Part Cost More Than Printer


 
Dave Mazz

Dave Mazz

TVWBB Super Fan
My Canon MP530 All-In-One Printer quit working. It started by printing odd colors, then skipping areas. Yesterday, I was printing a page of guitar chord diagrams. Page was about 3/4 complete, the paper kicked out, and two error codes came up on the computer. Looked up the codes and both indicated a logic board issue. One called for a reset, the other for a replacement. The logic board is about $175. Needless to say, a new printer has been ordered. Had no idea that home printers have gone the way of toilet paper. They are hard to find.
 
We are on our 3rd Canon All-in-One. First one died and the referred us to an MP922 which of course took different cartridges. That one died just after 1 year. Replaced with same model since we had too many ink cartridges and needed it in the middle of a print job. Cannon support offered a discount off of a replacement all 3 times, but the discount was off list price+tax+shipping from Canon. Did much better on the open market with Office Max and Staples. Our laser printers are all HP and run great. I had an HPIIIP with extra capacity paper cartridge that ran for over 15 years before wearing out. Wish these ink printers did as well.
 
What are the codes, David? I work on canon Copiers and some Wide Format machines. Those small ink jet machines are pretty disposable, though. We work on them on the side, but I generally cringe when they come in because often they aren't worth fixing and aren't designed to be repaired. It's usually the printhead and if it goes bad enough it can cause the machine to throw erroneous codes indicating the main circuit board etc.
 
Canon makes the print engines for most of the HP laser printers. Those are usually workhorses. Inkjets by and large just suck. They use a lot of ink by design. They have to eject ink from time to time to keep from drying up and clogging. When they get to the end of life they'll get into a loop trying to clean the printhead and they'll just suck down a ton of ink. The problem with color laser units is that you get parts wear on the other cartridges over time even if you don't use color. People use them as mostly black and white machines and that's a big mistake.
 
Dustin:
Thanks for your input on these frail devices! All of our lasers have always been B&W. If I needed something printed in color I'd put it on a memory stick and take it to Kinko's or another printing place. I saved the first MP922 and did the water cleaning suggested online to cure the clogged nozzle error. You are very much on the money on the loop of cleaning the printhead. If the current MP922 bombs, I'll pull the cartridges and put them in the old one to see if that cleaning method actually worked.
 
We sometime soak the printheads in a 50/50 mixture of ammonia and water. You are trying to dissolve that dried ink. This works only about 20% of the time in all honesty. If you have a problem with the purge unit, then even replacing the printhead is temporary. Its job is to suck ink out of the printhead.
 
Inkjets are disposable devices. Sadly. I was a Canon Tech Instructor and yes Canon makes the print engine in many laser printers (color and B&W)
 
Brings back memories of the noisy, but workhorse Okidata dot matrix printers. I had a little Canon bubblejet too I used for travel, but it got orphaned by Widows 8. Since we"re now retired, we don't travel so we don't need one for the road.
 
Dustin Dorsey said:
What are the codes, David? I work on canon Copiers and some Wide Format machines. Those small ink jet machines are pretty disposable, though. We work on them on the side, but I generally cringe when they come in because often they aren't worth fixing and aren't designed to be repaired. It's usually the printhead and if it goes bad enough it can cause the machine to throw erroneous codes indicating the main circuit board etc.
Click to expand...
One code was 6500. The other code was 52XX. Can't remember the last two digits. Canon also does not have a driver for Windows 10.
 
You did the right thing just getting another one. The code indicates a main board problem but it was probably caused by a bad print head. They could build those things to be more repairable but they don't. We have landfills full of that crap.

I worked on dot matrix printers for a long time including some Okidata models, and lots of old TI machines. They were fun to work on. You could fairly easily repair the circuit boards. That's mostly what I did was circuit board repair. These days it's just not worth the effort and you need specialized equipment. Believe it or not the boards are actually more reliable than they once were, though.
 
Dustin, an employee at Office Depot told my DH that all copiers/printers were made in China. (maybe he meant just Canon) Is that true?
 
Somewhat true. Canon makes some models in Japan still. Anything that goes into a U.S. Government office can't be made in China. They have to be specifically made elsewhere and in Canon's case, Japan.
 
Almost all color printers use all colors to print black. The reason is the black ink or toner (depending on type of printer) is not meant as a "true" black. It is meant for tonality and depth so in order to make truly black it needs all colors to do so. Unlike a B&W printer which uses a true black toner. I did not mention "ink" at this point as I don't believe anyone makes a B&W inkjet anymore.
 
Wow; I remember Okidata dot matrix printers, along with the thermal technology, lol. I thought I was a big deal when I would buy green bar paper in the 80's. Back near that era I had a Brother HL-630 printer; it served me very well but eventually I wanted color, and migrated to a few HP inkjet printers. I did not have the best luck with those, and in 2014 I bought another Brother, MPC-J6520DW and it works flawlessly still today. Ink is what I consider very reasonably-priced, too.
 
My g/f bought an HP color laser MFD a few years ago. For us, the laser print engine makes sense, we generally don't print enough to keep inkjets from drying out. This particular model has 4 toner cartridges, and it seems that the black cartridge does get replaced a little more often than the color carts. Only minor issue is that there are issues in the networking stack that I've had to work around, but generally, it's been pretty solid.
 
I changed to a B&W laserwriter when I retired, 7+ years and it's still working just fine. Much nicer not screwing around inkjet cartridges.
 
Dave Mazz said:
My Canon MP530 All-In-One Printer quit working. It started by printing odd colors, then skipping areas. Yesterday, I was printing a page of guitar chord diagrams. Page was about 3/4 complete, the paper kicked out, and two error codes came up on the computer. Looked up the codes and both indicated a logic board issue. One called for a reset, the other for a replacement. The logic board is about $175. Needless to say, a new printer has been ordered. Had no idea that home printers have gone the way of toilet paper. They are hard to find.
Click to expand...
Dave, they sure are hard to find. Office Depot was all out of what I wanted, Amazon wanted too much. Thank goodness, DH was able to find out what was wrong with my printer and FIXED it, after he bought me a new one at Walmart. lol Holding on to the new one for future use.
 
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