Canon MP600 woes

[Ezzie]

Hi. Laugh if you must, but I´m trying to get acceptable prints from my Canon MP 600 from a Mac Mini running OS X 10.5.7 and driver 10.26.00

My problem is, no matter what, I get vertical banding, or lines slightly lighter in tone for every pass of the head it would seem. What makes this even stranger, is that the last inch or so on a full 20x30cm print is OK, banding gone. On all photo quality prints.

I use OE ink and Canon Photo Paper Glossy Plus II. Other papers tested, both better and poorer, but results are the same.

Any ideas?

 

[Ezzie]

Canon Email support responded quickly, when I finally found out one could gain support by such a means. Wash the printer head in luke warm water, they said. And hey presto, the prints are great.

 

[The Standard Deviant]

Hello Ezzie, thank you for that! I have an MP610 and had the same problem. I contacted support but they did not suggest that.

First they tried to get me to call an expensive phone number, and then I emailed again and they said that selecting gloss paper in the print dialogue makes the printer use a different nozzle (and different black ink), and it did work for me printing black and white prints on photo paper. (I had foolishly selecting the correct ICC profile for my photo paper in photoshop, but this apparently does nothing to tell the printer to use the right ink.

Did you use distilled water?

 

[Ezzie]

Hi

I've been asked the question regarding water quality in other fora too. I used regular tap water. Having said that, I know that we have top quality water where I live. But if you want to be sure, warm up some car battery water (destilled) to a temperature you'd normally wash your hands in. The prints are still good by the way.

Oh, and I contacted Canon support here in Norway by mail, they responded same day.

 

[Denis M.]

I have an mp600, everything it prints now has a strong pink tint. It used to work fine. Profiles and print cartridges didn't fix it. My guess is that it's a print head issue. But since this is a cheap printer, I don't think they can be serviced (as in, replaced). I guess I'll try to wash the print heads to see if that helps.

 

[Ezzie]

The print head is a replacement part, as I understood when I talked to Canon. In my case the head was to fault, no doubts there, and if a proper rinse didn't fix the problem I could have had it replaced (for a price of course)