The Problem:

Yesterday I decided to install some new ink tanks in my Canon Pixma iP3000. It had just been sitting there, unused, for months and it was time to bring it out of retirement. It powered on nicely and was hassle-free to share with my Linux machines from my Vista PC, but when I printed a test page, I noticed a distinct lack of black ink on my page. Using the printer’s maintenance tools proved a fruitless endeavor.

The Solution:

It is a well-documented fact that sitting idle with dry ink tanks for a few months is not good for the nozzles on an inkjet printer. When ink doesn’t flow through on a semi-regular basis at least, bits of ink tend to dry up in the microns-wide holes, and you have a clogged print head. Canon makes replacement parts for this very purpose, but for an older printer like this, be prepared to shell out about $50 on eBay (brand-new print heads for newer models are probably double the price; often a large percentage of the original price of the entire printer). Well, I wasn’t prepared to go that route, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I had nothing to lose anyway.

After a little bit of Googling I decided that cleaning couldn’t be too hard. So here’s what I did:

Before & after removing the ink tanks and print head

First, I took the ink tanks out and removed the print head (it comes out easily as the ink tanks are what hold it in place). The print head is a small plastic piece that has some circuitry on one side and slots for the ink tanks to fit on the other. On the bottom are the nozzles (you may notice some smudged ink here that will tip you off as to where the black and colored nozzles are).

L-R: ink tank bays, contacts, nozzles

Next, I tried simply cleaning the area around the nozzles with a moistened Q-Tip. This used to work on an old HP printer I had about a decade ago, but my problem was evidently more severe this time around.