Defective black ink cartridge from Amazon? Nozzle plate area floods with ink after printing 1 page

[alexhuth]

I have a Pixma MX410 printer and recently installed a new PG-210XL black ink cartridge that I ordered using this Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001CSMJJE/

The cartridge arrived in a sealed box and gives every impression of being authentic but it has not been able to print a single page cleanly without spots and smudges and I have wasted most of a morning trying to troubleshoot. At this point I suspect it may be defective.

I started with nozzle check pages and cleaning the black ink group per official support instructions. Then moved on to deep cleaning, and ultimately cleaning the encoder film as suggested in this thread: https://community.usa.canon.com/t5/Printer-Multifunction-Support/Pixma-MX410-printer-streaks-and-smu... as well as cleaning off the cartridge itself with warm water. Here is a photo album of all the pages printed throughout this effort, only a few of which are even close to correct:

https://imgur.com/a/KUy6W0v

I also noticed the nozzle plate area fairly floods with ink after only a single print job. Here is a shorter album demonstrating what the cartridge looks like before and after use:

https://imgur.com/a/DxEjwdC

At this point I have about resigned myself to RMA and replace but in the decade or so that I've had this printer I have never seen this behavior before. I would appreciate any second opinions or advice from the community. How likely is it that an authentic OEM cartridge would behave this way if the printer is functional? (I have had no previous issues and the color cartridge seems to work perfectly.)

[shadowsports]

Replace the cartridge as defective.  If it doesn't work, its the printer.  

[alexhuth]

Tried another ink cartridge today, and the streaks and smears are even worse than they were on Monday. So it's the printer... I guess I'll try cleaning the encoder film again, more thoroughly and carefully?

[alexhuth]

On second thought, wouldn't an issue with the encoder be likely to affect both color and b&w printing?

[alexhuth]

More information: It occurred to me that the smudges I am seeing now may be from ink that was deposited by the previous cartridge onto the internals of the printer. I tried printing 3 more pages and each is getting a little less smudged + the pattern of smudging is different before; it looks as though the rollers are loaded with ink. I will try cleaning those and report back if fixed.

[alexhuth · Accepted solution]

Sorry for all the replies in succession. I think I have solved the problem.

After replacing the cartridge, there was quite a bit of ink built up on the printer internals. To solve this, I did the following:

- Printed a test page and 3 pages of a Word document, observing smears and smudges that got less noticeable with each printing.
- Opened the printer and carefully cleaned the visible print rollers using an isopropyl alcohol solution and cotton swabs.
- Ran the printer's "Roller Cleaning" maintenance function.
- Ran the printer's "Bottom Plate Cleaning" maintenance function.
- Ran the printer's "Cleaning" function.

After these steps, the nozzle check pattern prints perfectly. I will RMA the previous black ink cartridge to Amazon as defective.

[alexhuth]

Follow-up after 1 week: Print quality gradually declined from day to day, with black horizontal streaks appearing first (appears to be from ink getting on the rollers) and larger smears/blobs of blank ink following. Still no problems with the color cartridge.

I repeated the steps of roller cleaning, bottom plate cleaning, cleaning, manually cleaned the encoder, manually cleaned the bottom of the cartridge. This allowed me to print a legible but very low quality page. I've decided to replace the printer.