Canon printer woes

Earlier this year I dug out our old Canon MP810 because Mrs throbscottle wanted to print photos. Having been sat in storage for several years the head had dried up. Well, I managed to clear it, and came up with what I thought was a great idea to clean individual colours, by printing pages of solid cyan, yellow and magenta.
But then the pages went stripey, as though it could only print from the top half of it's nozzles.
So I think my individual colour pages stressed something so it failed.
Today I took it apart, reseated the head cables at both ends, checked a load of R's and C's on the logic board, nothing obvious found, put it back together.
Nozzle check pattern hinted that it might work, though it doesn't have a proper demo or self test page.
Tried a test print, won't print colour, I tried a graphic and some coloured text - doesn't even move the head.
Will print black text ok.
Any suggestions - is a fix possible?

Hi Throb

I had a similar issue with an Epson printer a while ago.
I found a 'head cleaner kit' on Ebay which consisted of a bottle of clear solution, a syringe and a piece of clear tube.
The process is to place a tissue under the head, where the paper would be, and use the syringe and tube to inject the fluid into each ink port which cleans the passage through to the tissue; I found lots of dried ink meant changing the tissue a few times, but it worked for me.

I believe some kits are specific to printers .. .. .. .

MM

I wish it was that simple. The head is clean as a whistle, I went through advanced cleaning methods. It was working, just not quite perfectly - I think my insistent efforts blew something. Further cleaning didn't do any good. Trouble is I've no way to know if it's the head that's failed or the board. It's like a whole block of nozzles have just stopped working completely. I was hoping to find something fusible on the board, but nothing. I'm reluctant to try another head or board because I've read that with these particular printers, if one fails it can trash the other, so if I swap the wrong end I risk destroying a good part.

So I suppose what I need is a method to test the head out of circuit.

You can make that cleaner quite easily btw, just use deionised water + a bit of isopropanol + a very tiny amount of detergent. Some people add window cleaner to it - I think the ammonia sort. Simple version worked a treat for me.

But thanks for the response

Finally found a service manual and able to do self test print. Still missing blocks of colour. Still won't print an image I send to it.

That sounds like a maker's hook built into the printer, compelling you to take it to a Canon service rep for best results.

Oh that's nice. You'd think there'd be something in service mode to turn it back on. Oh well. It's going to printer heaven now anyway. Sad and annoying, it was a good printer.

I wish I'd gone in with the cleaning fluid first, then would never have had this problem. Never imagined printing pages of solid colour would cause a failure though.

We once had a big issue with Canon printers. We sent loads of them back as faulty but usually got charged and returned with "no fault found" but often still with faults. On one occasion the Canon rep was in the store when the "no fault found" printers were returned, she took the first one out of the box and it fell to bits as they hadn't bothered putting any screws back in. We went through a load of them and many of them still didn't work (all no fault found) - I've never bought another Canon product since.