Our clinics use inkjet printers to print off baby photos for the mothers-to-be after their ultrasound. When we started this service, only the regular full size printers were commonly available, so we chose Canon and were served well. That is until they started being refilled with non Canon inks. At first, there did not seem to be a problem. However, one by one, they started to print strange colours. Print head cleaning seemed to fix it, for a short while, then the problem would come back. More and more print head cleanings would be needed to get it back to proper printouts. After some research into the problem online, it seems this is quite a common issue. There were many upset posts about off brand ink ruining their printer (not just Canon, even though that is what I was focused on). On the other hand, many people defended the cheap ink, but they also mentioned that they cleaned their print heads religiously, and that seemed to be the trick. Not running the cleaning cycle regularly would eventually lead to the print head being permanently marred by the ink. Unfortunately, it was just not feasible for us to run weekly cleanings.

We have since switched to Epson Picturemate printers, mainly for the size and simplicity, and have not had a lick of trouble yet.

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