My old i850 and current iP3000 have developed the same problem. After a year or two they both started printing a rusty brown or orange color instead of yellow, even during a nozzle check.
If I print enough yellow or clean the print head, either via software or with water/alcohol, it will cure the problem temporarily. But it gets worse over time and has to be purged or cleaned every day. I've done the water & alcohol & soaking & compressed air, but this only provides temporary help. Sometimes I would just print a yellow square which appeared to flush out the magenta that built up overnight.
After much frustration and many cleanings with the 850, I thought perhaps that the magenta ink may be leaking into the yellow ink somehow. How else would a nozzle check print a rusty brown coming out of the yellow nozzles? Perhaps there would be two leaks; one allowing the magenta to run out of its side and into the head, and one in the yellow pathway allowing the magenta to run in. It printed the rusty color very smoothly with no white lines. As you print a lot of yellow the color changes from rusty to orange and eventually to yellow.
From other forums I was warned that taking the printhead apart, removing the two small crews, meant it probably would never work again & this indeed was the case. But I figured it was not working properly anyway. So I took apart the 850 printhead by removing the two screws on the bottom and looked inside the plastic housing. Nothing much there. Just a gray colored rubbery seal or gasket between the black plastic housing and the white plastic that holds the nozzles.
I thought I would see a lot of magenta ink inside, since this is what is bleeding into my yellow, but I did not. All I saw was a tiny amount of cyan on the rubber seal. It could have even leaked out when I took the head apart. Anyway, I rinsed off the seal and put it all back together. I proceeded to get a printhead error message & the printer would not work. I played with tightening and loosing the screws and took it apart a couple more times, but to no avail.
There are no moving parts involved in what I did, and no visible electrical connections that were broken. I was real careful. But obviously something happens when taking these heads apart.
Recently my iP3000 developed the same problem time. The yellow started printing orange/rust color after a year or two of light duty use. Sometimes it looks like light magenta is being printed where the yellow should be. The nozzles are not clogged in the sense that yellow is skipping & leaving blank white lines or streaks. The iP3000 needs to do a color nozzle clean almost every day if I want to print color.
FWIW, I only use Canon inks. I typically print everyday & a couple times a week using color. I have also cleaned the iP3000 pretty thoroughly, including taking off the case in order to get at as much as possible.
I looked thru the i560, i850 and iP3000 threads and did not see anyone else mentioning this problem. Or I just missed it. But I find it unusual that both printers developed the same problem.
Has anyone else ever experienced this same situation? Is there a cure? Is there a trick to taking apart the printhead & still having it work?
See my later thread "Canon photo printer wrong colour mystery"
What you describe is exactly what happens to my printer.
You probably already know that inkjet printers have a "purge unit" On my i9100 it is located at the far right of the carriage. It comprises a suction pump and a wiper blade to wipe the print head. When you do a head clean, the purge unit sucks ink through the print head nozzles and dumps it in the printer's waste ink tank. The Purge unit also primes the print head by sucking ink into the nozzles of the head so that ink is in place ready to be "squirted" on to the paper by the print head.
I wonder if what is happening to the printers is that the purge unit no longer has enough suction to prime the print head so that some colours are missing. On my i9100 the yellow consistently fails (I have my own test sheet which shows this up) unless I carry out a few cleaning cycles, then it lasts for a day at most. Strangely when the yellow fails to print on my test sheet, the nozzle check on the printer still prints a full test pattern but it has the wrong colours. Looking at it you would not think there was a problem with the nozzles.
I had a thought that maybe the outlet pipe from the purge unit - which goes into the waste ink tank - is covered by the ink and is not in the air any more. I wonder if this could prevent the purge unit from operating efficiently.
I have the same problem with my IP3000. I can run the clean process 5 times and get it to work properly for a printing, and then an hour later, it's back printing a rusty color for yellow. Very bothersome. If I knew a new print head would fix the problem, I'd buy one.
I have not used the iP3000 for a couple weeks and needed it today for printing a document with color. Nothing critical, but the first thing I did was print a nozzle test pattern and of course was waiting to see magenta all over. I was surprised to actually see yellow! It did have a very slight magenta banding at the edges, but really minor & not worth doing a nozzle cleaning for what I needed printed.
When searching for a solution, there were a couple people with the same problem & they just bought a new printhead for $40 every year. It was worth it to them because the iP3000 does have use the chipped cartridges. They more than made up for the printhead cost by using aftermarket ink and/or carts. Of course they did a lot of printing.
I've heard the iP3000 sells for some serious money. I just looked at Amazon.com and saw "Buy new: $559.99 14 Used & new from $150.00". So I would hang onto that baby. I picked up an iP3500 fro $20 after rebate a couple months ago and will use that after my iP3000 runs dry. But I'll keep the iP3000 just in case I want to go back to it.
So I would say buy a printhead, hopefully cheap, for the iP3000.
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