Help with Pro-100 black ink streaks on prints

NAwlins Contrarian · Jan 5, 2025

After almost eight years, I'm experiencing an issue I can't readily solve with the Canon Pro-100 at work. It's a shared printer and I'm not necessarily aware of who printed, how, when, or on what--although it is fairly light-duty and almost certainly sees very little printing anything other than on Canon RC photo paper or plain copier-type paper.

The other day I printed two photos, then on the third print I got some black ink streaks. The ones that initially caught my eye were horizontal, i.e. perpendicular to the paper feed direction. I thought no biggie, seen this before, a few bottom plate cleanings as triggered through the driver and all should be well. Except after maybe twenty such cleanings, the ink streaks are substantially reduced but not gone, and don't really seem to be improving further. And now the ink streaks are basically vertical, i.e. parallel to the paper feed direction. A Canon manual shows this:

with the little raised plastic fingers to be cleaned with a swab to resolve stubborn bottom plate issues. Below and between them you can see the foam waste ink pad, which shows some ink, presumably from self-cleanings and some borderless printing, but not a crazy amount, not thick, and not seemingly enough to get to the surface riding on the raised little fingers. I tried cleaning the fingers as indicated, especially in the area of the main streaking, but the swabs come back relatively clean and the situation does not improve.

So it seems pretty likely that ink is somewhere else inside.

Can you recommend a procedure to investigate and hopefully solve this? Thanks!

palombian · Jan 5, 2025

NAwlins Contrarian said:
After almost eight years, I'm experiencing an issue I can't readily solve with the Canon Pro-100 at work. It's a shared printer and I'm not necessarily aware of who printed, how, when, or on what--although it is fairly light-duty and almost certainly sees very little printing anything other than on Canon RC photo paper or plain copier-type paper.

The other day I printed two photos, then on the third print I got some black ink streaks. The ones that initially caught my eye were horizontal, i.e. perpendicular to the paper feed direction. I thought no biggie, seen this before, a few bottom plate cleanings as triggered through the driver and all should be well. Except after maybe twenty such cleanings, the ink streaks are substantially reduced but not gone, and don't really seem to be improving further. And now the ink streaks are basically vertical, i.e. parallel to the paper feed direction. A Canon manual shows this:

with the little raised plastic fingers to be cleaned with a swab to resolve stubborn bottom plate issues. Below and between them you can see the foam waste ink pad, which shows some ink, presumably from self-cleanings and some borderless printing, but not a crazy amount, not thick, and not seemingly enough to get to the surface riding on the raised little fingers. I tried cleaning the fingers as indicated, especially in the area of the main streaking, but the swabs come back relatively clean and the situation does not improve.

So it seems pretty likely that ink is somewhere else inside.

Can you recommend a procedure to investigate and hopefully solve this? Thanks!

I didn't observe this yet, but I am thinking with you.

I suppose the streaks were on the photo side, and not the back, in this case you should look to structures on top of the paper.

Maybe some became dirty by ink spray.

See this photo with paper inserted.

Good luck.

Gesture · Jan 5, 2025

I thought also warning sign of waste ink pads getting full, but you seem to have excluded that??? How far apart are the lines?

Good luck.

PanoSteve · Jan 12, 2025

NAwlins Contrarian said:
After almost eight years, I'm experiencing an issue I can't readily solve with the Canon Pro-100 at work. It's a shared printer and I'm not necessarily aware of who printed, how, when, or on what--although it is fairly light-duty and almost certainly sees very little printing anything other than on Canon RC photo paper or plain copier-type paper.

The other day I printed two photos, then on the third print I got some black ink streaks. The ones that initially caught my eye were horizontal, i.e. perpendicular to the paper feed direction. I thought no biggie, seen this before, a few bottom plate cleanings as triggered through the driver and all should be well. Except after maybe twenty such cleanings, the ink streaks are substantially reduced but not gone, and don't really seem to be improving further. And now the ink streaks are basically vertical, i.e. parallel to the paper feed direction. A Canon manual shows this:

with the little raised plastic fingers to be cleaned with a swab to resolve stubborn bottom plate issues. Below and between them you can see the foam waste ink pad, which shows some ink, presumably from self-cleanings and some borderless printing, but not a crazy amount, not thick, and not seemingly enough to get to the surface riding on the raised little fingers. I tried cleaning the fingers as indicated, especially in the area of the main streaking, but the swabs come back relatively clean and the situation does not improve.

So it seems pretty likely that ink is somewhere else inside.

Can you recommend a procedure to investigate and hopefully solve this? Thanks!

Hi NA,

I don't know the Pro-100 particularly but the fact the swabs came up pretty clean is a positive. The switch in line direction is curious.

Clutching at straws but I wonder if the foam pads you mention are for borderless overspray rather than maintenance. One thing that stands out in your report is the eight year period. Could the maitenance pads be under the RHS cover and 8 years of gunk has got to the point where its being transferred by the head carriage?

I'm not a great fan of removing and replacing print heads if it can be avoided but one act of desperation might be to remove the carts and heads to inspect the area around the head it see if its carrying unexpected gunk.

If you can find a service manual it might have some suggestions.

palombian · Jan 14, 2025

The printhead rests on ceramic pads in 2 rubber cups. There is also a rubber wiper (see arrow) to clean it before. You can see all this on the right when you set the printhead in the position to change carts (image from PRO-10).

If this area doesn't look as this, but full of ink, you can clean it by spraying distilled water (using a syringe with a long needle) on the wiper and the pads and restart the printer. All the water should be drained afterwards. Repeat if necessary.

If not there could be a problem with the purge pump, maybe the outlet tube is clogged.

NAwlins Contrarian · Jan 20, 2025

NAwlins Contrarian said:
After almost eight years, I'm experiencing an issue I can't readily solve with the Canon Pro-100 at work....

The other day I printed two photos, then on the third print I got some black ink streaks. The ones that initially caught my eye were horizontal, i.e. perpendicular to the paper feed direction. I thought no biggie, seen this before, a few bottom plate cleanings as triggered through the driver and all should be well. Except after maybe twenty such cleanings, the ink streaks are substantially reduced but not gone, and don't really seem to be improving further.

Thanks for the responses so far. I haven't had much time to try to solve this problem, but to update: it remains a problem, and running successive Bottom Plate Cleanings reduces, but does not eliminate it, and the pattern strikes me as somewhat informative. Here is the first Bottom Plate Cleaning of the day:

Letter-size paper showing orientation though the paper path

and here's what it looks like after a couple of Bottom Plate Cleanings for the day:

As you can see, the problem improves but does not go away. The persistent black streaks are mainly in a pair of positions. That suggests to me that there's ink somewhere specific in the feed path, instead of there being some more general problem with a wiper or something. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

Regarding waste ink pads and such, they collect multiple things, including overspray from borderless printing--yes, I'm aware it's not the best, but this printer is going to get used that way--and also from self-cleanings.

Here's a look showing a Bottom Plate Cleaning page fresh out the printer, with the printer open, with the main problem area just above the right red arrow, an secondary problem area just above the left red arrow, both with rough lines to show the corresponding area inside:

Obviously there is ink in the pad, but the pad is below the path, so I don't see how ink would get from the pad onto the surface of photo paper.

Thanks for the past and any further assistance!

palombian · Jan 21, 2025

I am thinking along with you, although I have never seen any marks on my prints.

I mostly print borderless as well, and the interior of my PRO-10 (which shares most of the hardware) was sprayed with ink after 3000 pages. Yours is much cleaner.

I have already soaked ink from the cushions beneath (as Keith suggests) and once (gently) cleaned the timing belt.

I had similar marks on the folded paper like you did after cleaning the bottom plate (strangely enough resulting in ink stains on the TOP of the paper).

Maybe the dirt migrates down between the white blocks (see arrow). I cleaned them using kitchen paper sprayed with isopropanol. They turned from gray to white again, and the bottom plate test is almost clean too.

ChicagoRob · Jan 21, 2025

I was thinking of pulling the head and carts and thoroughly cleaning the bottom. However, if ink were transferred from the bottom of the printhead, the resulting marks would be more smudge-like, instead of the fine lines shown in your photos. Also, the marks would be parallel with head motion, unlike some of your samples. This is strange, because it would seem the most likely path for transfer would be from underneath the paper path, where the sponge and plastic strip reside.

palombian · Jan 21, 2025

ChicagoRob said:
I was thinking of pulling the head and carts and thoroughly cleaning the bottom. However, if ink were transferred from the bottom of the printhead, the resulting marks would be more smudge-like, instead of the fine lines shown in your photos. Also, the marks would be parallel with head motion, unlike some of your samples. This is strange, because it would seem the most likely path for transfer would be from underneath the paper path, where the sponge and plastic strip reside.

I have removed/replaced printheads several times in PRO-10 and PRO-9500 printers. It is without risk, but in my opinion, it won't solve the problem. If the printer pads are clean (see previous post), then the printhead is clean too.

My PRO-10 has printed 3000 pages without any major intervention; these are sturdy printers.

As I understand, the lines appear both on the prints and on the bottom plate cleaning sheet in the direction of the paper movement, not in the direction of the printhead movement.

There must be ink arriving somewhere in the paper path.

However, since the paper is aligned centrally in this printer, the traces should correspond with the borders of the most used paper when printing borderless (as you can see on the bottom plate sponges).

Maybe there is another cause. How many pages has the printer ?

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Help with Pro-100 black ink streaks on prints

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