Pixma iP 3000 color problems

[KurtSeiter]

Dear All,

I've had my Canon Pixma iP 3000 for a long, long time and its done a wonderful job so far. Now suddenly it has problems printing color correctly. Everything looks sepia or orange-ish or red-ish...

I did all possible cleaning routines and even changed all the color cartridges but nothing changed. The nozzle check in black and CMY looks fine except that the on the left side where it should print 2 black and gray rectangles with the letters "6C", "6C", "6M", "6M" and "6Y" in-between, those letters and rectangles are light and dark sepia-brown instead of gray and black. The other long, horizontal color bars have the right color and look fine, though.

Any ideas?

Thank you for your help in advance!

Kurt

[pinktech]

Congratulations on keeping your printer working well past it's sell by date. My beloved iP 4000 was many retired years ago.

I'm not going to dwell on monitor calibration because you are talking about the off color in the nozzle check.   

The two things that always come up with printers are whether your drivers are up to date (you can download and install the latest for your computer's operating system at the Canon website), and are you using genuine Canon ink. The driver stuff may change your regular color printing, but shouldn't affect the nozzle check colors. The ink is a different story. If you're using off brand or refills, there is no color guarantee. Even if Brand X had been great for years, today it may not be. I think those letters/rectangles are a composite gray, a combo of CMY and not a 'light black' from the big black tank. Different brands will render composite gray differently. If you have off brand, switch in genuine Canon color ink, do a deep clean to purge the old stuff, and try again.

If that doesn't help, it may be time to replace it. 😞

[Michael · Accepted solution]

Hello KurtSeiter.

Please double check that the correct ink tanks are installed.  It may be possible that a "Photo Cyan" or "Photo Magenta" tank is installed in the Cyan or Magenta slots.  Installing a "Photo" tank in the iP3000 may cause a shift in color output.

If the issue still persists, feel free to call us at 1-800-OKCANON for additional assistance with this matter.

[KurtSeiter]

Thanks for the replies.

The reason for all those problems was quite simple. I erroneously bought a photo cyan cartridge instead of the required "just" cyan.
As soon as I put in a cyan cartridge everything was fine

Kurt