Hey guys,

I recently acquired a Canon Pixma Pro9000 mk I, and did some prints on it.  I was just wondering if anyone else had any issues with inconsistency and/or banding.  Pictures look great on screen, but when they're transferred onto paper, some are pinkish, some are greenish.  I'm using Canon's Photo Paper Plus Glossy II.

I'm also using 3rd party ink, mainly because the ink that I have is about 1/40 the price of OEM ink, and I have quite a bit of it.

I've read that people use third party inks, that are super consistent and high quality... but my inks are definitely not it.  Where can I find those high fidelity third party inks?  I can't afford the hefty price tag of OEM inks!

Thanks in advanced!

Sounds like a nozzle check is in order.  Suspect some nozzles aren't firing right.  If the Canon head has ever been run without ink in it, it can fry the nozzles as they use heat to fire the ink onto the paper.  No ink = No cooling = Fried print-head.  Might take a few cleanings to get it going again.  Some inks are known to plug heads up too.

On Canon 9000 dye inks, I use OCP out of Colorado (rjettek.com) as my refills.  So far no issue (about 30 cents for a refill too vs. $16 for a OEM cart!), although I do use a ColorMunki Photo to calibrate the printer to screen which gets me a really close match.

On the Epson 3880 that uses pigment ink over dye, I use refillables from InkJetMall.com (Jon Cone).  So far, no issues just that I lose the ability to see the ink levels on the computer screen and I have to look at the ink in the carts once a month.  Savings aren't as great as with the dye printers verses the pigment ink printers.  Ink levels always show full on it with the pirate chips installed on the tanks to defeat the printer's "Use only Epson Ink" electronics.

On the Canon tanks, I drilled a hole on the top near that empty tank with the check ball into the tank, maybe 1/16" diameter.  I use a hot glue gun to seal it after the ink is shot into it via a syringe.  It can be cut off next time with a single edge razor blade to refill it again.  I also reset the carts with the resetter tool then too for about 5 seconds of the red LED light showing after it briefly flashes on inserting the cart into the resetter.

Thanks for the response!  Yea, I thought it might be a nozzle issue, too. but I did "deep clean" with almost a full cartridge of ink... like 4 runs, but same result.  I think I'm going to go with the OCP.  I've heard a lot about it, but drilling into the tanks sounds like such a pain in the but... and messy.

Once filling the tanks, could you just plug the hole with, like scotch tape? instead of hot gluing it every time?

I used to use a Canon Pixma 9500, ink cost was the reason I bought a different brand.

When I was using the Pixma I decided to try 3rd party inks, complete disaster, the nozzles clogged causing a color not to print, the cartridges leaked and the supposed pigment ink faded in 6 months or less.

Good luck I hope you have better luck with 3rd party inks than I did.

I went to rjettek and put the OCP inks in my bin, but I'm looking at what else I'll need.  I'll need a resetter, for sure... I also pulled out the little plastic bearings on top of my OEM cartridges.  The site has these plugs, do I need to get those? or can I just use, like electrical tape?

Also, how do you fill your cartridges? Do you use a syringe?  I was wondering if I can dump the ink into little squeeze bottles with pointy tips... but I don't know where I can find them...

If you are ordering, be sure and add those cheap orange covers for the output port for your carts.  They fit more snug than re-using the orange snap-offs that come with the OEM versions.  I used to tape the old ones back on, but they get messy as they leak a bit once they are snapped off and attempting to reuse.

You can also find small plugs that fit a certain size hole, but mine always leaked as my holes were not that well made in that drilled port where the ball was. Once it leaks, you got a big mess one your hands or in the printer.  That's why I use the hot glue gun so it seals better.  Any air and they leak!  Also why the orange caps above help to keep the ink from draining out while you are adding it.

Need to leave a bit of relief around the input hole around the needle too.  If it is tight as with the squirt tube bottles or too tight for the syringe needle, the pressure squirting in the carts pushes it out the bottom (another mess!).  Once it starts dribbling, it seems to go on forever like some capillary action until it gets sealed up tight.  I store the refills in Zip-Lock bags for future use.

Not that hard once you do a few and gets less messy after you do a bunch too (I work in the sink doing it.), but I found that sometimes the carts will stop accepting a "Reset" after some usage of say 5 times or so.  Once back in the printer, they'll throw out the empty blinking red light again so I may have to get another OEM cart.

I'd take your savings and get a "ColorMunki Photo" too somewhere down the road.  Fun little thing to use and I've profiled a lot of papers with it.

Thanks guys!  Refilling ink sounds like SUCH a pain... I hope I don't make a huge mess everywhere...  but it's hard to argue with such huge savings!

I have a pixma pro9000, and it's printing really weird.  I'm using Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II and OCP ink in OEM carts.  I couldn't figure out why the colors were all screwy, so I grabbed a color map:



When I printed it out, I got



You can see near the bottom, the shadows got destroyed... the yellows run into the greens, and there's a weird orange yellow all the way on the left where it should be red... why would only the bottom get ruined?  And what causes that?

Thanks!

So I printed a test page,

http://www.inkjetcarts.us/support/artic … ge-31.html

what I've found was, I'm lacking deep reds, like in the dice, the robot, and the beads, and where it says "synthetic gradients" left and center, the dark greens are plagued with a bit of yellows, and the dark blues have a hint of purple.

I think this screws up the shadows, because the skin for the asian lady and the two white babies is beautiful, but then the shadowy bits like the hair is terribly rendered.  And the black babies skin is ALL messed up.

Otherwise the binoculars and the chrome mixing cup look fantastic.  It doesn't look like there's any problems with the blacks or grays, so I can only assume it's the reds and greens screwing up.

Does anyone else have issues with orangy reds and yellowy greens with OCP?