paper path in Canon MX850

[myfathersson]

Am having multiple problems with this printer. A piece of foam rubber striping has come out of it somewhere and I cant figure out whether it is relevant or where it came from. It is about five inches long, 3mm high, and a centimeter and a half deep on a side which has a notch pattern (a bit like a very rough tooth-comb) in shape.

Its loss may be completely irrelevant to the main problem which is that the paper comes out of the printer with a tiny crease at the very front right corner of the page.

Doesn't sound important but the paper is feeding through the printer slightly wrongly and ends up sitting in the out tray slightly askew. For this reason I cant perform a cleaning of the bottom or rollers because the paper feeds into the printer, runs through back and forth 4-5 times and then almost exits the printer at that stage in (towards the end of) the cleaning process: But the cleaning process then involves it feeding back into the printer and at that stage the paper is askew and scrunches up inside the printer, completely jamming it and (I am told) depositing ink all over the underside of the ink heads.

Looks to me like some sort of roller issue or there is some tiny piece of paper adhering to the roller under the print head which I cant see? is this something I am likely to be able to put right please?

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

I would take the printer apart and see. Taking a printer apart is
sometime difficult, but if you own a device for longer than a year,
and don't care about warranty anymore, I recommend regular cleaning
this way. If you are in warranty, I suggest you let Canon take care of
it.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/77020772/Canon-MX850-Service-Manual
(you'll need to upload something to download this for free)

--
Gernot Hassenpflug

[myfathersson]

Thanks for that Gernot: I can now see that where Canon were telling me that I need to take this unit to a repair station to have it serviced, the service would definitely cost more than twice what the machine is worth.

Everyone seems agreed that there is a problem with the rollers, either something minor caught in them (not likely as this normally causes and error message with Canon printers?) or there is some misalignment or (more likely) something holding the rollers in place is broken.

It isnt clear that the steps described in the service manual are sequential: Please, would you happen to know whether there is any way of exposing the rollers to see what is wrong without having to virtually strip the whole machine down?

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

myfathersson <license...@gmail.com> writes:

> Thanks for that Gernot: I can now see that where Canon were telling me that I need to take this unit to a repair station to have it serviced, the service would definitely cost more than twice what the machine is worth.
>
> Everyone seems agreed that there is a problem with the rollers, either something minor caught in them (not likely as this normally causes and error message with Canon printers?) or there is some misalignment or (more likely) something holding the rollers in place is broken.
>
> It isnt clear that the steps described in the service manual are sequential: Please, would you happen to know whether there is any way of exposing the rollers to see what is wrong without having to virtually strip the whole machine down?

I don't own this machine so I cannot offer any concrete advice. But you could certain hold it upside down (removing inks, tray, paper and so forth) and shake/tap it gently to try and clear blockages. I still recommend stripping it, it really isn't that hard to take the case and logic board off if you have a service manual to guide you. It is unlikely you will have to "strip the whole machine down", the paper feed is the major part and easily exposed.

> > I would take the printer apart and see. Taking a printer apart is
> >
> > sometime difficult, but if you own a device for longer than a year,
> >
> > and don't care about warranty anymore, I recommend regular cleaning
> >
> > this way. If you are in warranty, I suggest you let Canon take care of
> >
> > it.
> >
> > http://www.scribd.com/doc/77020772/Canon-MX850-Service-Manual
> >
> > (you'll need to upload something to download this for free)

Good luck!
--
Gernot Hassenpflug

[myfathersson]

Thanks for that advice: There is a guy near me who has an 860 which uses the same head for fifty bucks and I was just wondering if it was worth the time taking this unit apart but now you have told me the answer, I will give it a try before giving up; because the 860, 870 and 882 etc dont seem to offer much incremental increase in quality in any area: The service manual is very useful indeed but there are so many steps that I am not sure it would be worthwhile for any moderately complex repair.

(In addition, this unit has a tendency to dump all its cyan ink out for no apparent reason over time)

Thanks again

[myfathersson]

OK Guys here is the scoop, FWIW

I got the new printer, an MX860 (which has great functionality, uses the same picolitre droplet size so I assume is similar in quality to the MS850 and for that matter all newer printers in this line but takes TINY ink cartridges!!) and took the 850 out and started to run it to see what was going on.

While I was doing so, suddenly a piece of the foam rubber I described in the first posting started to expel itself from the right hand side of the output roller area. Exactly the area where the paper gets twisted when I try to get the printer to take paper back into the printer. So I tugged a bit and the piece broke off. Then a further piece came out which I grabbed and got out and as far as I can see the problem has gone away!

SO either the problem is cured, this thin strip of foam rubber had fallen into the printer and was causing the problem OR that strip went somewhere and I will soon find out what it did when that particular part of the printer stops working

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

myfathersson <license...@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tuesday, October 9, 2012 11:17:13 AM UTC-4, myfathersson wrote:
> > On Tuesday, October 9, 2012 4:25:05 AM UTC-4, Gernot Hassenpflug wrote:

I scrolled with bated breath :D

> OK Guys here is the scoop, FWIW
>
> I got the new printer, an MX860 (which has great functionality, uses the same picolitre droplet size so I assume is similar in quality to the MS850 and for that matter all newer printers in this line but takes TINY ink cartridges!!) and took the 850 out and started to run it to see what was going on.
>
> While I was doing so, suddenly a piece of the foam rubber I described in the first posting started to expel itself from the right hand side of the output roller area. Exactly the area where the paper gets twisted when I try to get the printer to take paper back into the printer. So I tugged a bit and the piece broke off. Then a further piece came out which I grabbed and got out and as far as I can see the problem has gone away!
>
> SO either the problem is cured, this thin strip of foam rubber had fallen into the printer and was causing the problem OR that strip went somewhere and I will soon find out what it did when that particular part of the printer stops working

Good job!
--
Gernot Hassenpflug

[myfathersson]

OK So now that I have moved this printer into my living room where I use Linux,and we seem to have solved this problem, how do I install drivers for LinuxMint?

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

Depends what drivers you want to install. Canon may have proprietary
linux drivers for this printer. If you want to install them (provided
they exist) you can search the Ubuntu forums site
http://ubuntuforums.org/ where there is plenty of information on
installing these drivers.

If instead you prefer open-source driver, try to install the
gutenprint 5.2.9 http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/ drivers
(disclaimer: I am the Canon maintainer on this project) for the
printer part, and the SANE drivers for the scanner part. For fax, I
guess that means setting up a separate printer with an efax driver in
CUPS.

Notes:

1) Gutenprint 5.2.9 may not be available with Linux Mint yet, in which
case you can download the source from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp-print/files/gutenprint-5.2/5.2.9/
and compile yourself easily, taking care of dependencies as needed.

2) SANE 1.0.23 should support this device. Again, if Linux Mint does
not yet have this latest SANE version, download the source from
http://www.sane-project.org/ and compile yourself even more easily.

3) eFax: http://www.cce.com/efax/
Or Hylafax for enterprise needs: http://www.hylafax.org/content/Main_Page
--
Gernot Hassenpflug

[myfathersson]

I think you are right, there aren't any drivers for these newer printers on Mint for some unknown reason. There are older generic gutenprint packages but nothing looking vaguely promising. There are also instructions out there for downloading various files from sourceforge to get the MX850 working under early versions of Ubuntu but nothing seems to work in Mint, especially the newer versions.

There IS a report of someone getting an MX850 to work using something called turboprint but as yet I haven't been able to find it: (It certainly isnt in the package repository under software manager)

Pity. And the forums for Mint aren't much good either: It seems to be one of those forums in which questions tend to be asked and never answered. I am flattered by the suggestion that I can compile drivers myself!

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

myfathersson <license...@gmail.com> writes:

> On Sunday, October 21, 2012 10:41:03 PM UTC-4, Gernot Hassenpflug
> wrote:
> > myfathersson <license...@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> I think you are right, there aren't any drivers for these newer
> printers on Mint for some unknown reason. There are older generic
> gutenprint packages but nothing looking vaguely promising. There are
> also instructions out there for downloading various files from
> sourceforge to get the MX850 working under early versions of Ubuntu
> but nothing seems to work in Mint, especially the newer versions.

Hi, sorry ot hear that.

> There IS a report of someone getting an MX850 to work using something
> called turboprint but as yet I haven't been able to find it: (It
> certainly isnt in the package repository under software manager)

Turboprint is a commercial package. It seems to be quite good, but as
with the open-source drivers, it is most likely reverse-engineered and
therefore no doubt has some issues as well, probably not the same as
those of gutenprint though.

> Pity. And the forums for Mint aren't much good either: It seems to be
> one of those forums in which questions tend to be asked and never
> answered. I am flattered by the suggestion that I can compile drivers
> myself!

Well, it is not difficult, the gutenprint project has had years to
smooth the compile process over multiple platforms. Time taken is
probably less than 10 minutes, including installing dependencies.

If you like, I'll walk you through the process.

Cheers,
--
Gernot Hassenpflug