Add an Ink System to Canon PIXMA Pro from Scratch

Today I’ll be going over installing a continuous ink system (CIS) on the Canon PIXMA Pro 9000 printer. To start with, we’re going to need an empty CIS. We’ll fill that with ink (which you can buy from BCHTechnologies.com) and try out a few different ways of mounting the wiring tubes.

There will be a few things you’ll need to know about before getting started, the first of which is the lid trigger. You can find the lid trigger on the right-hand side of your printer. Its job is to detect whether the lid is open or closed, but you can easily trick it. All you have to do is insert a piece of paper into the tiny opening. The lid sensor will assume that the lid is closed if something is there.

After successfully fooling your printer’s lid sensor, open the door inside and take your ink cartridges out of the printer. Upon doing so, you’ll see three essential components of the carriage.

The first will be the brass pins connected to the reading chips that allow communication between the cartridges and the rest of the printer. The second component is the ink intake, which is self-explanatory. The third and final component you’ll see is the little lever on the side intended to help you pull up and remove your printer’s printhead.

Now let’s go over how to install the CIS. Step one is to put a silicone washer on top of each ink intake valve. Doing this will help the cartridge form a tighter seal and reduce air bubbles within the system.

Fill the CIS

Step two is to fill the CIS with ink. To fill/refill the ink tanks, start by removing the plugs from all of the packs. You’ll be supplying each of them individually. If you’d like a visual guide to this process, feel free to click this link and watch the demonstration video on my YouTube channel.

Fill the ink tank with the color of ink that matches the color of the tank’s plug. Once the tank is filled, locate the cartridge with the corresponding color. Lift the orange clip partially, but don’t remove it all the way.

Use one hand to hold onto the cartridge and use the other hand to elevate the ink tank. Let the ink fill the cartridge and absorb into the sponge before reattaching the clip. Put the plugs back into the ink tank as well to seal it. Repeat the process on the rest of the colors.

Prime the Cartridge

Once you’ve inserted the ink and filled everything back up, it’s time to prime the cartridge. Hold the tank so that the large chamber faces you, and then rotate it so that the smaller chamber is on the top and the larger section is on the bottom. The goal is to get most of the ink to flow into that larger chamber. A healthy ink tank will have a low ink level in the little chamber and a high one in the large section.

When placing the tank, make sure it’s on a flat surface and that the printhead’s height is between the small chamber’s ink level and the large chamber’s ink level. Whatever you do, do not have the tank on top of the printer.

Unplug the small air plug from each tank so you can install the air filter. Then you can begin reinserting the cartridges into the printer. The LED on the top of the cartridge will light up when the printer’s reader chip detects that the cartridge has been installed. If everything is functioning correctly, that LED should give a steady glow.

If the cartridge light doesn’t come on, a few possible things could be causing it. The three most likely are that your printer may have a bad connection with the cartridge, the chip might be covered in ink, or the chip is not installed correctly.

If the light does come on, but it’s flashing, that isn’t a problem with the chip. It almost always means that the printer thinks the cartridge is low on ink. Since this system has an auto-reset chip, this shouldn’t be a problem. You’ll easily be able to reset that later.

Wire the Ink Supply Tubes

The next step in this process is wiring the tubes. There are many different ways to wire the supply tubes. For today’s purposes, we’ll go over only two of the types of mounting methods. No matter what method you choose, you always want the tubes to be mounted in the middle of the printer.

Use a marker to mark where on the tube you want the mount to be. Try to avoid letting the tubing get too long. The first method uses a transparent clip to hold the tubes in place. We just glue the clip to the middle of the printer and clip it to the tubing.

Alternatively, you could use a T-arm mounting clip to hold the tubes. Another idea is to glue a normal piece of plastic onto the printer and have it stick out far enough to mount the tubing on it (about four inches or so).

Lastly, we’ll need to reset the ink levels after printing a few hundred pages when we receive a message that your printer’s ink levels are depleted. Keep that window open, and don’t click on the cancel printing or ok buttons. Open and close the printer’s lid, and the auto-reset chip should reset itself, thus indicating to the printer that the ink is no longer empty.

0:13- Setting Up

1:25- Filling the Cartridges

3:42- Installing the Cartridges

4:51- Supply Tubes

6:47- Resetting Ink levels