Brand New Epson R1800 clog problem

[wildboys]

You have an air bubble within the print head.

Been through this too many times. Just installed three CISSes on R800s in a couple of days. You must be patient.

This is the key weakness of the Epson piezo head but it is unavoidable for consumer level printers.

For an immediate solution. Let the printer rest overnight and try again....That's the biggest Epson secret. Three tries then wait a good few hours. If that doesn't fix it, remove the offending cartridge and reinsert it. Why? The Epson cartridge is completely sealed. When you insert it, you pressurize the system a little and the last valve inside the cartridge only opens at the last step of insertion. This small pressurisation can burp the head.

What is happening in a head cleaning is really a head purging that attempts to clear a clog.

The basic technology/principle of clearing the clog is flawed. Hear me out. What you have are 8 sets of nozzles all connected to one suction pad. Let's suppose there is a real clog on one of them. What happens when you apply suction to the set of nozzles? Ink will flow out of the ones with the least resistance and the one with a real clog will not flow ink. So how will the clog be cleared? It will not. Yet it works. So what is happening? Well. 99.5% of the time a so called clog is trapped microbubbles within the printhead piezo pump.

When you have air within the piezo pump, the air is compressible so when the piezo head pump squeezes to pump ink it just squishes air and no ink will shoot out. Hence the so called clog. Just because ink does not come out doesn't mean there is a clog, not necessarily. When you apply a head clean, you basically hope you pull the air out of the head by flushing the ink through the passages.

At the factory the heads are supposed to be filled with some type of liquid that prevents air from getting into the head. Sometimes it is not successful. Understand though that anytime, you remove a cartridge from an Epson you risk getting trapped air inside once you reinsert. The risk is quite small but irritating nonetheless.

That is why my recommendation with good refillable cartridges is to learn to refill them in within the printer. It is easy. That way you don't risk getting air in the head once air has been removed. On the Continuous ink system page, I wrote about temp fluctuations. This is one possible cause of so called head cloggings on CISS, when the temperature drops, the ink is pulled back into the cartridge and then the piezo pump which is just at the end of the line is now filled with air. I remember walking into my first physics class in high school and the teacher taught us "you can't push on a rope" and that was the trick to a lot of physics problems. Well in the world of Epson, you can't pump air with an Epson head. You can only pull it out with a "head cleaning". Liquid is incompressible ( within the confines of a printhead), air is.

If you return the printer, it will go back to Epson, where the techs will test it, flush the head and then sell it at their clearance center for a good price with shipping included. I want an R1800 so please return it and maybe they will drop the price and I'll get it for a song. Please Please. I'm serious.
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/BuyEpson/ccProductCategory.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=-13267
Sometimes they are marked down to $249 for the R1800 when they have too many. Looks like they don't have too many right now as they still are $349. Sometimes the R800 are down to $139 but at that price you can bet they don't last long and get snapped up. Hey since I let you guys in on this, the R1800 will never get that low again. Looks like they sold out their R320s for $179 recently. A printer that was on clearance at stores for $99 three years ago.
When the news of the R1900 gets around, watch the demand for the R1800 go up.

BTW

That is the very reason why Epson left lots of ink inside a cartridge when the chip indicated empty. People got upset and some organization in Europe was also upset, then retracted when they learned of the reason why. It is indeterminate how much ink will be pulled out of each cartridge when the resistance of flow determines the amount. That resistance is not predictable. So Epson uses some guess as to much on average should come out but it can be more or less. Secondly and more important, is that in the event someone runs the cartridge dry until the head is filled with air, and then goes out to buy another cartridge, it may well turn out that over half of the new cartridge may be used before all the air comes out to get a perfect print pattern.

That is the reason why I offer deep vacuum prefilled refillable cartridges to avoid this potential. Many people just put ink into the cartridge and then ask the printer to start doing the prime to suck ink through, then get air into the system resulting in banding and poor print quality, not knowing what they did is fundamentally wrong.

Considerations.
BTW, the choice of a Pro9000 and R1800 are very different printers. The R1800 I would choose for permanent prints or prints that must last. The Pro9000 would be my choice for prints that do not have to last. Otherwise the running costs of the R1800 is going to be higher. No question. But if you need the properties of pigment ink, then there is no other option in that price range.

I let the printer set overnight and it started to print correctly.I guess it was an air bubble like you suggested.The only bad thing is the head cleanings i did used up over half the ink in the cartridges.I guess head cleanings uses ink like a horse dranking water.Thanks for all the helpful tips from everyone.I printed some photos on epson premium luster paper and premium glossy and they look outstanding.

 

[lolopr1]

I let the printer set overnight and it started to print correctly.I guess it was an air bubble like you suggested.The only bad thing is the head cleanings i did used up over half the ink in the cartridges.I guess head cleanings uses ink like a horse dranking water.Thanks for all the helpful tips from everyone.I printed some photos on epson premium luster paper and premium glossy and they look outstanding.

mikling I guess you were right. I think he said outstanding

 

[mikling]

The concept of air bubbles is too complex for the layman to understand easily and Epson cannot print this in their documentation or it will scare people off.

I guess half a cartridge was wasted and most of this was probably unnecessary, but sometimes you do get the air bubbles from hell and it will take this. Just put this up to the cost of learning.

Just remember any process procedure that introduces air into the printing technology is going to potentially cause that irritating banding. On Canon's head , the ink well/channels work well intrinsically because of the nozzle layout technology and easily overcomes this. With Epson's technology, this is difficult to overcome and remains a weak point to the fundamental process.

On their newest commercial printers they have teflon coated bottom plates now. While it is claimed to help prevent clogs, and I can see why, ( see how oil remains in a big drop on a teflon coated frying pan and doesn't film out) . It will delay drying of the exposed ink. The other aspect is that it will probably also result in a better drop shape of the ink on ejection.
This, I suspect, will allow them to increase the print speed a bit as one of the limitations certainly would be how long it takes a drop of ink to actually detach from the plate and reform properly at the nozzle outlet. This must happen before the next drop is ejected or shot out.

On the newest commercial printers they actually do wave cancellation routines. When the liquid leaves the nozzle, the bit that is left in the nozzle will resonate and slosh around like soft jello. What Epson actually does is to activate the piezo pump to cancel these oscillations out. This way the ink settles faster and the next drop is shot out in a predictable mannner yielding perfect drops with no satellites or splashes. Drops when magnified, yield perfect round drops. Now just think how fast these things are all happening. Imagine if we were back to the first computers to try and accomplish what is being done here. It would take a few buildings of tubes just to print images like what these machines are doing. Amazing.

 

[leo8088]

So how will the clog be cleared? It will not. Yet it works. So what is happening? Well. 99.5% of the time a so called clog is trapped microbubbles within the printhead piezo pump.

This is something interesting. Am I hearing it right that 99.5% of the time so called clog is not clog. It is trapped microbubbles in the print head? You must be making a revolutionary claim. So Arthur Entlich (SP?) has been wrong in teaching people how to use chemicals to unclog Epson print heads. Are people 99.5% of the time wrong complaining that their Epson print heads are clogged? LOL. Ah.... you said it will not (unclog) yet it works. How can I make any sense out of this?

I will buy that the piezo pump is not powerful enough to pump air bubbles out of the head. Why is the purge pump unable to do that either? Not I do not believe it. R1800 is tauted by Epson as a high quality professional printer. You need to provide much more evidence to prove that the purge/head cleaning design is flawed. Did you imply that all Epson printers are flawed the same way?

Air can be compressed. My air compressor takes a 5 horse power electric motor and nearly 10 start up amp 120 AC to turn that thing. That's 1200 watts of power to compress air. Care to estimate how many horses the piezo pump has so that it can compress air as you cited?

By the way Epson lost the law suit for declaring ink cartridge empty when there is still excessive ink left in them. If Epson has technical reasons that they must have that much of ink remaining in the tanks they would not have lost the case.

Well in the world of Epson, you can't pump air with an Epson head. You can only pull it out with a "head cleaning"

I think you have just shot your own foot by saying the opposite of all you have been saying. After all the head cleaning or purge is designed to pull air and ink through the head. Wildboy said he pulled a half of the ink from his ink cartridges. If that much of ink was pulled I doubt that the mircobubbles were not.

Just some observations. Sure hope this makes sense to you all.

 

[Trigger 37]

mikling,.. What fantastic timing. I was just having problems with my Epson 1280, which I have only had for 1-1/2 years. I've been refilling the same Epson ink cart for about 6 months but I really haven't done that much printing with it. In my usually routine I printed a nozzle test and saw that the Photo Magenta was mostly missing. I tried one cleaning and that didn't help. So since I was going to do a lot of printing on this unit I decided to refill both ink carts. After the refill I started getting all kinds of strange nozzle test prints, first black was missing, then all of magenta was gone, then after I did another cleaning one would partially come back and another one would totally dissapear.

I, like many other fell right into the trap of thinking it was a clogged printhead, so I did all the standard printhead cleaning tricks. Nothing helped and again some things would come back and other would totally disappear. I have a standard 6 color bar that I print in the size of a 3x5 card just to test for streaks and ink flow. The basic nozzle test does not print sufficient ink to really test much. A nozzle check on an Epson can look perfect but if you try and print a picture with some sky you will get banding or fading which I call ink starvation.

Anyway it occured to me that this can not be any kind of clogging becuase the head will print all nozzles for awhile but a minute later it won't print anything. Then a day later I can print the 6 color bars and all are great but one will be very streaky,.. like the photo Magenta. So one more cleaning and then it won't print any of the color bars correctly.

I knew the second I read your explanation that all my changing of the ink cart to fill it back up probably got air into the printhead and it is still there. I've cleaned the bottom of the printhead just to make sure there is no clog there. I do believe there is some small amount of clog in the photo magenta becuase it was there before I every took out the cartridge to refill it. I also have done your "heavy duty" cleaning of the nozzle by using a syringe to inject cleaning solution into that head. The question is,.. can this type of inject force the air bubble out of the printhead. I made sure I was not injecting any air into the printhead.

One last comment,... The difference between the Epson technology and the Canon is really night and day. There are so many differences it is a whole new challenge. Take the purge units,... the Canon printers have a suction pad for black and a second one for colored ink. The Epson only has one, and like you say when it does the suction, it will pull ink from the ones with the least resistance. However, there is still suction being applied to all ink carts. The Canon unit has a wiper blade that wipes off the excess ink that accumlates on the bottom of the head. Epson has none. The Epson does not appear to have a 2nd suction cycle when the head is moved off of the park position, therefore ink can puddle there and could wick black ink backup through the nozzles. I have not seen this but I know the Canon purge unit goes through a 2nd cycle just to get the excess ink off the pads.

I imagine if there were a guaranteed way of clearing out any air in the printhead you would have described it. If there is, let me know. I've got a big job to do and I don't have much time.

 

[mikling]

First, I guess I was totally lucky in predicting that printer would function fine the next day right?
Fine.

LEO8088
OK, did I say you cannot compress air? ??????

My basis for saying that it is flawed, intrinsically that something does not make sense on basic principles. In involves two concepts, the greatest flow takes place through the path of least resistance. If there is a clog it will present a higher resistance and a complete clog will be totally blocked and not flow any ink. If you think that the head cleaning always involves clearing clogs then the more clogs you clear the harder it is to clear remaining clogs as the other nozzles would have opened up and make the relative flow resistance greater. This then means that as the clogs are cleared there is less force to clear the remaining harder to clear clogs. (This is diabolically opposed to what you are trying to achieve!...think about that) So from the theory of clearing blockages it is a flawed principle of doing it; unless each nozzle has its own suction pump pad.........impossible. But something happens right? so that means something else is at play here.

The first question you have to ask yourself is this? Is a head cleaning always a clog cleaning? the second is how can a clog suddenly occur within microseconds if it is in contact the balance of the other liquid and if it can, should it not occur more frequently.

Where did we learn that everytime an inkjet printer doesn't print properly that it must be a clog.

Think about it. Is the world still flat? At some point in time most people did. Does that make it reality?

So again, for the layman it is easiest to think a head cleaning is a clog cleaning. It is the easiest concept for the general consumer to grasp. If you wish to think that go ahead and waste that precious ink and don't believe a word I say. That's fine with me.

Clogs do occur but in the vast vast majority of cases, it usually revolves around getting entrapped air bubbles into the head though the ink path.

Trigger, with those sponge cartridges the only way to minimize the possibility of not trapping air within the sponge media is to use a vacuum chamber refill process. However, even this has some limitations as well. I hypothesize that repeated filling and then drying cycles trap air within the residues but I cannot delve into this for lack of resources. Suffice to say refilling sponge cartridges for the Epson is problematic and always has been for me. The vacuum chamber reduces the problem but does not eliminate it.

If you look into my homebrew CISS http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2136 you will see that this printer is around the same generation as your 1280, give or take. The way I got around the refilling sponge issue is to clear it completely of air. By having a CISS, no more air is ever introduced again. To do so, follow my instructions and you will have to slowly very slowly move ink through the complete cartridge many times using the syringe. To essentially "suck out" all the trapped bubbles within the sponge. The best way would actually be to burst those bubbles in the cartridge first by placing it in a vacuum chamber with greater than 25 inch Hg. Oh if you do this, you'll see the foaming that occurs as the microbubbles expand within the vacuum and the fine foam emanate from the cartridge under a high vacuum.

The other and possibly better way is to obtain some decent spongeless cartridges. Why I didn't do that was because I was doing as an exercise in fun (Possibly why you mess with some printers as well) and didn't want to put money on "junk". I'm frugal.

The Epson should have wipers of some type and I think they are felt or some absorptive material on the 1280 generation. On the R260, 380 they are silicone. Too many head cleanings will sometimes leave excessive ink on the bottom plate, meaning that either the felt has become saturated or the wiper is smearing or something? Suffice that occasionally you might find an errant drop of ink on your print, immediately after a head cleaning.

As to the suction cycles, the R800/1800 in question does have it. I am not sure on prior generations and what their algorithms were.

As you have realized, the so called clogging can be observed as a random phenomenon appearing and disappearing and that should have driven the "thinking" person, as it has for you, that something other than a blockage is taking place.

How do you ensure that you remove all the bubbles? I don't know how. However, each time that I use the big gun, i finish up flowing 12 ml of cleaner through the head slowly and I ensure that what I put in is a solid column of liquid. Thus far, it has always produced a perfect nozzle pattern after at the most two or three head cleanings. Can I call that a guarantee................NOPE. Not enough attempts to guarantee a 99.99% confidence level. Trigger you know what I mean by that. A high likelihood, Yes. but guarantee, NO.

My big gun method can introduce air in the chamber if not done properly. How? First by pulling back on the syringe. Second, when removing the rubber tubing. However, the first risk is usually something that I actually intentionally do when the big gun technique is called for. As for the second risk, if you acquire sufficient skills it is minimal if you can continue to produce pressure while withdrawing the tube and not make a mess.

I am giving away a ton of secrets here.

If you think the clog is external, you soften and dissolve it. First, remove the cartridges, pull the plug and proceed to cut out a piece of magic chamois ( german brand) so it fits within the parking pad. Place it on the parking pad, thoroughly soak with your favorite head cleaner and then move the carriage back to the parking position. The magic chamois ensures contact with the nozzle pad and will dissolve the true external clog over time. In all of these procedures, rough handling can result in damage so you do so with some risk proportional to your ability and skills.


When you get a real blockage, I use a gentle pulse technique to have flow two ways to dissolve a partial blockage and clear the internal filters. How? leave air in the syringe chamber. That way, when you compress the syringe a little the air compresses ( Get that LEO8088), you don't shock the system and when you release the pressure goes down, the plunger comes back up a little, you get a little reverse flow. This will help dissolve and dislodge dried ink.

Find fault in the system? Fine, don't use it. it has always worked for me so far. Generate too much pressure and you risk blowing the head seal, so do this at your own risk and no guarantee of any kind is offered here and IT IS NOT WITHOUT RISK. Some skill is required. Be prepared to pay the price for learning. So go collect those discarded printers and practice there. Not on your new megabuck printer.

Once you have cleared a blockage, you get a feel for it. After that it is time to clear the nozzles. For this, you flush very gently over and over again.

If you have a new printer from the factory, none of the above is necessary.
If you have a printer that was working and suddenly has banding, none of the above is necessary. You have air in the system due to either poor refill techniques, or poor quality cartridges or some procedure you had preformed. If three successive head cleanings don't clear it, then wait overnight. Each consecutive head cleaning is stronger/higher volume sucked out and consumes more ink so be aware of this.
If you left your printer in storage for a long period, and three head cleanings and an an overnight wait doesn't get it back running? Try the head soak.

Picked up a discarded printer that prints hardly anything? Try the soak and if necessary, and I suspect it will be, the big gun method.

About the separate parking pads on Canons, on the 6 color all dye machines there is only one not two. I suspect the choice for using two on machines that use pigment as well as dye inks has something to do with it. Additionally, the nozzle plates are separated on the substrate. Finally, it may confirm my hypothesis about flow resistances whereby the pigment nozzles are larger, the ink properties are different and the dyebase nozzles are different and contain ink with different properties.

Trigger, a big job on non vacuum chamber refilled sponge cartridge with a deadline, requires crossing your fingers ..............on both hands. Good luck.

LOLOPR1 I think you'll agree

Unlearning is a lot more difficult than learning.

 

[Tin Ho]

Trigger57: You are having an excellent chance to prove this air trapped in the print head theory. If you have another set of cartridges you can find the proof within minutes.

I thought I am done with this thread. But...

Epson has a very large customer base. I am surprised to hear that so many experts and novices all these years have not discovered the theory that air can be trapped in the print head when changing ink cartridges which would give you a clogging symptom. The number of Epson users experiencing clogging is probably not very small. I am hearing that 99% of those are not clogging but air trapped in the print head. I don't remember how many times I have unplugged and re-plugged ink cartridges in the R200 that I played with recently. I had no "clogging" in it yet. Anyway, the answer should't be hard to come out. I do want to find out if I am one of those who never learn. He he, I also want to find out if some people are ... I can't spell the I word, sorry.

 

[mikling]

Tin Ho, did I not say that the possibility of introducing air is small when reinserting is small? Here's something that one must consider when you read of problems on the internet. What you fail to also hear about on the internet is the number of people who havehad no problems with their Epson printers when they always use the high quality Epson cartridges. What you will hear a lot of are people who try and save money and run into problems refilling them or the numerous people who may have acquired some poor quality compatible cartridges. This will always bias the reports you read of on the internet. Just the same anyone considering to acquire a printer, comes to this forum and hears of all the problems would be scared to touch one. People report problems here, similarly, people report of problems with theirs as well. Also another smart person will point out that some person had a problem and they used the original Epson cartridge. Despite all efforts to not have disasters on the space program we still have had them. That should tell the story. Do you ever see the car dealer's garage filled with perfectly functioning and maintained vehicles?

Trigger has already proved the trapped air theory within his printhead by seeing that the same spots are not always missing. Read his post throughly as you seem to be unable to understand. What Trigger now has to figure out is how to get his cartridges refilled PROPERLY now because he now knows he does not have SOLID restrictions. and has admitted so.

Obviously Tin Ho doesn't understand experiments where a control sample must be used because if he did, he would not tell Trigger to use a second set of cartridges subjected to the same errors of the first to prove another point. Oh boy, I'm wasting my efforts here.

Oh before I forget, watch out for poor quality seals on some compatibles. I didn't say ALL compatibles as some smart person will chime in and say I never had that problem but air can be ingested there as well.

I get the distinct impression that a certain person is always desiring to prove me wrong each time. I can make mistakes. I am human. I don't wish that your DH200 oscillates and burns up your woofers. So be considerate, there is no ranking here.

 

[Tin Ho]

Tin Ho, did I not say that the possibility of introducing air is small when reinserting is small?

Mikling, I had no problem with this statement of yours. It was this statement that I am having questions:

Well. 99.5% of the time a so called clog is trapped microbubbles

Arthur Entlich is mentioned many times in this forum for very valid reasons. You statement tosses all that out. We need to say wait a minute. Is that right or not.

I get the distinct impression that a certain person is always desiring to prove me wrong each time. I can make mistakes. I am human. I don't wish that your DH200 oscillates and burns up your woofers. So be considerate, there is no ranking here.

Truth and fact is what I am after. If we never question anything we are not learning. If we never admit mistakes we are not learning either. I have total respect to you for many of excellent posts from you. You do get respects from a lot of people here too. That is for sure.

There is no need to continue this discussion. If we can not resolve the difference it is really OK. I have made up my mind so there is no need that I have to hear it from you. My DH200 turns out to be a DH220. It is under powered. If I am not careful it can burn out and damage the speakers. Thank you for reminding me.

 

[Trigger 37]

mikling,... thanks for all the information. I understand when you talk about the "Big Guns" your are referring to a Syringe with Cleaning solution and the connecting tubing that fits over head head inlet. I will try this again and see if I can do better this time. What continues to amaze me is how the printing from a specific color can show a perfect nozzle print, then print absolutely noting on a color bar, but then in the next print, a total full color bar for that color is printed. This clearly shows that it has nothing to do with any clog, but the mystery is how it can come and go so rapidly,.. within 2-5 minutes,... and there have been no cartridge changes,... no way to intruduce any more air. It does act like Mike had mentioned that air bubbles are also trapped in the cartridge.

Years ago when I had Lexmark printers, I had real all kinds of posts from people about air bubbles inside the refilled ink carts, and the problems this cause. This may sound really dumb but I also read that just a few drops of Isopropyl Alcohol in each cartridge would dissolve all the air bubbles. Alcohol changes the surface tension and rapidly dissolves any air bubbles. I've seen this demonstrated. So my question is; "Do you think this would also work on Epson printhead and/or Epson Ink Carts. I'm talking about 1-2 drops. It doesn't matter if you changes the color, that can be purged out once the printing get solid.

Mike,.. one other point,... the Epson 1280s can not be refill while the ink carts are still in the machine. Each Cart has a locking cap that covers the ink cart completely. You can't get at the reill holes. As soon as you release the locking caps, the ink carts are raised up off of the inlets,.. open to the air.

If Epson has know about this "Air trap" in the printheads for the last "N" years, why haven't they done anything about changing their design so the new printers don't suffer from the same fault. Or is it such that this is an enharent problem in the pizo jet technology and they have designed themselves into a box and there is no way out. This "Air Trap Technology Problem" must be a major problem for Epson,.. it is almost like a "Catch 22" for customers. If it can happen to a brand new printer right out of the box, or to any customer that just bought a new ink cart, this is going to happen a lot. It wouldn't be a problem if the design of their "Purge Unit" would guarantee to clean the problem, but as you pointed out, the ink will always follow the path of least resistance.

I do not know of any basic technology design flaws of the Canon system. If you take care of your printer, and you ink carts, it will last for years. I kept my i560 running for 4 years and when I sold it, it was working perfectly. I will agree that since each ink drop or bubble printed from a nozzle requires that an internal semicondutor resister be heated to very high temperature. Doing this for 10,000 pages, even if the ink supply is always perfect, will probably ware the resistor out or burn it to the point where the resistance changes and it keeps getting hotter and hotter with each print. Finally it burns out. Think about what happens when it is not taken care of and the ink well runs almost dry, but the print commands continue. It will heat up and burn or boil what ink is left onto the walls of the nozzle. Pretty soon it will look like the bottom of most cassorole pans. Burnt to a crisp. So after that, you can buy a new printhead and start all over.

I'm going to try a drop or two of Isopropyl into each printhead intake and see what changes. I don't think there is anyway this can hurt the PH.