Canon printers?

Question

I own a Canon BJC-6000 and a Canon MPC-400. The problem is that after having used them for couple of years (only light home-user stuff like the occasional document or photo) they start to constantly fill the yellow ink tank with other ink (magenta mainly, whether that is of any significance) resulting in photos with a purple/pink tint (well when I say tint I mean it is so purple/pink that you cannot get any other colour, only shades of magenta.) The printers have never been damaged in any way and they have never been heavily used. I never buy cheap crappy ink tanks or those kits for refilling your tanks: I only buy the genuine Canon tanks. It does not take long for the yellow tank to fill and cleaning the print heads (using the utilily provided with the printers) does not help. I do not know if it is only the yellow tank that fills with magenta ink (because as you will know, cyan ink is quite dark when in a tank anyway). It can't just be my printers; what did/would you do about this?

To ak: I know that the next printer I buy will not be a Canon because as both you and I know, they aren't exactly all they're made out to be! However, buying a new printer is not an option right now - does anyone know how to solve my problem?

To subdragonzero: The yellow IS definately filling with other ink - the printers I mentioned do not use colour "cartridges" - it uses three separate colour "tanks", and one section of the tank is transparant so you can see the ink and the yellow (within a week or so of being in the printer) is definately being filled with other ink. I'm guessing that this could only happen when the printer is cleaning the head before/after printing (as when I did this on my old printer with no yellow tank to see what was happening, I saw ink being cleaned off put back on and cleaned again on the small bit of metal that touches the tank's sponge.)

Answer 1

My experience with Cannon ink is that the yellow portion of the cartidge clogs and dries up. Without it mixing with the cyan and magenta, you're going to have some funky colors... mostly tints of one or the other. I cannot imagine that the yellow portion is being filled with magenta, as that would seem implausible. The only solution that I've found is a fresh cartridge.

To see if your yellow is still coming out, or magenta is coming out of the yellow area, run your finger over the heads and see if yellow shows up, or if there are less than three streaks. If you're winding up with one cyan and two magenta streaks, well, then congratulations, you've done something I didn't think possible.

Answer 2

I have a Canon Pixma 4300 and I like it, though I think it is an older model. I have never had a problem with it and it prints excellent pictures. Never having had any other printer I don't really know how it compares, or how the ink prices compare. This particular model uses five different cartridges so it is supposed to be cheaper for ink but I am not sure if that is true. I would not hesitate to by another Canon.

Answer 3

I recently did the research, spent hours online finding "the best" photo printer in my price range. Everybody said the Canon iP5000 was "the best you can buy" (at the time) at that price point. I bought one from Amazon and had nothing but trouble with it right out of the box. The infamous roller marks (black streaks) and a horrible yellow-green tint on every photo. Canon refused to do anything except tell me how to run the trouble shooting program. I finally asked Amazon for help and they immediately sent me a shipping label to return it free of charge. That was my first and last experience with Canon printers. Canon cameras are awesome though!