Canon's Ink Sink

07 Apr 2015

My Canon Pixma recently stopped working with an error that seems unrecoverable, basically meaning that the device reached its end of life (the dreaded Error B200). It was slow to start, but generally I was quite happy with the scan and print quality. It used a lot of ink, but that was acceptable since I was not printing much. Or so I thought.

Instead of just throwing the whole thing out I decided to salvage a lot of the electronic parts, especially the motors. I tore the case apart and was shocked to find huge cotton panels soaked in ink. It seems that each time you switch on the printer and it does its little startup sequence, it also cleans the print heads by ejecting a huge amount of ink. I found hundres of Euros worth of soaked up in cotton panels but also sticking to various corners of the casing. Reading reports of other Canon customers the Error B200 is a planned obsolence mechanism that, after a certain amount of start-up cleaning procedures, should prevent the ink from flowing out of the case at some point.

Right now I’m so riled up about this that I’m vowing to never buy a Canon printer again.

Here are a few more shots from the inside: