PIXMA MP640

Canon PIXMA MP640

The Canon PIXMA MP640 is an inkjet based all-in-one printer - it has a scanner so that it can also act as a copier and you don't actually need a computer connection to use it that way. However since the MP640 came with built in WiFi (which added to the price) it was obviously intended to be used with a computer.

PIXMA MP600 range

This printer range started with the MP610 in September 2007, followed by the MP620 and MP630.

The MP640 retains its predecessors inks but added duplex, WiFi and an improved control panel.

Canon marketing material says:

PIXMA printers are made for photos. Fast, lab-quality prints right at your fingertips. PIXMA lets you re-discover the memories hibernating on your hard drive and print them with ease in flawless detail.

The MP640 was on the market from 2009 to 2011. The official retail was £179 but a year later it was selling for about £135 (CPC catalog 2010). The MP640 targeted a more cost conscious market than the MP990 which was launched at the same time - it had a grey ink to improve photos, a CCD scanner instead of the MP640 CIS and a bigger LCD screen (3.8 inch), as well as additional bundled software, but cost almost twice as much at £329 RRP.

Canon replaced the MP640 in their lineup with the MG6150 (2010), this put the grey ink feature from the MP990 into the lower cost machine.

That was followed by the MG6250 (2011) and in November 2012 the MG6350 which added mobile and Internet printing. Now in 2014 the PIXMA MG6450 is the current model. Inkjet printer names change very frequently as brands jockey for position. Features that change are sometimes interesting - that extra ink. Change is often superficial - a slightly bigger touchscreen for control, internet and mobile print support.

Pure-play printers using the same printheads, inks and general mechanisms are the iP4600 and iP4700

Likely Issues

The MP640 was a popular machine in it's time and will no doubt have won Canon some friends. It got good reviews as well in PC-PRO and TrustedReviews for instance.  However if you are reading this page presumably yours has an issue!

It's an inkjet printer so innevitably it will have the usual problems:

  • They aren't particularly cheap to run if you want a lot of printing. Ink for a colour document costs fractionally under 6p. Photos are smaller but more densely printed so they are about 12p not including special paper. These costs are in the "quite good for a little inkjet" range.
  • Printhead nozzles will ultimately block. The printhead in these machines is regarded as "semi-permanent" - it is replaceable, it isn't cheap. Whether you change the printhead or buy a new printer probably depends on how many spare inks you have. A new printhead costs about a third the price of an equivalent new printer - they are expensive. However if you have a set of inks then you will want to use them because they cost as much as a printer.
  • Most problems with an inkjet are related to the printhead but there are other possibilities:

    • Most commonly there is a bad connection. The connector from the carriage to the printhead or to the cartridge doesn't make properly. Inkjet connections are commonly made using flat flexible cable with gold-flash disks and mating bobbles. Nothing else uses a similar connection - but then most things don't need a multipole connector at a very low price.
    • The carriage trailing cable may get damaged through accident or wear. Ultimately flexible cables will get metal fatigue or the covering will wear out.
    • The automatic alignment sensor(s) may get contaminated.
  • The absorber pads may be full - the printer will give a warning code.

This type of printer is intended for home and perhaps small office use. The intended price is about £150 - so it is "premium" rather than bargain basement stuff.

There is always a question whether this kind of printer is repairable. Probably not if you have to pay a call-out charge of £50 or more to get a diagnosis. On the other hand Canon did prepare a service manual and replacement printheads are available. Some of the other components seem to be obtainable at the time of writing, but with lead times of 7 to 10 days - there is very little stock in distribution. Technicians and IT support people with a few of these printers to look after will get sufficiently familiar with them that they can judge whether a repair will be worthwhile.There is a bit more on this below. page down icon


Canon top-right-logo

What Canon Say:

A premium Wi-Fi All-In-One that delivers superb photo quality and fast document printing, scanning and copying. With Wi-Fi & an Ethernet port, the PIXMA MP640 integrates seamlessly into home networks.

Print, Copy, Scan over a network

Ideal for advanced users, the premium PIXMA MP640 integrates seamlessly into your home network via Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Share superb photolab-quality printing, copying and scanning with the whole family.

Realistic document print speeds

Canon supports the industry-wide ISO standard for measuring print and copy speeds. This makes it easy to select the right PIXMA for you based on real document print speeds. The PIXMA MP640 offers ISO ESAT speeds of 9.2ipm for mono documents and 8.1ipm for colour.

Photolab-quality prints in just 20 seconds

Canon's FINE print head, with class-leading 1pl size ink droplets, delivers superior 9600x2400dpi print resolution: photo prints are free from grain and have ultra-smooth gradations of colour. Print a 10x15cm borderless photo in approximately 20 seconds using default settings. Alternatively print via Wi-Fi, Ethernet, IrDA IR or optional Bluetooth.

5 Single Inks

Canons 5 Single Ink system uses ink tanks that are individually replaceable, minimising wastage. Four dye-based inks deliver superior quality photo prints; an additional pigment black produces crisp, sharp text documents.

High-quality scanner

Scan in incredible detail using the 2400dpi scanner. MP Navigator EX software offers OCR and PDF editing features along with a range of image correction options. Auto Scan Mode automatically recognises what youre scanning whether its a document or a photo and selects the appropriate settings.

Intuitive operation

Take control using the intuitive Easy-Scroll Wheel, previewing images on the clear and bright 7.5cm colour TFT display. Scan to and print from USB memory stick and memory cards. Alternatively attach a compatible camera via PictBridge.

Auto duplex printing, 2-way paper feeding and DVD/CD printing

With two paper paths, load different media & plain and photo paper at the same time. Produce professional-looking, double-sided documents with ease using the auto duplex feature. Personalise DVDs and CDs by printing directly onto disc.

Longer lasting, beautiful photos

The ChromaLife100+ system provides longer lasting, beautiful photos. The combination of the PIXMA MP640, original Canon inks and certain genuine Canon photo papers preserves memories for a lifetime.

Colour Print

Colour inkjet using five inks and a single semi-permanent printhead. The five inks give the usual CMYK "subtractive colour" approach plus a black suited to text rather than pictures.

Control:

LEX_MS810 Control Panel

LCD screen with navigation buttons and "easy scroll wheel". One of the changes Canon has made on more recent printers is to use a rather larger touch-screen rather than navigation buttons. There is a button to switch between black only and colour.

Canon make a great point of the easy scroll wheel in publicity at the time. In practice people seem to prefer touch screens for printer interaction (but not so much with PCs)

Approx. 9.2 ipm - Black

Approx. 8.1 ipm - Colour

With the MP640 Canon was one of the first printer manufacturers to adopt ISO/IEC 24734 and 24735 print and copy speed standards, allowing users to make direct printer-to-printer speed comparisons between different models and manufacturers.

Up to 9600 x 2400 dpi

One picolitre drop size

Canon printers generally seem to win respect for their photo quality

Scanner Abilities:

The scanner is a flatbed CIS type (The MP990 had a CCD scanner and has better image depth)

Scanner Type: Flatbed CIS colour scanner

Scanner Resolution Optical: Up to 4800 x 9600 dpi

Scanner Resolution Digital: Up to 19200 x 19200dpi

Colour Scanning Depth: 48 / 24 bit (RGB each 16 / 8 bit)

Halftone/Greyscale: 16 / 8 bit

Compatibility: TWAIN / WIA (Windows XP/Windows Vista)

Effective Scanning Width: A4/LTR

Copy Abilities

Typical home-copy abilities. The printer lid incorporates an A4 / US letter scanner.

Duplex

The printer has duplex which is automatically selectable using plain paper in A4, B5, A5 & Letter sizes. Obviously auto-duplex copying is not available since there is no scanner ADF.

Interface:

Hi-Speed USB (B Port), Bluetooth Ver2.0 maximum speed, 1.44Mbps (Option, HCRP) (with optional Bluetooth Unit BU-30)

Network

WiFi and Ethernet.

IEEE802.3u (100BASE-TX), IEEE802.3(10BASE-T), 10/100Mbps (auto switchable)

Wi-Fi: IEEE802.11g/IEEE802.11b (Compatible with IEEE802.11n1 ),

CAN QM3-6264

Pictbridge

System Compatibility

As with most recent printers there are drivers for Windows and Mac but not indefinite support into the future.

Canon does have a Linux driver MP640 series IJ Printer Driver Ver. 3.20 for Linux (debian Packagearchive)- File name : cnijfilter-mp640series-3.20-1-i386-deb.tar.gz here. There isn't a specific driver in older versions of Ubunbtu.

Canon’s FINE (Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering) technology – which offers grain-free printing at resolutions of up to 4800X1200dpi …

FINE is Canon’s unique print head manufacturing process that uses nano-technology to produce highly-accurate print heads. All sections of the print head are developed using photolithographic processes with semiconductor exposure systems to ensure that the nozzle dimensions, ink ejection openings and heater positions are aligned with extremely high precision. This enables microscopic ink droplets to be ejected with prescribed volume and accurate placement.

Power:

AC 100-240V, 50/60Hz

The power unit QM3-6264-000 is internal, which makes the printer rather neater than many competitors. It as actually a little module very like the external devices used in other printers, an autoranging module.

The fly in the ointment is that these little modules are not readily available, a special order is likely to take a week or more and the cost is likely to be in excess of £45 in the UK.

Power Consumption:

Standby: Approx. 1.3 W (when scanning lamp is off), Off: Approx. 0.6 W, Copying: Approx 14 W1

Inks fit the following printers (which are all interrelated)

PIXUS iP3600 iP4600 iP4700

PIXUS MP540 MP550 MP560 MP620 MP630 MP640 MP980 MP990

PIXUS MX860 MX870 MFP

Printer manufacturers like the idea of "regionalising" their cartridges. They sometimes advance the argument that this allows different formulations allowing for different climates - but if that were true there would be a desert and a rainforest version and that isn't what happens. Instead there is usually an EU, US and Asian version and the difference is price - the EU tends to be a less competitive market and has higher working costs because of the national divisions - so we are asked to pay more. Regionalisation lets manufacturers lock out "grey imports".

Printer manufacturers do sometimes produce "stripped down" specification printers for some Asian markets - using a less sophisticated 600dpi toner to deliver a less expensive machine for instance.

In the Internet age differences in naming do cause confusion so here is the cartridge list. Normally you will only be able to buy the type for your region.

Japan
BC321CBCI-321C2928B001AAJP
BC321MBCI-321M2929B001AAJP
BC321YBCI-321Y2930B001AAJP
BC321KBCI-321K2927B001AAJP
BC321PKBCI-320PGBK2926B001AAJP
BC321GyBCI-321Gy2931B001AAJP
EU and UK
CL221 C CLI-521C2934B001AA EU
CL221 M CLI-521M2935B001AA EU
CL221 Y CLI-521Y2936B001AA EU
CL221 K CLI-521K2933B001AA EU
CL221 PK PGI-520P2932B001AA EU
CL221 Gy CLI-521Gy2937B001AA EU
US
CL221 C CLI-221C2947B001AA US
CL221 M CLI-221M2948B001AA US
CL221 Y CLI-221Y2949B001AA
CL221 K CLI-221K2946B001AA US
CL221 PK PGI-220K2945b001AA
CL221 Gy CLI-221Gy2937B001AA US

Dimensions:

450 x 368 x 176mm

Weight:

Approx. 8.8 kg

Consumables:

The MP640 takes five inks, four of them from the Canon Chromalife 100+ CLI-521 range. Chromalife images are intended to last more than a hundred years if Canon ink and paper are used These are 9 millilitre cartridges with an expected life of around 450 normal A4 pages and 300 photographs.

An unusual feature of the cartridges is a little LED which begins to flash as the cartridge runs out. This helps people printing without a computers (using pictbridge, memory cards or just using the printer as a copier) to know when ink is running low. The MP640 printer could use its screen, of course.

buy now icon

2934B001AA Canon Cyan CLI-521C PG-521C Ink Cartridge 9ml 505 pages

2935B001AA Canon Magenta CLI-521M PG-521M Ink Cartridge

2936B001AA Canon Yellow CLI-521Y PG-521Y Ink Cartridge

2933B001AA Canon Black CLI-521BK Ink Cartridge page life 3425pp

2932B001AA Canon Black PGI-520BK Ink Cartridge

QY6-0072 Printhead for Canon Pixma MP630/MP640

A single printhead deals with all five inks. This is one of Canon's FINE printheads with 1 picolitre drop size allowing a claimed print resolution up to 9600 x 2400dpi. The FINE printheads are supposed to produce circular droplets, but the motors driving the head an paper can't necessarily position things quite that finely. buy now icon

In the US the dye inks are the CLI-221 range, with the PGI-220BK. In the UK, Europe MEA and ANZ the range is called CLI-521 with the PGI-520BK. If you download a user guide or manual for the wrong region (quite likely) a confusing set of inks will be listed - in all probability this won't matter too much because you won't be able to buy them. DON'T order them from the US - they may be cheaper but they probably won't work.

In Japan the printers are called "PIXUS" instead of "PIXMA" and the cartridge seems to be the BCI-321. Quite why the branding changes from PIXUS to PIXMA isn't explained - perhaps PIXUS sounds funny to English speakers - but so does PIXMA.

Despite the cost of manufacturers cartridges we don't recommend refill or clone cartridges for ordinary home or business use. The exception is where you have a local refiller.

The problem is that refillers and clone makers are just a bit less secretive than the original printer manufacturers. There are brands, but they don't necessarily do the work themselves. Asking a re-filler for details of their process usually causes them to go silent - they don't come back and say "we source our dyes from Sun chemical, toner from Union Technology, drums from Gihonclick, and have a Malvern FPIA-2100 for toner characterization. About the most that can be pumped out of them is whether the job is done in Europe or China. Few if any give details that would build product confidence. Experience suggests quality control leaves something to be desired.

In practice there is a bit more information about refilling than there is from the manufacturers because there are a few trade shows, a couple of magazines and several companies like Static control and Uninet who provide components.

However if you do a great deal of printing - things like community group newsletters or digital print runs - then refill or even a continuous ink system might be a good choice - but you probably wouldn't choose a PIXMA printer for that kind of thing.

Refill Inks

As said in the introduction, costs for a colour page are around 6p which is in the "OK" category for inkjets". Obviously some people want to drive that cost down.

Confusing if you order clone inks or refills from the US, China or anywhere else they probably will work - because these typically have reverse engineered chips that fool the printer circuits into working. We do not recommend refills and clone inks for colour printers because:

  • The colour balance may not be very good, particularly if you use a mixture of manufacturers originals and refills.
  • There is a markedly higher risk of both leakage and of clogging a printhead. A clogged printhead is not only expensive to replace there is a marked waste of time and ink trying to get it going again. For most users of this kind of printer we aren't convinced that cheap cartridges really save money.

Printer manufacturers are a secretive lot, they won't tell anyone exactly how things are made. That is understandable; their ability to make a profit depends on sales of ink.

We think high-street and local refillers who are doing the job themselves deserve an exception. It is clearly an environmental good that cartridges don't travel. Many of them take a pride in their work, are knowledgeable and give advice to customers - and will try to put printers right when they go wrong.

All the big print manufacturers have environment policies, the Canon Sustainability Report 2013 runs to 136 pages and we don't think it is just green-wash. However the big companies are using recycling schemes as a way to cut supplies of cartridges to refillers. We think it might be better if they cooperated with refillers to some extent, recognizing that customers should have a choice. The manufacturers are keenly aware of the criticism that cartridges create waste and national scale recycling efforts don't really make sense; localism is better.

Canon recommend their MP-101 paper for head alignment.

Spares:

In principle inkjet printers are just about as repairable as dot matrix machines and perhaps easier than colour laser printers.

A significant problem is usually the retail price of a new machine. Mass market inkjet printers are complicated but made in huge numbers they can sell for under £100. Machines equivalent to the MP640 seem to be between £100 and £150 depending on the retailer and the precise specification.

Other than the printhead, spares for these printers are not regularly listed by any UK distributor; however there seems to be one distributor on each continent (US, Australia and EU) listing the parts and selling them on the Web. When we have enquired about parts they have been available, however in the UK they have been rather costly - expensive enough to put customers off repair.

Some repairs will need the Canon Service Mode software. Canon probably won't give you that because it is restricted to authorised service centres.

Service

Lets face it, this is a £100 class printer. Its an elaborate piece of machinery, it ought to be repairable. There is a service manual. (Part QY8-13CN-000 covering the MP640 and MP648). However without test-rigs and special information to test specific aspects of operation people won't want to spend more than a couple of hours on an inkjet fault. The problem is that it takes twenty minutes just to have the printer go off and do head-cleaning cycles three times. Getting the machine in bits in any meaningful way is likely to take 30 minutes the first time you do it.

The Parts Catalog is PIXMA MP640 Parts Catalog. There doesn't seem to be a document number but a search for QK1-5699-000 Wireless LAN board is likely to find it.

Stripping and rebuilding one of these printers on the first occasion is likely to take around two hours; on the twentieth attempt that will be down to 20 minutes. The problem is that few people outside Canon's factories and triage warranty repair centres will ever see that many printers - there are something over 20,000 printer models out there so there is probably no true local expert on this specific model in your area.

There may be a Canon authorised dealer and in some big cities there are authorised service centres. Canon bought up a copier dealership in each UK city back in the 1990s and used them as sales and service centres. The problem was that they weren't cheap. These days there are a few authorised repair centres in the UK - they are not cheap.

We have some sympathy with the authorised repairers. At one time repair paid reasonably well but these days it does not - that is why we used to repair things and now run a spares website. Spares websites don't pay particularly well either; the margins over what the manufacturers and distributors charge are meager. We live in a world full of disposable hardware - if you don't like it lobby your politicians. Boycotting the companies making repair difficult might have possibilities - but they are all at it.

A common problem with little inkjet printers is the Service Tools. The printers actually have quite sophisticated control over the sensors, motors and printhead but those functions aren't available to ordinary users, only via a service tool that is made available to authorised service centres.

Big companies like Canon may need to act defensively. The "hot Coffee Lawsuit" suggested that people could sue companies like McDonalds for big money giving rather frivolous reasons; spilling coffe on yourself might be blamed on the vendor if they knew there was a potential danger. In electronic repair there is an endless succession of dangers. There is potential danger in any piece of IT kit: electrocution if you don't turn it off before working on it, a small explosion if you plug things in the wrong way round, poisoning if you or your children try to eat components or the ink. Foxing the lid switch brings the risk you may trap your fingers. Hence almost every piece of equipment says something along the lines of "No user repairable parts inside". If you regard yourself as a "user" .

Big companies also use the legislative environment to their own advantage. People dislike wasteful environmental pracctices, so the printer companies charge a bit extra for cartridges, put a freepost label in the pack and try to stifle the refil market. You won't find service infomation on their public websites because it might be dangerous. Changing things like absorber pads in the Canon MP40 is not necessarily dangerous. Turn the printer off, unplug it and after 10 seconds when the capacitors have discharged it is dead as a doornail. The power supply is a module in the back and it can be entirely removed.

The absorber is full of half-dried old ink so changing it is messy. Ink deliberately makes an indellible mark on paper. Clothing, skin and plastics will be stained; furthermore the inks are a mixture of bye colours with a pigment black, anthing

Out of interest to see if anyone is trying to repair these printers we have compiled a bit more information gleaned from service manuals, forums and other online sources.

Fault Finding

The service manual gives details of the error messages