tutwood wrote:
first ever post on any forums so take it easy if i get it wrong
bought my first ix4000 printer and all worked fine till i fitted a continuous ink sys after 10 mins of hair pulling and screaming the dreaded 15 flashing lights came on . no matter what was done could not resolve issue , printer bieng only 2 weeks old removed cis sys and phoned canon who duly sent an engineer . turns out the logic board was goosed 1 brand new printer later i put the cis sys back in and it works fine.
Given what you've pointed out later in this post it sounds like your blew the printhead and that in turn blew your printer. I had something similar happen with an MP750 some time back and it's now a little known but more reported issues that printheads that fail can fry printers too so if in doubt as to a printers COD (cause of death) it's often worth just binning the head that was in it to avoid repeating the problem.
Note: the problem isn't caused by the use of non-OEM carts or systems either, a duff printhead with OEM carts will do the same thing.. 
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first problem with this sys was it could not work under a vaccum ( turns out your meant to take silicon grommets out of the resivoirs , this being a chinese version the booklet was not very helpful) took grommets out and replaced with small air filters supplied.
I'm guessing you mean the "travel plugs" or similar which stop the ink spurting out of the air balance portion of the reservoir. These do, as you noted, need to be removed in order for air to get into the CIS to replace ink as it's used. Shame your instructions weren't helpful on this point
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...after doing this the ink now flows back to the resivoirs , whilst printing you can see the ink flow movining back and forward in the lines but goes back to original position , to date it has not filled the cartridge up yet , have to do so manualy with syringe .
Hmm... that sounds like either there's still a problem with the reservoirs feeding air in, location of the reservoirs creating too much negative pressure or air leaks at the cartridge end of things.
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so first question is does the canon ix4000 need to be under vaccum or not as i have noticed that there are small holes on OEM canon carts
In a word, No. The air holes in the OEM cartridges are already catered for by the provision of air holes (that you left plugged in Oops #1) in the reservoirs. The vaccum effect caused by the use of ink in the cartridge is what the CIS relies on to draw more ink in from the external reservoirs so you shouldn't have any air getting in to the loop until the very end where it's just replacing ink in the reservoir.
My guess would be that your problem is likely the seal between the black rubber grommets in the printhead and the cartridge ink exit port as this is notoriously bad for issues in all Canon Pixma CIS setups. Ideally you'll have been supplied with some very thin silicon grommets that sit on top of the rubber ones and help provide a much cleaner and more secure seal at this point. If not, you're going to need to see if you can find some.. I know that rihac.com.au have these available and if you're in the UK you might try their UK office rihac.co.uk.
If that's not the cause then it may be that you have some other air leakage taking place elsewhere between the cartridges and the reservoir end of the tubing.
Ultimately though I have to admit I did try to get a CIS working in the iX4000 myself (admittedly with my own home grown kit) and failed abysmally so you may be better off considering the purchase of a refilling kit and just keeping a selection of cartridges ready to go. From painful experience I suspect you may waste more time with a CIS on that printer than in learning to and opting for refilling instead.
Hope that offers some help.
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Printers: (Canon) MP500/830, MX700, iP4000/4200/4300/4500/5200, iX4000(A3) (Epson) C84/86, D88, CX6600, R285/800/1900 (HP) K550, K850, K5400, L7680
