Brother printer unusable print quality

I have a brother MFC-J5910DW with refillable cartridges.

This morning I printed a minnie mouse graphic with no problems at all and created a jigsaw from it.

Then I tried to print a photograph for a keyring and the quality was terrible. I was advised to clean the print heads so I did this twice. The first attempt the yellows showed up slightly off and the second time a bit worse and then after that there were large sections of the print quality report missing because the printing was so bad. Brother told me to do the cleaning up to 6 times but each time it got worse.

So this afternoon I bought the printer back to the shop and they gave me a new one. I have just gotten home and plugged the new printer in, put in my refillable cartridges and printed the test sheet and it is the exact same as the old printer, completely unusable quality, barely printing text at all.

If this is a brand new printer its leading me to believe that there is a problem with the ink but I have no idea what or how to fix it. Any suggestions would be very very very much appreciated.

can you post picture of your refillable carts?? did you removed rubber chop out??

I have tried printing with the rubber bungs in and out

Attachment 1213

I cant explain how bad the printing is. I'll photocopy something and photograph the original and the copy so you can see

ok. tell me please how much ink is showing on your screen monitor??
Also please take rubbers out. perform head clean and try to print nozzle test page.

Believe it or not, this almost white page is a best quality colour photocopy of the magazine beside it.
Attachment 1214

they all say full to the top, do I take out the big or the small rubbers? I'm nearly afraid to do a head clean since that seemed to cause the problems on the other printer this morning.

take them out completely.

Thanks Paul, it was the rubbers causing the problem. I remove them and did a clean and a test print as you advised and I got something on the page. I had to clean and print again to get correct results.

However, after printing 4-5 proper images I then got an image that was just yellow, removing the rubbers and cleaning again fixed this immediately.

Thanks again for all your help

Do you have the small funnels that came with your cartridges installed? The Brother cartridges do not like the bungs in - they do supply little flying saucer shaped funnels that are designed to be left in the holes. I think bungs are necessary on epson cartridges as they are gravity fed, I believe the Brother sucks the ink through and hence need to be open to the air.

Oh no!! I didn't know what they were and when I got it working initially I'd say I dumped them. I wonder can I just leave the small bung out, will that be ok?

Is this what you chucked away?
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-h.../tmp_share.jpg

Yep, but just looked and found them, I assume the fatter end goes into the smaller of the two holes?

Ohhh. Great. As i found few extra so i could send them to you if needed.

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Originally Posted by Paul

Ohhh. Great. As i found few extra so i could send them to you if needed.

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thanks so much! You are so good

Well between us all we tend to come up with the correct answer eventually lol

Yep, well pleased I got mine sorted, I've put the large bungs back in to see if was just a temporary air lock and the air filters are in place.
Will do some tests tomorrow.
Need to find the right print settings now.
Thanks for the help.

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Originally Posted by WorthDoingRight

Do you have the small funnels that came with your cartridges installed? The Brother cartridges do not like the bungs in - they do supply little flying saucer shaped funnels that are designed to be left in the holes. I think bungs are necessary on epson cartridges as they are gravity fed, I believe the Brother sucks the ink through and hence need to be open to the air.

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They are called filters.

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Originally Posted by Ian M

They are called filters.

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Well they are filters imho only if they have filter material in them. If when they arrive they have no filter material then they are little funnels lol

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Originally Posted by WorthDoingRight

Well they are filters imho only if they have filter material in them. If when they arrive they have no filter material then they are little funnels lol

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Oh what do I know? I'd better leave it to the experts. Think it's time I faded back into the background with some of the others again.

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Originally Posted by Ian M

Oh what do I know? I'd better leave it to the experts. Think it's time I faded back into the background with some of the others again.

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Well I do think they are supposed to be filters, I have seen them before with filter material in them. But the ones supplied definitely do not have any filter material in them and do no seem to come apart to install any so I can see no advantage to using them over just removing the bung! Mine are sat in my draw for just that reason. Anyway Ian we all lurk in the background and just pounce when necessary.

Shh Hush, while we've been discussing it PC World and Maplins have just increased the price by £80.00 since Sunday.

The 5910 goes up and down in price like a yo-yo. I think it is one of these products that is often used by retailers to say 'was £189 now £99' for which obviously it keeps going back up for at least 28 days lol.

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Originally Posted by WorthDoingRight

Well they are filters imho only if they have filter material in them. If when they arrive they have no filter material then they are little funnels lol

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They're called filters.

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Originally Posted by Justin

They're called filters.

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A Filter is a porous device for removing impurities or solid particles from a liquid or gas passed through it. As these plastic pieces as supplied with the Brother cartridges do not in any way shape or form filter anything they are not filters - if and when you fill them with filter material then they can be called filters. They are also not really a funnel so maybe they should just be called plastic vents lol

We didn't say they WERE filters, we said they WERE CALLED filters. But thank you very much for the lesson anyway, always appreciate a smart arse :wink:

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Originally Posted by Justin

We didn't say they WERE filters, we said they WERE CALLED filters. But thank you very much for the lesson anyway, always appreciate a smart arse :wink:

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Well I searched hi and lo to find an answer on google and there did not seem to be an answer as to what they are called. I think that they were ultimately designed to be a filter as I have seen them with filter paper in the flyingsaucer shaped bit. As supplied however with my cartridges they have no filter material and they seem to be sealed so cannot be opened to put filter material in. In fact as they are they seem to have no advantage over just removing the bung as they do not stop anything entering the holes. As they would say 'as bout as useful as a chocolate teapot' :smile:

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Originally Posted by WorthDoingRight

Well I searched hi and lo to find an answer on google and there did not seem to be an answer as to what they are called. I think that they were ultimately designed to be a filter as I have seen them with filter paper in the flyingsaucer shaped bit. As supplied however with my cartridges they have no filter material and they seem to be sealed so cannot be opened to put filter material in. In fact as they are they seem to have no advantage over just removing the bung as they do not stop anything entering the holes. As they would say 'as bout as useful as a chocolate teapot' :smile:

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OK try & get your head around this.

A CISS system is based on the Mariotte's bottle principle. This is a stoppered reservoir supplied with an air inlet and a siphon. The pressure at the bottom of the air inlet is always the same as the pressure outside the reservoir, i.e. the atmospheric pressure. This then helps to push the ink through the tubes to the cartridges that feed the print head or tubes from the cartridges to the print head.

The air filters are there to control the atmospheric air pressure & also have a dual purpose to keep out things such as dirt or dust that may contaminate the ink.

Now on my broadband I have a filter on there which doesn't have any paper inside as it is there to filter the signal.

So, going back to Mariotte's bottle principle this means a filter not only cleans it can also be used to control.

As for bungs well, I know where I would like to shove one :wink:

Having downloaded and read a CISS manual it seems they are not bungs they are 'Air Balance Plugs' lol - Lets just assume that items that come with CISS are called 'Air Balance Plugs' and 'Filters' due to some damn awful chinglish translation (or a wish to make simple objects appear fancier than they really are). Whatever we decide to call them is I suppose irrelevant as long as it defines the object in question enough to allow someone new to refillable or CISS systems to work out what we are talking about.

An air balance plug is the rubber stopper that you replace with the air filter. You can call them whatever you want but, the rest of us will stick to what they are really called.

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Whatever we decide to call them is I suppose irrelevant as long as it defines the object in question enough to allow someone new to refillable or CISS systems to work out what we are talking about.

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All you will do is confuse someone who is new which is probably what you are doing already.

Well Ian M I at least tried to keep my replies polite, your replies seem to be coming straight out of where an air balance plug would fit nicely!

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Originally Posted by Ian M

All you will do is confuse someone who is new which is probably what you are doing already.

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i agree here....keep it simple for new folks starting into this....to many la-de-da words and folks get confused.
this business is awkward enough to learn without overcomplicating it for others :rolleyes:

SIMPLES...and not the meerkat version !

@bigj2552 How is my initial comment 'they do supply little flying saucer shaped funnels that are designed to be left in the holes' overcomplicating matters? I said what they looked like, where they went and what they did!

Whatever you call them the description should have been enough for them to be recognised and used.

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Originally Posted by WorthDoingRight

@bigj2552 How is my initial comment 'they do supply little flying saucer shaped funnels that are designed to be left in the holes' overcomplicating matters? I said what they looked like, where they went and what they did!

Whatever you call them the description should have been enough for them to be recognised and used.

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sorry bud - but your whole demeanor sometimes comes over as "overcomplicating" things just a tad when its really not needed...not for the sake of the regulars, for the new folks coming in......
and i,m NOT just referring to this post - others posts as well bud....

suggestion for you my forum friend - have a long hot coffee and chill back a bit...trust me, you will get on a lot better and make MORE friends :wink:..listen to the ol man :wink:

johnny

Well, your comments are noted and I will go back to my cold cup of coffee and get on with some productive work for my own benefit and leave helping to others. I might be seen as nit-picking but I come from a family with a long history of working on cutting edge engineering projects and believing in the ethos of 'worth doing right' and sometimes that gets the better of me when answering on here.

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Originally Posted by WorthDoingRight

Well Ian M I at least tried to keep my replies polite, your replies seem to be coming straight out of where an air balance plug would fit nicely!

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What isn't polite about my replies? All I have done it stated the facts & even added a bit of science in there too. The problem we do seem to have here is that someone is wrong who will not admit they are wrong. I'm not the only person who has tried to put you right on this & explain what is the correct name for something. If for example I needed some new CISS Air Filters I wouldn't search on the internet for 'flying saucer shaped thingy's' would I. That is the reason why we do like to use the correct name for something.

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Originally Posted by WorthDoingRight

Well Ian M I at least tried to keep my replies polite, your replies seem to be coming straight out of where an air balance plug would fit nicely!

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I would suggest you report me to admin.

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Originally Posted by Ian M

I would suggest you report me to admin.

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LOL I am sure if admin had any issues they would let us both know :biggrin:


I did not say that they were not called filters, I just made the comment that as supplied they were not capable of filtering anything! If someone had said to me where are the filters that were supplied with your refillable cartridges, I would have answered, no filters were supplied but there were some weird flying saucer shapedbits of plastic :rolleyes: Remember 'Today, if you are not confused, you are just not thinking clearly'.

I think you need to agreed to disagree and move on and keep the forum and keep smiling :biggrin:

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Originally Posted by WorthDoingRight

Well they are filters imho only if they have filter material in them. If when they arrive they have no filter material then they are little funnels lol

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I'm probably setting the cat well and truly amongst the pigeons here, but my "little flying saucer shaped funnel" things have a thin white mesh disc in the middle of them, which looks like a filter. I always thought of them as filters because they have a filter in them.

I didn't know anyone supplied them with the filter missing. That said, some have been known to separate into two halves in the shipping bag, so it's possible the filter material could have fallen out.