Why does my ink turn dark?

[PenguinLust]

Is old ink supposed to turn dark? The yellow cartridge is the same one that's been in there for God-knows how many years. I assumed that's the reason the yellow is so dark. But the cyan is weird. A couple of days ago I was printing some colour images, and the cyan was bright and beautiful. Then suddenly, today I was printing the same images, and the cyan is now all dark and flat. Why is that?
I Googled 'inkjet "ink turns dark"' and various other things, and got very few hits, and none of them indicate that this is a likely property of old ink. So now I have to ask why my yellow is dark, and why my cyan turned dark overnight.
I have a Canon i860 running WinXPSP3.

 

[jimtonic]

If you don't use your printer very often, there could be a build up of old dried ink in the print heads, so purchasing some cleaning cartidges may help as its good practice to use cleaning cartidges periodically.
Ink cartridges contain pigments, which will eventually break down, so cartridges will have a shelf life, usually upto a year once opened.
Hope that helps!

 

[InkCartridges]

Not many people do know but as jimtonic said, ink cartridges do actually have a recommended use by date (it's usually on the packaging the cartridges come in), it's not really recommended to keep an ink cartridge for 'years' and still use it after this time. It could damage your printer if your not careful.

 

[hpjones]

You should at least print 1 page a week to prevent the head from clogging. If even 1 of those cartridge is clogged up. The output would not yield the correct colour. You could try placing the clogged nozzle under warm water to let the dry ink flow. Then you can wipe the remaining ink with a cotton swab. Then run the printer head cleaning tool.

 

[jcsmithart]

My yellow turned dark in a very short time arter refilling. In fact, I used paper towels to siphon the ink out of that cartridge and it was solid black. I began to think the black was leaking somewhere within.
The colors from this canon area awful and I've had the white streak probem even before a refill was used.
What is a good affordable brand of printer with affordable inks?

 

[henesy]

If you don't use your printer very often, there could be a build up of old dried ink in the print heads, so purchasing some cleaning cartidges may help as its good practice to use cleaning cartidges periodically.
Ink cartridges contain pigments, which will eventually break down, so cartridges will have a shelf life, usually upto a year once opened.
Hope that helps!

I wonder why this had happened to me,my ink cartridges have been opened for 4 months only...

 

[l_d_allan]

* I also was curious. I contacted Canon tech support, and got a reply that their OEM ink cartridges (they call them "tanks") don't have a "use-by-yyyymmdd" date because they don't expire. That surprised me, but they should know.

* I did purchase a used CLI-8 based printer via Craigslist a while back (iP4500 iirc ... excellent printer), and two of the ink carts were nasty looking ... dark yellow and brackish looking cyan

* The printer hadn't been used in years, and couldn't do a decent nozzle check, so it took a bit to get the print-head declogged ... but the negotiated price (much lower) was worth the risk.

* The nasty carts looked to be OEM originals, but perhaps not.

* My speculation is that the printer + carts may have been stored and gotten very hot, which would probably be very bad even for Canon OEM ink in an OEM cart.

* I do have OCP (German) conditioner fluid to flush / purge used carts, so I might have been able to thoroughly "refurbish" the nasty carts and use them.

* IIRC, I'm pretty sure I threw them away, as eBay has bulk "virgin empty carts" for about $1.00 each, and I've been very satisfied with the 200 or so "virgin empties" I've purchased over the years.

* To me, "life's too short" to deal with a suspect cart that may have residual crud/bacteria/dissolved foam in the three piece cart filters, even after thorough purge / flush. Even with care, I still get more clogs that I'd like, so it is worth it to "error on the side of caution" to reduce print-head nozzle clogs. Or ink flow starvation issues. YMMV.

 

[Laser Tek]

If you don't use your printer very often, there could be a build up of old dried ink in the print heads, so purchasing some cleaning cartidges may help as its good practice to use cleaning cartidges periodically.
Ink cartridges contain pigments, which will eventually break down, so cartridges will have a shelf life, usually upto a year once opened.
Hope that helps!

Agreed on this however, I would like to emphasize that a toner itself (without being open) has no shelf life. As long as the storage is good, it will always produce good results.

 

[matthew12]

If you leave the printer off for extended periods of time, the ink in the heads will clog and you will have to throw the printer away.

 

[ricohestore]

The ink may get dried up..if printer is not being in use for longer time....even atmospheric changes impacts sometimes.