Pixma Pro 9000 II advice please

[arith]

My printer has taken to dumping tiny bits of ink in the border of prints in exactly the same place on the trailing edge.

It is forever cleaning itself, if I leave it switched on I can hear it after it has been idle a couple of minutes, and I'm forever replacing yellow ink although the marks on the edge of prints are dark.

It makes me scream when I check the ink and they all report as full, then the noise, sort of like a car starter motor, and then it tells me one of my inks might be empty.

I've cleaned the rollers and base plate, I don't think I need clean the jets do I.

Could it be that there is a very slight shade of colour in the border? I noticed that Canon say it is because of printing to the edge but my prints are not as bad as the example; in fact I'm still entering them in a local competition.

If it is; I've got an £80 printer that prints up to the edge and it isn't good enough for Canon to just dismiss it as operator failure when their printer costs 600% more.

[bambleweeney]

I had a similiar (actually much much worse) problem with my Epson. I'd cleaned the jets and what I got were puddles of black ink on the print. What I ended up doing (and I don't know if this is possible on the Canon) was wetting some folded up kitchen roll with cleaning fluid (a.k.a Mister Muscle) between the parking pads and the nozzle carriage and leaving it for a couple of hours. Problem solved and a very inked up piece of kitchen roll !
A really easy job which might fix your problems if you can do something similiar on the Canon. Suggest a Google search for head cleaning for your printer (the Northlight site http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/index.html might be worth a search, it's where I got my cleaning tips from)

[arith]

Very interesting Paul. Its only done about 60 A3 prints since new, the ink is right at the edge or just on it, if it is before it looks like two or three fine black/green wavy lines about 5mm long.

Although both yellow and magenta are reported to be empty I tried one with a 2" border.

Both of these were reported as full to the top yesterday and I've only done a few prints.

It was perfectly clean so I thought maybe it is dripping ink when printing up to the edge; looking through my prints I find one with a border and ink in it. :eek

[Geoff F]

I've had 4 printers in 9 years, and that is without doing an excessive amount of printing.

The warning signs of impending printer death have always been ink blotches on the prints. It starts on the borders then gradually spreads to blotches on the printed area.

In each case, I attempted to mop up excessive ink from the saturated 'drip strip' but it just kept getting worse.

I have switched between Epson and Canon but haven't really found much difference. Epson printers, from my experience, require more frequent nozzle cleaning but each printer lasted about the same length of time.

Currently, I am back with Epson; an A3 Photo R1900 which works as well as the previous Canon (which I think was a 9000) and didn't last nearly as long as I had expected.

I suppose if you live close to a suitable service centre it might be worth getting a print head replacement, but in each case, I considered that, for me, I might just as well take a loss and purchase something else.

[arith]

It is only a few months old and has 1 year warranty. Good job I kept the box. Cheers Geoff