PIXMA MX922 printer not printing black

[traciflome]

My pixma MX922 is not printing black text.  It will print color.  I have changed my ink, cleaned it and shut it on and off.  Thoughts?

[LuBelle47]

Just an update to my previous post.  I discussed the problem of my printer/laptop not printing black with a good friend of mine.  She told me that she and her husband (who is considerably more tech savvy than I am) had the same problem and after taking up the matter with a tech person was advised that there is a driver update available.  Her printer is a 700 series printer. I have not yet attempted to update mine, been busy lately. 

 Hope this helps someone.  

[DPDISXR4Ti]

I wonder if the same is true of my MP830?

[LuBelle47]

I don't know, but I spoke with a friend of mine and she told me that she & her husband had the same problem.  They have a Canon  700 or  800 series.  Her husband is much more tech savvy than I am and took the problem to a tech (don't know if it was a Canon tech) & discovered that there is a driver update available.  I hav.en't tried to update on my Canon 420, been busy lately.  Hope this helps.

[gtaprinter]

Posted twice, and twice removed - I guess I mentioned an online retailer by name which is against the rules. Alright, third time's the charm!

1. Your printer has 2 black ink cartridges (BK and PGBK). The smaller BK is used for graphics and images. The larger PGBK (pigment black) is used for text. In my case (and in most people's here), you couldn't print black text. When you tell the printer to use glossy paper or high quality print, it will use the BK cartridge - it's smaller and more expensive. You don't actually fix the underlying problem, and that is that the ink is not flowing from PGBK through the print head.

2. If you tried deep cleaning once or twice, stop doing it. You are wasting a tremendous amount of ink. I ran through multiple cartridges (colour, and black). Still, I wouldn't even get a smudge of text printed from PGBK. WHen I looked at the print head, it was soaked in black ink from PGBK, so there was no flow problem, but a blockage in the channel.

3. Soaking the print head in warm water or isopropyl alcohol may not fix the issue. I tried multiple times. Soaked for hours. No difference.

What you actually need is to powerwash the channels inside the print head. Best way of doing it is get a univeral print head cleaning kit, they're not expensive, which comes with the cleaning liquid, a syringe, and attachments to make a tight seal around the print head inlets. I did this cleaning, was quick and easy, and voila!

My printer is fixed and the black text is printing beautifully. Beats throwing the printer out (not a fan of throw-away society), and cheaper than replacing the print head.

[robertglez]

I've been having this issue for several months and was about to dump my Pixma TS6250 and buy a new printer. I had already tried most of the suggestions in this thread (pattern printing, cleaning and deep cleaning multiple times, all of the cleanings in the Maintenance settings, etc. ) with no success whatsoever, other than set it to High quality printing so that it didn't use the PGBK cartridge and could get the black lines print normally. However this is useless for double-sided automatic printing of long documents which is what I use the most.

Today I decided to re-read the thread and give it a last try, and now I have my printer working again flawlessly!!! Here's what I did: I started by printing the head pattern and the PGBK line was indeed completely blank. The other lines were perfect. Tried printing a colour document and of course the black characters were missing completely. Tried one normal cleaning and a couple of deep cleanings (I had already tried that some weeks ago). No success. So rather than thinking that it could be a circuit board failure as some people have mentioned, which is not possible to resolve as a customer, I thought it should just be the most probable cause: a PGBK header clogging, and I did my last attempt: remove the PGBK cartridge and drip a few drops of pure alcohol (96º) on the printer's header/ink pad. I didn't have any fancy tools at hand so I wrapped some toilet paper around the tip of my toothbrush, gently pressed the ink pad a few times and dried the area. Some black ink started to exude from the pad. Then tried again the header pattern printing and BOOM! A simply perfect PGBK grid pattern line came out, where it was totally blank before 🙂 I've tried printing a few documents and they were printed out perfectly.

So I would say that most of the problems we're seeing here are due to these bloody clogged printer headers. If you feel hopeless about it and want to give it a last try before dumping the printer, just try the above instructions to see if it works for you.

[youroff]

Had the same issue with MG7520, seemed to ignore black ink on text content. Cleaning using the printer's feature didn't help at all. Taking out the head and actually rinsing it with water (using a syringe)  worked perfectly.