Canon Pixma ix6850 won't print black although prints perfect nozzle check pages?

[CAT00]

Hi all,

I am using an ix6850 to print black transparencies for screen printing, never had any problems before. Then half way through a print it stops printing the jet black i need, I replaced the small black cartridge because it was spent but it won't print black from photoshop or illustrator only if I do a nozzle check does it print jet black, perfectly. We've messed around with colour profiles but nothing works. I'm begining to think it isn't a problem with the ink cartridge itself but a problem between the cartridge and the actual printing bit ( no idea what it would be called ) as when the printer was left overnight it printed a bit of the halftone before it gave up and returned to grey?

Just to add I've just discovered it can print jet black if it thinks its doing it on plain paper. It just won't do it in any of the usual modes for glossy paper?

Any idea what we could do?

Cheers,

Cat

[shadowsports]

Greetrings,

Except for "plain paper" the printer uses all ink colors to prink black on all paper selections other than plain paper.  IF these cartridges are empty or near empty, its possible black can fail to print.  Depending on the driver you are using, there might also be a black or grey-scale printing option which might interfear depending on the settings being used.

[CAT00]

Dear Rick,

Thank you for your reply. I changed all the black cartridges just incase, I cleaned it, deep cleaned it, cleaned the rollers etc.

It is bizarre I can only get the blackness I require on a plain paper setting, I use inkjet transparency paper and normally select glossey and it normally works fine. I make the images in illustrator ( very old version ) and I bring them into Photoshop where they are greyscaled in order to turn them into bitmap halftones, so greyscaling is used. However I don't use greyscale straight from illustarator usually and it still couldn't print black. I did try greyscaling etc on or off in each program but still got grey?

Cheers,

Cat

[streettacos310]

did you figure out what was wrong? im having the same issues. it prints a very light blue on transparancies all of a sudden. i manually cleaned the print head too and still no luck.

[CAT00]

Afraid not I just print everything in the plain paper setting now, its the only way I can get a black print. I'm presuming its a software problem as all the nozzel checks etc perform perfectly. Canon don't seem willing to help, I think the only option would be a completely pointless and unnecessary service from them.

[streettacos310]

thank you. does it print dark black on the reg paper setting?

[streettacos310]

i just solved my issue. i changed the artboard from cmyk to rgb then i changed the black in illustrator to a spot color black and turned the values in rgb to zero for the spot color. turn the intensity & contrast all the way up in your printer settings. also change from standard to graphics and print on matte photo paper. hope that works for you

[echobot]

Check out this...   https://community.usa.canon.com/t5/Personal-Printers/My-printer-started-printing-quot-shadow-double-...

Also this..

https://community.usa.canon.com/t5/Personal-Printers/My-printer-started-printing-quot-shadow-double-...

[CAT00]

I presume I'm missing the point here but these links seem to refer to the printers printing double not failing to print black?

[echobot]

When the black pigment head part (PGI-650-XL) fails totally, you don't get any black text printing, but all color printing and any combination of color printing heads (CLI-651-XL) works.

Also setting the paper to higher quality print does not require the pigment ink head, so you get black from the normal black cartridge.

I don't have a IX6850 but had the same problem on a MX926 which suffers from both double printing and failure to print black text only pages.  It's worth checking to see if it's the same problem as the symptoms and 'fixes' sound identical.

In your case, you mention that it won't print black on glossy paper but will on text only.  In that case it may be a blockage in the non pigment black (CLI-651-XL) ink part of the head.

The reason that I think the problems are similar is that both your printer and mine use the same cartridges, so they probably use the same print head and behave the same way.

Keep in mind that if the printer thinks it's printing graphics, it'll try and use the CLI-651-XL inks and if it thinks it's printing a text document, it'll use the PGI-650-XL pigment black ink.  You can mess with the settings to tell it to print a text document on glossy paper and it'll use the graphics inks instead.

You may find that the program and settings you're using for transparencies is invoking the graphics inks and your black  print head may not be responding correctly.  Are you sure that when you do a check print, it's printing it 100% properly?  Check it against a reference print in the manual to see that all of the lines and borders are in the correct spots and the shading is correct.