Used Canon ipf6300 startup with bad nozzle pattern

[mcbroomf]

I got a freebe used Canon ipf6300 (24").  I use a 44" Epson P8000 but want to dedicate that to canvas and use the 24" printer for paper (I had no plans to do this until I was the free offer of this printer).  The printer was idle for 2 years I think and startup is not going well.  Not sure if I should start throwing money at it, especially as I see the 24" HP Z3200 is selling for $1800 with free shipping.

This is what's happened so far;
Started up printer.  It ran a clean cycle, internal nozzle check, clean cycle then threw a hardware error (03800500-2F30) and asked to be turned off and restarted. 
When it restarted it seemed to lose the paper and I had to reload it (24" roll, ie unload and reload)
I ran a nozzle test pattern and only got a faint/partial grey pattern, ie 1 nozzle, nothing else.
Repeated above ie clean/internal nozzle/clean/same error (reloaded paper)
The next nozzle pattern showed a more compete grey pattern and a light magenta with a good number of missing lines, nothing else
I installed the driver and connected it through USB to my PC with no issues.
Another clean/error cycle and I then ran a "14 balls" test pattern.  It showed no red, green, blue, yellow or black, only some magenta and cyan and a grey.
I took out and shook all the cartridges.  The yellow seems empty but all the others have ink.  The Canon shows 50% in all so it is not reporting actual levels.  I remember my ipf8xxx doing this after being powered off for some time..
Looking up the error code in the manual is no help (they are not listed), but I found a good article on a print head fail on an 8xxx printer by Keith(Northlight) and my error code looks similar.  His attempt at a clean did not work but the new head did.
I ran other nozzle test print, another clean and repeat.  So far the nozzle test print seems to have evened out with just 4 inks showing; PC (good), PM (good), G (bad) about 1/3 of the pattern .. fading) and GY (good).  I'm assuming that they print in the same order as they are installed

I think I'm out of yellow and I think I recall running heads dry is a "bad thing".  But with absolutely no ink coming out of 8 of the 12 I'm wondering if this is worth pursuing.  Could be a pair of heads and a full set of inks (I think that's about $1600 if I use Canon, maybe $1100 if I try 3rd party) with no assurance that I don't have blocked lines.

Any other suggestions or diagnosis?

Thanks

Mike

[I.T. Supplies]

I would recommend contacting Canon to see if they can assist you with the errors and let you know the reason for why it's doing these.

Otherwise, if you needed a full set of ink, it would cost less than $1k for Canon brand.  Retail cost may be up there though (per your estimate).
It can usually be the heads are having issues firing properly, even after cleaning and replacing the inks or might be something inside the printer itself like the board or connections where it's not allowing the proper firing of colors even after cleaning and replacing cartridges/heads.  Hard to say for sure unless you check with the manufacturer that can let you know from description print outs.

800-423-2366 is Canon's customer service and just explain to them the issues so they can narrow down the reasons for this to be happening.

[mcbroomf]

Great idea thanks.  I now recall doing that with my 8300 when I was getting some error messages.

[Pete Berry]

I can't see any happy (relatively inexpensive) ending to this. Non-working free large format printers of any ilk are very seductive but rarely a bargain, and cutting your losses now would be my recommendation. Sounds like the HP is a good bargain.

It will take at least new heads and sufficient ink to fill and test them, and a good chance that the controller board/mother board is shorted out from previous printing while disregarding a "replace R/L printhead" message. The Canon bubble-jet nozzles are electro-thermally activated, ink-cooled, with a huge surplus of nozzles that can be re-mapped to the inevitable failures (think eventually shorting out). But this creates an increasing power draw with increased head temps.. Ignoring the above message and forcing printing will sooner or later draw excessive current through the controller board and blow it.

In my 12 year history with iPF's, a wise tech. once told me that if a couple of cleanings don't resuscitate the missing lines, further will just be a waste of ink and possibly damaging The up-side of the every 4-5 years head replacements is that you can do them yourself, and have virtually total freedom from nozzle checks in the interim.

[mcbroomf]

Thank you Pete, this is indeed my inkling. 
The frustrating thing with this printer and the 8300 I owned is that neither gave a "replace R/L printhead" message.  The printer was working up until it went idle, and I didn't get the message and the hardware fault code is not listed in the manual.

[stockjock]

I have had an iPF8400 for just shy of 4 years.  I don't claim to be an expert on large format printing but I have followed most of the posts on the Canon printers.  Probably you simply need to replace your print heads and add ink.  The print heads can be bought on eBay for about $325-350 most of the time and there are two of them.  I have had to replace two print heads over the years with no problem.  You can also buy recently expired ink on eBay for 25-50% of retail.  But that is still a substantial investment and unfortunately might not fix your problems.  Apparently, these Canon printers are prone to having the motherboard burn out for a variety of reasons and I have read that continuing with a bad print head can actually increase the chance of damaging the motherboard.  Replacing that is very expensive.

I have never used the HP Z3200PS but obviously lots of folks on here love them.  The price for the 24" HP Z3200PS is down to $1600 at Adorama.  That seems to be to be a better bet than trying to fix the iPF6300.  If I didn't have a full set of inks for the iPF8400 and an extra print head lying around I would probably pick up the HP just for the embedded spectrophotometer.

[mcbroomf]

Thanks for the additional thoughts.  I bought one of the early Z3100 24" printers and ran it for many years until it died, so the 24" Z3200 is a semi-known entity.  I have run so many cleans and test prints, effectively dry, on this printer that I think your and Pete's assessment are right.