Canon BJC-6000 bubble jet printerIn January 2000 I purchased a Canon BJC-6000 bubble jet colour printer (similar to the Canon S450 printer). I usually like Canon products, but the more I use this printer, the less I am pleased with it's overall reliability & economy (see ink comments way below). In fact, over time this printer has proved to be very frustrating, including poor design which makes it all but impossible to get at paper jams. Below I've listed some things I've learned about this printer. INK CARTRIDGES & PRINT HEADS: The Canon BJC-6000 printer initially received above average magazine reviews (don't believe everything you read in magazine reviews) & it must have sold well because I found it very difficult to find any place that had stock on more than 50% of the various ink cartridges (7 of them), or print heads (3 of them) it can use, even almost a year after I bought the printer. Apparently ink for this printer is suppose to be more economical than most other printers (don't believe it), partly because it allegedly uses ink efficiently (finer droplets), partly because you only have to change the ink tank that's empty & not throw away the other colours that aren't empty yet (less of an advantage than you might think) & partly because you do not have to buy a new sprayer nozzle housing (print head unit or BJ cartridge) each time you change ink tanks (only every so often when it's worn out, or about 1 print head for every 10 ink cartridges, if you believe Canon's claims). Despite the claim by Canon that the print head sprayer (BJ cartridge) only needs replacing once for each 10 ink cartridges, I'm only on my 3rd or 4th black ink cartridge & the sprayer head already is wearing out & causing significant problems despite electronic & manual cleaning as per the manual. When printing pages with colour graphics after the printer has been siting unused for several hours I get black smeared over the colour graphic until part way down the page, see examples. I also get unclean blacks for the first 2/3rds of a page & sometimes a colour in place of where black text should be. Canon weasels out of their advertised claim of 1 print head for each 10 ink cartridges by saying that the print head is a "consumable part" & therefore subject only to a 90 day warranty, not the 12 month warranty that comes with the rest of the machine. Also, I suspect that Canon's exaggerated print head life expectancy is based on using quality setting 4 & the plain paper setting (which often isn't adequate for quality printing). If you use quality setting 1, 2 or 3 & the high resolution paper setting, expect far less life out of the print head. INK ECONOMY: Despite how economical the ink is supposed to be on this printer compared to others, I'm not at all convinced it's any less expensive than other printers & I would still have preferred to see much larger ink tanks that don't run out so quickly, especially considering that there is still a lot of ink tied up in the felt blotter tank that never gets used. There is a small light reflecting prism at the bottom inside of each transparent ink tank which first tells you via the status monitor that you are almost empty of a particular ink & later tells the status monitor that it's completely empty (at which point it won't print until you put a new ink cartridge in). I've discovered that when the status monitor tells you an ink cartridge is empty, there actually is still a huge amount of ink absorbed in the felt blotter tank that can be used up. If you put masking tape around the bottom of the transparent part of the ink tank so the prism can't let the status monitor see that the clear chamber is empty, you can get a lot more use out of the cartridge, or at least allow you to use the printer until you can purchase new ink cartridges. When it finally does start to show signs of really being out of ink, make sure you replace the ink right away so the print nozzles don't clog up with dried ink. I would also have preferred to see a design where all 7 types of ink cartridges could be housed at once so you didn't have to switch the photo quality tanks with the big black tank, when switching between printing non-photo quality text/graphics pages & printing photos . There certainly is enough space to accommodate all 7 ink cartridges at once, by putting one more holder in for the three photo cartridges. The current design is a nuisance & a design shortcoming in my opinion. I've found that the PHOTO BLACK ink (BCI-3ePBK) gives a noticeably blacker black (crisper & cleaner) on black text using label stock, than the REGULAR BLACK ink (BCI-3eBK) which often looks like a dull black in comparison. I fail to understand why Canon doesn't use the better looking PHOTO BLACK ink as the ONLY black ink & eliminate the need for two different types of black ink. This could also simplify things by only having 2 print heads rather than 3. I noticed that in the new Canon model BLC-8200, it only uses one type of black rather than two. Although the main black ink tank (BCI-3eBK or BC-30e with the print head) for text is bigger (27 ml, or just under an ounce) than the colour & photo ink tanks (13 ml, or just under half an ounce for colour), there is enough room for a main black ink tank that holds 2 - 4 times the amount of ink that Canon actually makes the BCI-3eBK tank to hold. Since standard black for text is the ink that is used most often, I would have preferred to see a black ink tank twice or quadruple the capacity of this one, even if it cost a little more money. Of course from Canon's perspective they wouldn't be able to make as much money from selling ink if they provided a larger tank. Perhaps some enterprising company will design a larger tank to fit in there. Additionally, I have found that the BJC-6000 printer wastes a LOT of ink by regularly going through a self test routine which sprays ink into a cavity in the base of the printer to keep the print head sprayer nozzles purged of any dry ink. So much for efficient use of ink. One soon gets the impression with any printer (especially this one) that the real money to be made by manufacturers is not in selling the printer, but in selling the various inks & print head sprayers (it's all about extracting as much money from you for consumables as they can get). At about $20. Canadian per color/photo ink tank that only holds just under 1/2 an ounce (times 6 of those), and about $25. Canadian for the main black ink tank that only holds just under 1 ounce, plus the price of the sprayer print heads (main black print head is about $60. CDN including one ink cartridge), it's not hard to see that you can spend a small fortune to keep all 7 ink tanks in operation (about $190. CDN just for one set of 7 ink tanks, including the 3 BJ cartridge print head sprayer/holders, or $145. for just the 7 inks). I'm surprised that so far I haven't seen a third party refill ink kit for this popular printer, because it looks like it would be very easy to refill. The ink cartridge is not pressurized, nor does it have a bladder like some other cartridges, so it seems like it would be a snap to top up the empty ink chamber with compatible ink. You would be amazed at how quickly the ink gets used up when printing photographs. If you are aware of a third party kit to refill the 7 ink tanks, please let me know. I recently came across a web site at http://www.oddparts.com/ink which offers bulk ink by the pint at a really good price of $159. US for a package of 7 pints (1 pint of each colour). However, they did not answer my email questions after 3 days & when I phoned to make a purchase, the lady I spoke with seemed defensive when I asked questions about whether their ink would perform just like the Canon ink. She actually discouraged me from purchasing, so I didn't buy anything. She even mentioned that the photo inks did not work well on HP glossy photo paper (a cause for concern). Either she was having a bad day (we all have those), or she was not confident that I would be as satisfied with the results using her ink as I am with the Canon ink. If you buy from this company, please let me know if your were satisfied with the ink & whether photographic quality is the same as Canon ink. I've tried an ink refill kit from Nomi (Cat. # BJC-6000-CK) which has black & the 3 basic colors (but not the 3 photo colors) & it's $39.99 CDN at most computer stores & should give 3-4 refills for each bottle. Unfortunately it's VERY messy, the thin rubber gloves rip almost right away, the hand drill is almost impossible to use (use a power drill instead), everything doesn't fit neatly back into the tight packaging & the instructions advise drilling a second hole above the felt container (probably a bad idea because then it leaks if you don't plug it). Worst of all, I've had two color print heads go defective on me shortly after refilling with the colored ink. I would not recommend using this Nomi brand of ink refill for this printer. Take note that Canon changed the part numbers for all of the ink tanks & BJ cartridges by putting the letter "e" in the middle of the part number. The "e" apparently stands for "enhanced" quality with finer droplets from the spray nozzles. The Canon S450 printer uses the same 7 ink tanks & BJ sprayer cartridges as the BJC-6000 printer & the Canon S400 uses the same ink tanks as the BJC-6000. Here are the part numbers: BCI-3eBk Black BJ Ink Tank, part
# F47-3131-400 $25. (Canadian) BCI-3eC Cyan BJ Ink Tank, part
# F47-3141-400 $20. BCI-3ePC Photo Cyan BJ Ink Tank,
Part # F47-3171-400 $20. YELLOW HIGHLIGHTER: While experimenting I discovered that many of the standard printer settings on plain paper allowed a yellow highlighter pen to smear black text, regardless of how long the ink has had to dry. If you put your settings to "High Resolution Paper" (even it you're using plain paper), set the quality setting to "1, 2 or 3" which automatically sets it to "Diffusion", it will always cause text not to smear with a yellow highlighter pen. These settings will take noticeably longer for the page to print out & cause a shorter life expectancy on the print heads, but I presume they use the ink more sparingly so it doesn't smear. SOFTWARE INSTALLATION: Windows NT software (version 3) doesn't come on the standard setup CD, but it is available as a download from the Canon web site & it's also available on the "Canon Creative Pro" CD software that also comes with the printer. The "Canon Creative Pro" CD wasn't compatible (wouldn't read) with my SCSI Yamaha CRW4416SX player/burner & barely worked on a SCSI Sony CD-ROM CDU625 player in another machine, but it did work on an old IDE Panasonic CD-ROM CR-574 player. I had Canon mail me another CD which didn't work any better, so I presume that the "Canon Creative Pro" CD had format or pressing problems that will affect it's usability on certain brands of CD-ROMs. The Canon BJC-6000 setup software & reference guide CD did not have any reading problems on any of the 3 CD-ROMs I tried it on. I found after installing the NT printer driver software that it failed to clear out all the temp files that it uses during installation (sloppy programming), so I had to manually delete the temp files. I also found the installation of "Canon Creative Pro" left a few temp files. The "Canon Creative Pro" complete install uses a total of 110 MB of hard drive space. 12 MB goes in the operating system directory, 20 MB goes in the directory where you have Microsoft Word installed & 78 MB goes in whichever directory you install the programs in. A version 4 printer driver is now available from the Canon site, but I have not tried it since I've learned all the workarounds for the version 3 driver. ON-LINE REGISTRATION: Built into the "Canon Creative Pro" CD is an on-line registration, but it has two problems. If you're a Canadian & you type in a proper postal code with the space in it (i.e. N6K 2Z1) it will reject but it won't tell you exactly why it rejected. If you remove the space it will work. Also the on-line registration software doesn't recognize cable modems which are always on-line. You need to have a telephone modem if you want to register on-line. I'm told by Canon Canada that the on-line registration is only for Americans, but it doesn't say that on the registration. NT PRINT PREFERENCES: The Canon Windows NT printer driver software is a little different than Windows 95/98. You cannot SAVE your personal preferences in Microsoft Word when menuing under File/Print. Instead you have to go to the lower left corner of your desktop & menu under Start/Settings/Printers then right click on the Canon BJC-6000 icon & left click on Document Defaults. When you've set your preferences here, they will save when you click OK. Unfortunately you can only save your most common preferences, you cannot save print preferences on a file by file basis. For graphics, I found that I almost always set Media Type to "High Resolution Paper" instead of "Plain Paper" because the Plain Paper setting causes coloured graphics to appear duller. When I looked at the printed graphics with a magnifying glass I could see that the Plain Paper setting causes the colored graphic to have a fine screen of black dots sprayed over it. I have no idea why Canon created it this way unless it was to sell more high resolution paper by making plain paper look worse than it normally would, or unless it was a flaw (bug) in the printer driver. For graphics, I would recommend using the "High Resolution Paper" setting even when you're using plain paper, unless the plain paper bleeds ink (most don't). When you click on the "Advanced" button, you'll see a print quality resolution, I usually set mine on #2 for graphics & photos. When doing graphics on resolution #3 setting, I have frequently found the colors to be off significantly (i.e. yellow looks orange), but on #2 the graphic colors are pretty accurate. Photos done on quality resolution #1 tend to make black areas too solid black & may not allow the detail in the black areas to show. Setting print quality to #4 will sometimes cause streaking in graphics if you have a slightly clogged print head & even on #3 you might see slight streaking, but usually not on #2 because the print head moves over the paper much slower. Ink streaking can usually be solved by doing a print head cleaning from the status monitor. For regular black text printing, resolution #4 is often normal. Make sure the paper feed says "auto feeder". If you click on the "color" button you'll see the "Output Style" which should be set to "Vivid" to get sharper coloured graphics, or "Accurate" for photographs (using the optional photo ink cartridges). For photographs I have found that in the Advanced Properties area, if the brightness is set at normal the picture is too light. I either set the brightness at "Dark" which looks pretty good but can increase an already red face to make it look sunburn, or I leave the brightness control at "Normal" & increase the "Intensity" slider to 10 or 15 (you'll have to experiment to find the best position). When printing photographs, it is best to use "Glossy Photo Paper" because it gives slightly deeper blacks & higher contrast than "High Resolution Paper". AUTO FEEDER TRAY: The auto feeder tray is positioned on a steep angle so that gravity will assist the feed wheels. In my opinion that is a much better design than my Hewlett Packard printer where the paper tray is horizontally positioned. SET TEMPLATES TO AUTO FEEDER: Because this printer has an auto feeder tray & a manual feeder slot, you must make sure that ALL 3 areas of print software are set for "auto feeder" if you are using the auto feeder paper tray, otherwise you will get a message saying that the printer is out of paper. Label templates that come with Microsoft Word usually are set to manual feeding, so be aware that when you menu under File/Print, you will have to click on the "options" button then make sure that the default tray is set to "auto feeder". Also, in Microsoft Word you may have to menu under File/Page Setup & set to "Auto Feeder". OVERSIZED GRAPHICS/PICTURES: If you are printing a graphic or picture from Microsoft Word or similar program, you will get sharper print resolution by starting with an oversized graphic or picture & format scale the size down on the page rather than scaling it down in a paint program. I found that when I used oversized pictures & format scaled the size down to a lower percentage in the desk top publishing program (or word processing program), the Canon BJC-6000 was able to produce extremely fine resolution (very pleasing). An alternative to format scaling the size down, is to load the picture into a program like Abode PhotoShop, menu under Image/Image size, untick "resample image", change the % or size to a smaller amount (which increases the print resolution) & save. You can also increase your print resolution (quality) when scanning in a picture by setting your "Output Resolution" lower than your "Scan Resolution" which will increase the "Magnification" or "Print Resolution", which increases the final print quality. Oversized graphics & pictures will increase the data size of the file, but you will often find it well worth the increase in print quality. The Canon manual makes no mention of this method of increasing picture/graphic quality, but it should. It's all too easy to blame the printer for low resolution graphics, when the real problem could be the method you are scaling your graphics by. SETTINGS FOR PHOTOGRAPHS: For photographs you should use the 3 photo ink cartridges (on the left in place of where the big black ink cartridge normal sits) & the standard 3 regular colour cartridges. Whatever application you're printing out of, you should menu under File/Print, which will open up the "Print" properties box. Click on properties, select the SuperPhoto icon, make sure the BJ Cartridge says "Photo/color" & where it says Media Type select "Glossy Photo Paper" if that is what you are using. Now click on the "Advanced" button & make sure the Paper Feed says "Auto feeder". Now click on the Color button at the lower left & make sure that Output style is set to "Accurate" (only use Vivid for non photographs like logos) & make sure Brightness is set to "Dark" (normal makes the picture too light), or that Brightness is set to "Normal" & Intensity is set to 10 or 15. All other settings in this area should be left in their middle default positions. Since these are not your normal default settings for regular (non photographic) printing, each time you open up an application to print photographs, you will have to reset these settings (settings are not retained in the work file). Photos will use up the ink at a surprisingly fast rate (not very economical). PARALLEL PRINTER CABLE: It's probably a good idea to buy a high quality IEEE-1284 parallel printer cable (doesn't come with printer), but a cheap cable won't affect resolution despite what some manufacturers claim. A cheap cable might affect reliability or RF interference (noise). I like the Belkin F2A046-10 cable, but if you don't need the 10 foot length, get the 6 foot length (F2A046-6) especially if you're looping through a scanner. The Canon FB 620P scanner has an active amplifier (not a passive loop through) so this may not be as much of a problem with long cable lengths as it might be for some other scanners. CANOCRAFT CS-P COPY SOFTWARE DOESN'T WORK WITH THIS PRINTER USING STANDARD PREFERENCE SETTINGS: When I bought the Canon Canoscan FB 620P scanner, it came bundled with the Canocraft CS-P Copy program which is designed to allow your scanner to print something out on your printer (like a photocopier). It worked fine for the last year when the Canon scanner was hooked up to the HP Deskjet 500 printer, but now that I have hooked in the new Canon BJC-6000 printer, this copy utility no longer works with the standard printer preference settings. Apparently Canon didn't try their scanner with their printer to see if the drivers would actually work in Windows NT. At the suggestion of Canon, I tried all 5 parallel port settings on my motherboard bios, but nothing helped. Finally Canon & I discovered that the printer Status Monitor was interfering with the communications between the scanner & printer. Apparently the Status Monitor is an always on device (once the print command has been given), but any parallel port device or software must take their turn one at a time on a parallel chain. The solution is to change the standard preference settings as follows. Go into Start/Settings/Printers & right mouse click on the Canon BJC-6000 icon, menu down & left mouse click on "Properties", then click on the "Scheduling" tab, then click on the radio button that says "Start printing after last page is spooled", then click on OK. This will start the Status Monitor only after the scanner has completed its scan. Canon should have written their Windows NT printer driver for the BJC-6000 to automatically set this preference setting, but they didn't. Now that they know about it, hopefully this will be corrected in the next software release. Windows NT can't use USB printer connections, but if you are using another operating system that can use USB connections & you've bought the updated BJC-6000 series model printer with USB connectors instead of a parallel connection, you probably won't have this conflict mentioned above. As an alternative, since the printer Status Monitor is the problem causing the conflict here, you can just turn the status monitor off by going to Start/Settings/Printers & right mouse click on the Canon BJC-6000 icon, menu down & left mouse click on "enable Status Monitor" if it was already ticked on. This turns off the Status Monitor in case turning on spooling caused any problems, however it is usually better to leave the Status Monitor on so you know what's happening to your BLC-6000 printer. CANON CUSTOMER SUPPORT: I've had several occasions to phone Canon Canadian customer support because the software wasn't as intuitive as it should be & the printer manual wasn't answering all my questions. I also had to have the printer in for repair because the paper feed mechanism jammed up & the lid switch on the cover malfunctioned. Also the main black print head sprayer malfunctioned. On about 2/3 rds of these occasions I found that customer support was quite knowledgeable, usually pleasant & able to answer all my concerns. That's a better batting average than most companies. Originally it was not difficult to reach customer support (a pleasant surprise), but now they have a multi-level phone menu which makes it very difficult & frustrating to actually get to speak to a person or return a call. If the manual were a little better, the preference settings set by default where they should have been, some of the bugs mentioned above were fixed, the print heads more durable & the ink didn't run out so quickly, then this printer would be more idiot proof (more intuitive) & I probably wouldn't need to call customer support at all. If you want to read up on the details of the Canon BJC-6000 printer (now obsolete already & replaced by the almost identical Canon S450 printer), they can be found at http://www.ccsi.canon.com/bjc/index.html There is a good site at http://members.1stnetusa.com/a/inkjet/ by Jon Schweitzer, that has all kinds of tips on how to get the best economy from various printers including how to refill ink cartridges. By Doug Hembruff. |
Home Page & Power Products | Tutorials | Opinions | Legacy Video Production | Contact Info