We had yet another customer call today asking if we could supply them with a printhead for their nearly new Canon bubblejet. It was the same old story – we always ask what type of ink they are using, and the usual answer is either refilled or ‘no name’ generic ink cartridges. What people don’t realise is that refill and generic inks will clog up the nozzles in their printhead. The reason is that cheap inks are coloured with pigment that is not ground up finely enough so the dye particles slowly but surely get lodged in the fine print nozzles and block them up making the printheads useless. And whereas once upon a time Canon printheads were classed as consumbles and were relatively cheap, they are now classed as spare parts which can only be purchased from Canon’s spare parts dealers (with the associated increase in costs for parts and installation). Printer companies spend millions of dollars a year to formulate inks with just the right properties for a particular printer – inks which won’t clog, or dry too quickly or slowly, won’t dry out in the printhead, will be delivered at just the right rate etc – yet people believe someone in China or elsewhere producing ‘compatible’ inks will produce the same result for a fraction of the cost. The upshot of all this? Yes, you can save a few bucks using non-genuine ink, but be prepared to either throw away your printer when it gets blocked printheads or be prepared to pay a Canon tech big bucks to install a new printhead.
Here in Aus, a canon printhead for the IP5000 printer is $122. A brand new set of genuine inks is at least $20 per tank, and with 5 inks for the printer, that’s $100 per new set of tanks.
I think there is a good reason why people are preferring compatible inks. The price saving cannot be ignored.
I have been using non genuine ink for around 8 years and have only replaced the print head once and use the printer daily. canon ip3000
I’ve been using generic inks for years also but recently found some of the rarely used colour tanks were printing streaks.
Seems to me the tanks need to be regularly used and that’s the only trick.
I AGREE WITH THE USE COMMENT. HAVE USED GENERIC FOR 10 YEARS AND HAVE HAD GOOD RESULTS WITH EPSON. ONE PRINTER FELL OVER IN THIS TIME-BUT USED IT LITTLE. I HAVE FOUND BETTER LONG RUN RESULTS COME WITH REGULAR USE. EVEN JUST SWITCHING PRINTER ON REGULARLY WILL USUALLY BE ENOUGH.
THE PROBLEM WITH GENERICS IS THAT IT TAKES SOME TIME BEFORE THEY BECOME AVAILABLE FOR NEW MODELS.
Canon knows their printheads are trouble.
You buy a new Canon printer & it has a 1 year waranty.
You buy a new Canon Printhead and it has a 90 max. warranty.
Truth be told, anybody’s inks will clog the printhead.
Canon is only telling you part of the story. Printers are made to be used, not to be a desktop ornament. No matter what make printer you use, if you let it sit for months unused, you are going to have problens.
This article is a big bull****!!!!! i don’t know its purposes, but i’m using canon ip3000 for 5 years and the last year it had problems with printing while i was always in need of cleaning it before i print…now it can clean but it won’t align printhead due to malfunctional error….so i opened it and i saw that the printhead was losing ink and had some spoiled surface on a specific part of cyan and magenta colour!!!
i could not have cyan and magenta on printings…only yellow!! and printhead proved it!!
so…guess what…I’M USING ALL THESE YEARS ORIGINAL INK CARTRIDGES FOR 9€ ON each colour!!!
I had the typical striated colours on my Canon ip3000 so did some “maintenance”. I deep cleaned many times, still the streaks occurred in the test prints. I noticed the black lattice pattern on the test was a bit skewiff so I tried the “Print Head Alignment” function and voila!!! I got the power button with 5 orange then green flashing light warning. Tried it again and the message was Error: “Print head not installed”. I can only assume after wasting so much ink with the tests that the print head was buggered. I bought a new Canon mg5150 yesterday (the devil you know………) but don’t want to jettison the ip3000 off a cliff – for environmental reasons. Can anyone help whether the ip3000 has died or can it be resurrected somehow? Thanks.
What a load of croc. I’ve been refilling my canon 610 for years now and never had one problem, not even with
5 x ink bottles for $48 and the prints are still as good
as the first time they were done. So yeh, all good.