly cheap, cheaper than the cost of printing at home in many cases. 6*4 is only 4p per print for instance, and prices do not rise too much even at 36*24. So well worth looking into.

How have you found the print quality to be on larger print sizes ?
 
If you are not printing on a regular basis it's often better to use an online solution and just keep a very basic office style printer if needed. As long as your display is properly calibrated you should be fine with a decent printer and it's often the easiest solution all round. I don't know what your quality requirements are like but White Wall are pretty good.

One suggestion for printer maintenance is to keep it switched on 24/7, rather than switching it off and on constantly, which tends to cause problems while consuming more ink. Also save your printing for when you have a few images to do and not just one at a time.

Those recommended cleaning cycles can make it worse and it's better to use a proper cleaner. Some use Isopropyl or products like Magic Bullet. In general I find that leaving the printer on 24/7 and running some occasional prints at highest quality is all it takes to keep everything running well.
 

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