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[Styles]

I bought refill cartridges for my Canon Pixma ip4200 printer.  The cartridges were not the official Canon cartridges, but generic refill cartridges.  I've had good experiences in the past, but this time they may have been my demise.

I put the cartridges in.  I didn't print anything for a while(ie 1-2 months), and when i tried printing, I found that the printer was omitting the black.  All other colors worked.  I've tried printing from a variety of programs, and all seem to have the same problem.

I printed the test pattern, and the composite black (BK) and PGBK lines didn't print.

I tried the cleaning function on my printer menu 5X, with no luck.  I've also tried the deep cleaning function 5X.  I've tried taking the cartridges out and soaking the printer head in Windex and hot water overnight, swabbing with q tips then drying and reinstalling.  This fixed the composite black(BK), so now I get composite black, but printing out the test page in greyscale just prints out a blank page.  Seems like the PGBK cartridge still doesn't work.

I've even tried swapping the PGBK with the official Canon replacement cartridge.

Anyone had this experience?  I feel like my whole life is spent fixing things that never should have broken...

[Melancholinpolly]

is it racist?

[Styles]

hahahahah, I was wondering why there was a bedsheet over it when I bought it.

[snow veil]

You gunked up your print head.  Unfortunately, that's the risk you take when you use non-OEM ink cartridges.  Canon sells print heads for the ip4200, but I don't recall them being too cheap.

At least you don't have a machine where the print heads are non-replaceable

I had a similar experience with an ip3000 but wound up just replacing it for an ip6600 instead.

[divideByZero]

Try soaking the printhead in 91% alcohol, or even denatured alcohol overnight. Then put it in a sealed container with clean alcohol and swirl it around. This should loosen up and remove the nasty clogs. The contacts may be damaged though from the water and windex mixture though.

[Styles]

Thanks guys,

This is such a good forum; so helpful.  It's like night and day between this and the other forum that I post on:

http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/index.php

But those guys are pricks, it comes with the territory.

Anyways, I'll try that...failing that, I'll try to order a new print head.  I hear the HP printers have the head integrated into the ink cartridges so this wouldn't have happened?

Where the hell would I find 91% alcohol/denatured alcohol?  Moonshine?

I'll let you know the progress...

[urgannagru]

aka rubbing alcohol. look in the first aid aisle. just make sure its the 91% kind, most are only 70% or someting

[Styles]

I could only find 70% rubbing alcohol, so that's what I'm using....back country pharmacies FTL

I'll soak it overnight and see what happens....

[Styles]

Ok, the results are in.  I soaked overnight in 70% rubbing alcohol, flushed with clean alcohol, then q-tipped around the outlets to remove ink.

I reinstalled the head back in the printer, loaded the ink cartridges, and did a print head alignment.  On the alignment page, I was getting spotty BK bars, and PGBK didn't show up at all.
I did a couple of deep cleans, then gave up.  Called Canon Tech support.  They told me a new print head is about 150 bucks.  I got a dirt cheap HP deskjet F4280 All in one for 50 bucks at Office Depot.  The only ridiculous thing is that the printer cost 48 bucks, then the extra refill cartridges that I bought were another 100 bucks. 

Seems like printers are pretty much disposable nowadays....Seems like a waste.

[Styles]

god, my HP F4200 sounds like it's got a bunch of loose gravel rattling around inside when I'm printing.  Maybe that's how it's supposed to sound, but damn, that's crazy.