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Two years ago I bought a Canon PIXMA MG5550 which never had a problem until recently, when the printed text started to appear "blurry".

I printed the nozzle check pattern and this is the result:

It is supposed to be a perfect grid with straight lines. As you can see, it's not (what's printed is blurred, the picture is not out of focus). If you click the image to view it not scaled down, you will notice that certain lines on the grid even split in two and then merge back together. On the left, where it says "PGBK", you can see what I mean by blurry text. All the other cartridges (C, M, Y and BK) do not have this problem.

So far I tried:

• Executing the printer's built-in nozzle cleaning (several times)


• Executing the printer's built-in deep nozzle cleaning (several times)


• Replacing the PGBK cartridge with a brand new one


• Replacing all cartridges with new ones

Nothing has worked, and I will have to buy a new printer if I can't solve this.

Any advice?

From page 174 in the User manual, here's how to perform a printhead alignment:

1. Load 2 sheets of A4/Letter paper


2. Go to Printer Properties. Click the Maintenance tab and the Custom Settings


3. Tick "align heads manually" and click OK


4. Click Start Print Head Alignment and then click Align Print Head


5. Enter the numbers of the patterns with the least noticeable vertical streaks and click OK


6. Another pattern is printed. This time enter the numbers with the least noticeable horizontal streaks and click OK.

They also have a video that shows how to do it.

InkJet printers generally don't last too long, if cleaning the printing head's with new cartridges doesn't work, there's not really too much to do.

You can try asking the manufacturer, but if it's old you don't have much chance getting a replacement, I'm not sure any warranty would cover the print heads after a certain amount of time.

Laser printers are a lot more expensive, but if you print often they can save you a fortune in ink (toner) and also don't dry out anywhere near as quickly.
I have a Brother Mono Laser Printer and the last time I went to print something I hadn't used it for over a year and it printed fine on the first page with no problem. Much better suited for Office scenarios too.

I have exactly the same problem with my two year old Canon MX926 Printer. The printout is exactly like the one pictured here.

I have swapped ink cartridges, performed manual and automatic head alignment, removed the head and re-seated it, cleaned the indexing strip - all to no avail.

Upon checking the various forums, it appears that this is a common problem amongst Cannon printers that Cannon has not acknowledged.

I've also found that if I change the text color of the document I'm printing, the text prints perfectly, however when it's black, I have blurred text. That means it's clearly not a hardware issue, but a software one, or if it is a hardware issue, it can only be the black print head assembly (which is separate to the color ones) as the problem does not show up in color, which means the rest of the printer assembly is fine.

Regardless, this is my second MX926 that's done this. I thought the first one failing in this way was just bad luck, but this is clearly a common pattern of failure amongst Canon printers.

Canon, please post a fix for this. I love the printer, but if this is a common fault amongst Canon products and you won't acknowledge it, I won't be buying Canon in the future.

This reminds me of the Ford Powershift Transmission denial which saw Ford US and Australia being fined Millions of dollars for failing to acknowledge a fault with their product.