Plugged 3880 and Auto Clean?

[Some Guy]

The 3880 spit out a image where blacks are very cyan (A rich cyan too, like a cyan cart was in the black ink space!).

Did an Auto Clean from the printer's LCD menu.  Machine did all the whirrs and clicks it does normally starting up.

I was using mostly the Matte Black prior, but it might have switched to the Photo Black for Auto Clean?  Can't find which black it uses in the manual or on the print.

Anyhow, it took 20 minutes to do an Auto Clean. First row with the 3 black checkerboards, the first showed only 12 blacks out of the hundreds.  Then it did another row and maybe 20 blacks showed up.  No magentas, or yellow appears in the first row, just 3 blacks and one dark cyan.

Did more whirring and clicking.  Made another row and it began to show improvement, but the third Light Black began to miss a few square which were okay before.

Last one did all 8 inks and maybe one or two misses of a square.  It also did the Dark Magenta, Light Cyan, Light Magenta, and Yellow that time.  Prints are starting to look okay now too.  Maintenance Pad dropped 27% in this mess too.

"So which black is being used in the Auto Clean from the printer's LCD menu?  I'm guessing it is the Photo Black and not the Matte Black?"  So if true, then the Matte Black could be plugged if it is only using Photo Black for the Auto Clean?

TIA.

SG

[hugowolf]

It uses whichever black is in the lines at the time. If it was set for matte it uses MK and if it was set for glossy, it uses PK. It is cleaning the nozzles not the ink.

So what sort of print are you getting from the standard, manual, non-auto nozzle check print?

I would suggest a manual nozzle check print. If that shows missing nozzles, then a regular (not the auto nozzle check) cleaning. Then a manual nozzle check. If that isn’t clear, then try printing something like a Granger color chart. Repeated head cleanings aren’t recommended.

Brian A

[Some Guy]

It uses whichever black is in the lines at the time. If it was set for matte it uses MK and if it was set for glossy, it uses PK. It is cleaning the nozzles not the ink.

So what sort of print are you getting from the standard, manual, non-auto nozzle check print?

Brian, print was cyan wherever black should have been.

I was using "Matte Black" prior to the Auto Clean.  Seems it automatically switched back to "Photo Black" for the AutoClean from all the atypical whirring and clicking.  No knowledge as to what black is actually used on the printer's checkerboard pattern, other than maybe a dozen squares out of what should have been hundreds.  It was plugged badly!

I can only assume it was the Photo Black that was plugged since there is no indication on the print as to which black is used for the cleaning.  Auto Clean took forever as it appears it reads the color pattern as I could see the blue light pass over the test pattern, then repeat printing another row of checkerboards after dumping more ink onto the maintenance tank.  It used a lot of ink.

Granted, I have dry heated air and running two humidifiers isn't helping at all.  Even my portable Epson dye printer will plug in two weeks if not used.  The Canon takes maybe 3-4 weeks to plug up, but it is slight compared to what happened with the 3880.  With the heavy cyan in lieu of black ink, I thought the ICC profiles went bad, just the one black was plugged.  Surprised it pumped out so much cyan for the black too.  Must be mixing cyan along with the black for neutrality or a cool black?

SG