I am having a spot of trouble with my printer at the moment and it is this. When I print a page of nothing but words I get what I can only think of calling shadows of each letter, as though each letter had thickness and was throwing a shadow of itself behind and to one side of it. This happens only on every other line of words so i tried different things to try to find out what was causing it. First I did all the things the manual says to do like cleaning and deep cleaning if that didn’t work, about four or five times. I changed all the cartridges in case they were suspect and that didn’t solve it either. I printed out all the bits of paper that the manual said to, to check that it was ok and they printed out ok. I then thought I should try to eliminate any particular colour that was or might be causing the problem so chose a different colour to print the document rather than black. Yo and behold every line printed out as it should do perfectly so I then selected the right hand side of the paper to print with a different colour and the other side black. It printed out ok on the right hand side colour but not on the left hand side black. I have even fitted brand new makers original cartridges instead of the the two compatible black cartridges that I normally use on economic grounds, and it is still a problem. It is also a problemm when I want to print pictures of my wifes water colour painting too. Can any one help this 85 YO guy please?
Are they brand new cartridges, or new, unused cartridges? I ask because you might want to check the use-by dates on the genuine black cartridge in case it’s past it.
I know our Epson also had problems in the past when it was run on compatibles and if not used in a while would get dried up deposits in the pipes and need syringing out with rubbing alcohol. It’s the reason we now only use the genuine cartridges.
That said on one occasion printing out a large image and setting it to high quality and photo paper (even though it was ordinary A4) managed to get it printing correctly again so you could try that with your wifes water colour painting - of course this method will be wasting ink if it does nothing to fix the problem.
As an aside, I was an ICT Technician for over 10 years and to this day I still loathe printers because of problems like these. Give me a Windows Blue Screen of Death any day of the week !
Thank you Skadgeer I will try that out on Saturday Morning.
I’d be tempted to try printing in “draft” mode as well. This significantly reduces the ink usage but may also help with ghosting, at least making it less noticeable.
I’m also an ex-techie and agree that printers are an even darker art than networking. In my programming days, you wouldn’t believe the various combinations of start points (coordinates 0,0) - top left, bottom right, top right etc.
If you do decide to change your printer, I can recommend Brother laser (for just black printing) or HP desk jet for colour. The advantage with HP is that the print head is part of the cartridge.
The other option is create a test file (no useful data) that gives you problems on your printer and send it over via PM just in case it’s an obscure formatting error in your word processor.
My best guess is that as you’ve done all the available maintenance checks, especially alignment, it needs a new print head. The trouble is you won’t know for sure until you’ve tried it and you’ve already spent money on new cartridges so you may just be throwing good money after bad. Basic printers are so cheap so it may be time to cut your lossrs. Good luck.
Throw it in the bin and get a Brother laser printer.
Does the HP printer have separate cartridges or are they bundled together in three. The last HP I had was like this and if one colour of the bundle of three was used up you had to buy a new bundle when the other two colours may have had some ink still in them.
The Canon IP8750 appears to be a current model, and sells for several hundred pounds, so it’s rather more than just a throwaway item. Typically of more expensive printers, it has , I think, 6 or 8 separate cartridges. Virtually all cheaper printers have several colours integrated into one cartridge, plus a black cartridge.
My HP Envy printer is like that. Rather than use HP genuine cartridges, or put up with all the warning/don’t do it messages generated with compatible cartridges…, last time round I sought out the most popular and recommended seller on eBay of refill kits.
Works OK, but every now and then, I get the blurs similar to Pollyanna. Don’t know if it’s the printer, the cartridges ( the cartrdges are genuine HP that I’ve refilled ), or whatever…
But I get past the blurring problem for a while by taking the cartridges out, runnng the face of the print head gently down some kitchen roll to see if the ink is flowing OK. ie you get a line of ink down the kitchen roll. Usually, the flow is not great. I clean the print head with some toilet paper sprayed with isopropyl alchol / lens cleaner. That , so far, has done the job… till next time.
Thing is…, with so much going on ‘in the cloud’, the amount of printing I do is rather limited. And inkjet printers much prefer to be in regular use to prevent the cartridge/head drying out.
The only way round it that I can see is to buy a laser printer. When my HP inkjet becomes more bother than it’s worth, I’ll probably go for a refurbed commercial laser.
I totally agree that the printer is a good model but in my opinion is still totally uneconomical to fix if you can’t do it yourself. Yes cleaning the print head may work but if you have no experience in that direction and no one to help you’re going to struggle. Everything is easy if you know how to do it. A six or eight cartridge printer is only worth it if you’re really into photography and really need to print stuff for yourself otherwise it’s bound to be far more economic to use profesional printing services. I stand by by original post but bow to your greater knowledge.
HP do sell models that use separate inks these days, in fact I have an old one in a cupboard complete with a spare black cartridge if you’re ever passing Barnsley !
I only retired it because I rarely use colour and now have a Brother laser.
If you do loads of printing you could get a continuous Ink system. It’s pretty janky but works nicely.
Sorry, but what does Janky mean please.
Another way of saying that it looks like a bodge.
Are using Canon cartridges? I’ve found others don’t work properly in my Canon printer…
For every two compatible cartridges I use, I then put one OEM cartridge through. I was given this advice by a man who at the time had his own shop selling compatible and OEM cartridges. He said that the compatible cartridges didn’t have the same cleaning fluid in as the OEM cartridges and putting an OEM as every third cartridge thro’ kept the heads clean. As soon as mine started playing up I put two OEM black cartridges in, in place of the compatible ones and I have have tried everything that there is to try without any success. What I do know, is that it is only the black cartridge printer head that has the problem because by printing the text in any other colour than black it all prints out perfectly. so it is something to do with the electronics to do with the two black cartridges that is causing the problem. I bought some cleaning fluid to clean the head which I did three times.
Look also at the contact pins where the cartridge seats; tiny, tiny bits of paper fluff getting stuck in there is a common problem with many ink-jet printers. I assume your Canon is no different.
Use a lens puffer or some isopropyl spray to remove it, don’t use a tool.
The pins you mention did have a good clean when I took the head out of the printer to clean them with some fluid you can buy for such a problem as mine. The printer head was laid in a flat tray, with a small amount of fluid to soak, before drying it off by blowing warm air gently over the pins and the rest of the cartridge printer head.