Brand New Epson R1800 clog problem

[mikling]

Trigger, buy a new GENUINE Epson cartridge and see what happens. It's expensive but it is your solution or else fire up those refillables ( assuming they are of proper design).

I'll trust a genuine Epson cartridge as the highest possible source for quality. The trouble is you are not using a proven control sample of a known 100 % good cartridge. For this reason you will have a headache trying to figure out what is wrong. The china special compatible........like a box of chocolates...you never know what you will get. Just like Forrest Gump said.

I'm tired of this.

 

[Trigger 37]

Mike,.. Thanks for the offer. I think the T008 is for some other printer. The Epson 1280 uses the T007 and the T009. I have one refillable from each that I bought a long time ago but have never tried because the "Priming Insturctions" were so difficult I never wanted to try it. I found some other instruction on "Alotofthings.com" for the refillable T009 and they don't even mention Priming the ink cart. They use two techniques; #1 is to use a very large syringe with a "Luer Slip" tip loaded with 10ml of ink, then they draw back the syringe to pull air up out of the ink cart. This is repeated until all 10ml is in the cart. #2 is just standard filling with a needle. These are the 2P refillable ink carts. Is your T007 a different type. I have ink on order from your store but have not paid for it yet. If the T007 will fit in the box I'll be happy to try anything right now. I'll issue the PayPal order today.

TinHo,... I had cleaned the bottom of the printhead several times and I've flushed the purge pads till they were clean. Each time the printer does a standard park and clean I can see the evidence of all colors, but of course they are very small and all somewhat mixed. At least they are visible which tells me the pump is working.

I'm wondering if doing extra cleaning cycles is going to be of any benefit or if just printing the bar pattern is a better way of pulling in through the printhead and out of the ink carts.

 

[Tin Ho]

I'm wondering if doing extra cleaning cycles is going to be of any benefit or if just printing the bar pattern is a better way of pulling in through the printhead and out of the ink carts.

Cleaning the bottom of the print head will not stop the ink from leaking out. You have to remove the excessive ink from the sponges in the cartridge. I think all refill instructions available on the net always say to suck some ink out at the end of filling ink to the cartridge. It really means not to overfill the sponge. Did you overfilled your sponges?

For Epson printers you can print purge pages to wear out excessive ink from the cartridges. It is not for Canon printers though. I found that cleaning cycles on Canon printers could not fix the leaking (out of nozzles) caused by overfilled sponges. I am not sure if the same would apply to Epson print heads. What I know is if ink leaks out of nozzles you will experience the irratic behavior of the print head. You will see streaks with colors changing from one moment to another. You will see white streaks (missing colors) and mixed colors. In the worst case you will see ink dripped down on the paper.

It is not clogging, not air trapped in the sponges. It may be an issue for spongeless cartridges but not for sponged ones.

 

[mikling]

Trigger as long as you can get a consistent continuous SOLID supply of ink through the system, you will be OK. So that really means that pulling ink through the syringe multiple times. Think siphon........ Do it slowly because if it is pulled though too quickly, you can risk causing too much foam as the ink is pulled and mixed with air in the empty spaces in the refillable. Foam is harder to dislodge. Just keep drawing on the syringe until you see a consistent solid column of ink. There is only one drawback to the previous and it is that many people end up making a mess while they attempt that. However, you've taken printers apart and put them back in one piece. Thus it will be OK for yourself. I am assuming that the Refillable you've acquired is of a good design. this we will find out when you complete the prime. Of course, The other way is to just fill it with ink and let the printer suction pull it through. Nothing wrong with that as long as you don't panic when you get missing bars and wasting ink. Then again you might get lucky and will go through fine.

 

[Tin Ho]

The nozzle check print in Trigger's #30 post looks to me a clog in the magenta. It is not an ink leaking problem.

 

[Trigger 37]

Mike, TinHo,... I'm really sorry for all the trouble I have put your guys through. However, I hope it will be a "LARGE LEARNING CASE", for others with similar problems.

I tried onr more cleaning cycle on the new ink cart and got much better results. The yellow came back but there were streaks in other bars, and the magenta was much deeper is color. I decided that I had to clean the bottom of the printhead one more time because of the streaks in several colors. This time I use hot water, but by the time I got it to the printer and put it on the paper towel under the printhead it was just warm. Anyway I cleanded it back and forth and got a lot of all kinds of colors, mostly black. ONe more print of all color bars and 99% of the streaks were gone. Printed a high quality photo on my best paper and got excellent results. Now that I go back and think about this printer, which has not had that much use, buy I have always printed something at least once a week. The real problem is that because of my lack of experience with Epson printers, I was no aware of how much ink accumulates on the bottom of the printhead. There is no wiping station in this printer and for 1+ years I have not cleaned the bottom. I was not aware that I need to do that. From now on I will clean the bottom before I start to print any serious photos. Three months ago I printer 15 medium quality posters for our golf club tournament, each with large print and special photos. These were 13 x 22" prints and used a lot of ink. I never cleaned the printer after that. This is all dew to the lack of knowledge of how to take care of an Epson. It has worked so well for me for 1+ years I ddn't know how clogged the bottom of the head was getting.

If anyone knows anything about a wiping action in this printer please let me know. It seems to be a design flaw if this printer does not have one.

Here is my final 6 color bar test.


So as I go back and remember all of the problems I was having, they were probably due to clogged head either on the inside or the outside. All the extra cleaning just left more ink on top of more ink. So when I did the initial cleaning with the paper towel, and changed the ink cart, things changed but did not resolve the clogs. When I really did the cleaning several times with hot water ( I actually used warm windex), the head cleaned up and one more heavy test print of the single large bar of magenta finished the job.

Anyway, that is my conclusion.

 

[mikling]

If you had solid blockage the bars would not come and go. It would have been blocked and not printed anything until cleared....and they were clear before your last bout of missing ....as you had printed a perfect picture prior to that.

Next question, so you're printing and then you get banding....so how the heck did that happen in microseconds if the nozzle is still in contact with liquid? , to suddenly get a blocked nozzle ? Unless the ink had huge impurities within it and there are filters prior to the chambers?.

Look at the link to the article I posted. You will see the contruction of the head and then be able to understand what is going on. the piezo pump is not a 100% displacement pump. It works by little squeezes into a large volume, that is why once you get compressible air, the squeeze can't push out the ink, the bubble simply compresses inside the chamber.

There is a type of wiper on the 1280. There has to be. It is not fashioned like the Canon's. Do realize that each time you turn the printer off and then on there is small purge that occurs. This small purge is enough to clear the microbubbles as it did for the originator of the thread on the following day.

Anyways if you choose to do it your way, go ahead. You have your freedom.

 

[mikling]

FINISHED with this

 

[Trigger 37]

Mike,... and anyone else that may have this problem, no need to get upset about this. I know you have put in a lot of time on this one thread. However, others are going to learn from these results. I guess you pointed out a key problem we all have with one little word,... "Clog". It can mean a dozen things to 6 different people. I, and many other people, use the word very loosely. When I say I think the problem was a clog, I mean a clog of some kind. It could be an air clog, a dried ink clog, or just so much wet ink on the printhead that the results look like a clog. I don't think there was any kind of blockage, or clog, or bubble, or anything inside the new ink cart I put in. All I did to make the printer work was to install a folded up paper towel under the printhead for 10" long. Then I wetted the first 4" and moved the head over and left it there for 30 seconds. Then I added more (Warm Windex) to the towel and moved the head again. I repeated this over and over. When that towel was totally black and soaked with ink, I pulled it out and replaced it with another one and started all over again. For the final pass, I moved the head to the center once all the towel was wet and then I picked up both ends of the towel and used it like a shoe shine rag, pulling it to both sides of the head, over and over. I thing I really got most all of the residue ink off of the face of the nozzles. This was clearly blocking some of the ink so it never got out of the head.

Then I printed a 4x6 image of the 6 color bars and noticed a considerable amount of banding, or white stripes in the magenta bars. The other bars were in good conditioin, even the yellow which had been totally missing. So then I did one head cleaning cycle, and printed a large 4x6 image of just magenta to purge anything that may be blocking the nozzles. After that I re-printed the 6 color bars and all of them were perfect. I then printed a 8x10 photo on premimum glossy photo paper and it is good enough for mounting in my upcoming art show.

I don't care what we call the problem,.. whether it was air bubbles in the head, clogged nozzles, dried ink or wet ink on the face of the head, or whatever. It was fixed by several paper towel head cleanings and one regulary head cleaning cycle and one purge print.

If there is a wiping station in this printer, it is doing a terrible job. I've pulled many heads out of very old canon printers, and at the most I can wipe all of the residue ink off the bottom of the head with one slightly wet paper towel. If you were to see the amount of ink I got off the bottom of the Epson printhead, I think would agree that I was lucky to get anything to print through that mess. I will check some of the Epson Service Manuals I have and see if similar printers have a wiping action like the wiper blade in the Canon purge unit.

I hope this thread helps someone else. It sure has made my day,... I got my top quality printer back.

 

[mikling]

There is substantial ink remaining within the head even after you have removed the cartridges. As long as you put some absorbent material down there, it will wick it out. The epson head does accumulate ink depoits on the bottom and the method you described will clean. How can you tell there are ink deposits underneath? Simple. When you print a nozzle check and you have the bars not in the proper stairstep pattern, you have deposits under there. Why is this telling? because the deposits are sitting at the edge of the nozzle and it is deflecting the output of the nozzle to the side and not perpendicular to the head thus leading to the out of place stairstep bar. Why does this occur sometimes? because the lousy wiper will streak ink mud across the face.

The method of cleaning underneath has its risks by cleaning it with the method you described. It can possibly dirty the paper edge sensor normally located at the printhead edge. this will give an error condition and make the printer non functional. So do so ONLY if you are aware of the risks because that error condition will cause heart palpitations to the uninitiated.

BTW, while I discovered these issues by myself, in my discussions with the ink engineer at Image Specialists, he confirmed my points about the Epson clog. There are so many possibilities but the least likely one is the one that people think is the most common...the dried ink clog especially with dye based ink. Ok call a clog whatever you want but the main source of the perceived clog for an Epson is a result of entrapped air. This is not terminal and on a previously functioning printer has more to do with the quality of the source of ink feed than anything else.

Yes, you have your printer back and with proper cartridges I said you would.

If it was the printhead, let's stick the old refilled Epson cartridge back in there again, use some and refill it again and see what happens.