Canon Pixma 68000 Series: Black tank smudges and skips

[cooltouch]

I bought my printer about 3 years ago and it's been stone-cold reliable until this morning. It was delivering a smudged, skipped output in black only. So I ran a cleaning routine and found that it is only the PGBK (the large black tank) that's involved in the smudged, skipped output. So I ran a few cleaning cycles, to no effect, then ran probably a dozen deep cleaning cycles. If anything, it got worse but now, after about a dozen cleanings, it's about where it was when I started.

So I'm puzzled and a little bit frustrated. I pulled out the tank and inspected it, couldn't see any problems with it. So I'm wondering if the head and/or the carriage for the tank is the culprit. And if so, how do I clean this? If I need to open up the printer, I don't have any instructions telling me how to do this without breaking things. I'm willing to give it a go, though. I'm not afraid to try fixing it myself. I've fixed all sorts of my own stuff, from cars and motorcycles to guitars and cameras.

So anyway, I'm looking for what my next step should be. Any help you can provide will be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[cooltouch]

Typo: it's a 6800 series, not a 68000.

 

[Claremidott]

Sounds like the print heads need cleaned. Did you try this yet? You can do this in printer properties under maintenance

 

[cooltouch]

Yes, as I mentioned above, I put the printer through several regular cleaning cycles and then a dozen or so deep cleaning cycles. They had absolutely no effect. In fact, once I started cleaning the head, its output got worse, then a little better once I started doing the deep cleaning cycles, then it finally got back to where it was when I started -- after about a dozen deep cycles. So I figured I'd just stop at this point, take a break, and see if I could find an answer online. So far, no luck.

Surely there's someone here who's cleaned the heads on one of these printers before? I'd just like to know how to open it up without breaking things.

 

[cooltouch]

OK, problem solved. Turns out it was something dead simple. The printer was out of ink. Odd that the little popup that shows ink usage was still showing both black tanks as being full. The big tank was dry and the small one had only a trace left, so I just replaced both. Still no output first time I tried to print out a single page. Did a deep clean cycle and that did the trick. So we're back to normal now.

 

[Claremidott]

Ah this happens all the time. Sometimes with non original ink the chips do not read the ink levels correctly and so the printer did not instruct you to change the cartridges.