PIXMA MX922 how to fix double printing of letters?

[travisvu]

When printing, some lines come written with double letter effect: For example, the word "bad" looks like "bbaadd". The letters are so close that are almost on top of each other. This does not happen to all of the text on the page, but to many lines.

Printer is MX922.  Print from Word doc (or any text editor) onto plain paper.

Already did all the steps in the Maintenance window (ie. cleaning, head alignment, nozzle check, etc...).  No help.

[Mellanby43]

Cleaning encoder strip on Canon MX 926 made no (zero) difference to double printing of letters every fourth or fifth line!!

I've tried all possible solutions that have been suggested/recommended online.  Simply no joy. 

Doesn't print double on scanned documents though.     Jeez ... waste paper basket for Canon 926 I think

[EAB]

This worked for me! I have a PIXMA MG3620 and was having an awful time with double letters (it looked like I had blurry vision) and smudges. I cleaned that timing encoder strip with a Q-tip and alcohol and printed out some pages and voila it is fixed! Thanks!

[kaetterhenry]

I also am having this problem with my Canon MG5400. Does this unit have an encoder film and if so, where do I find it?

[nhan7616]

Even after cleaning the encoder strip won't help. I think main problem is printheads. Mostly of this problem come from Ink Tank inkjet printer. Where printheads used many years and some nozzle blocked by dust and dried ink when you not usiing many months or not using genuine ink. I got exactly this, but using E560 printer with CISS (continuous ink supply system) and ONLY when I using duplex printing. That why mostly inkjet cartridge won't get this problem but Ink Tank inkjet printer, where cartridge replace everytime you run out of ink. But my E560 printer use CISS, so it like Ink Tank inkjet printer. After 1 year setup CISS in my printer, shadow text starting getting worse. I tried many solution from google, but not work. So I just brought a new black inkjet cartridge, reinstall CISS and Print Head Alignment. Then it solved. Here is 2 line text before and after (Actually it worse than before but I only have this).

[Grez1]

Well, I did clean the timing strip per instructions. It did not change performance whatsoever (which is pretty much what I expected, as I did not see any visible grease or dirt on the strip). BTW, if this is a part that is intended to be maintained, why is there not better access to it? There is not space in there for anyone with hands bigger than a six-year-old's (and then you can't see well, because you're blocking the light). But, I digress.

I've had this problem for some time now, and no cleaning/aligning/etc. helps in any way. I'm really at the point where I feel like I should just get a new printer.

One thing that I did notice...I saw that the timing strip instructions did mention not to remove grease from the lower rail. I saw a couple of areas on that rail that, to my eyes at least, seemed to be devoid of grease. Could that be causing this issue as well? If so, what type of grease should be used/how much/how should it be applied?

[Grez1]

Still looking to see if a moderator has any other ideas. Thanks.

[ahmetsacan]

I came to this page having the same problem. Photos printed fine but text did not, so I figured I could print my documents using photo-printing option on plain paper, which worked great. I tried to find the minimal changes that can make the document printing work and it was "Borderless Printing". So, the work-around in my case was to select Borderless Printing in the printer settings and use Plain Paper as the paper source (you'll get a warning that borderless printing is not recommended for plain paper).

In my case, this was clearly a software bug/problem. This has been a very frustrating problem that I suspect started with a software update. A perfectly fine hardware was made useless. I almost thought it was introduced maliciously to force users buy a new printer.