Brand New Epson R1800 clog problem

[wildboys]

I just bought a new epson R1800 printer new cartridges and all.Right out of the
box first nozzle check Red and black have lines missing.I did a head cleaning
same two color missing in the exact same spot.i did an auto nozzle check and it

says could not fix clog try manual cleaning so I did another head cleaning with the

same results.Lines missing with the red and black colors.I am already having second

thoughts about buying this printer.I have not printed one photo and the heads isare clogged and a fourth of a cartridge has already been used without fixing the problem.I think I should have bought the Canon 9000 pro.Any suggestions on fixing the problem or should I return this printer?

 

[canonfodder]

Wildboys,

I wouldn't keep that printer for a moment. They owe you one that works first off without even one head cleaning.

 

[Tin Ho]

I would like to hear what Mikling has to offer on this thread. This printer has superior 1.5 pl print head. The clogging must has nothing to do with the nozzle size but has everything to do with the ink composition. Mikling, if this statement is wrong perhaps you have the answer for the question you posted in another thread.

Canonfodder is right. You should return the printer to the store. Even they are willing to give you another one you will have tons of problems down the road. Just imagine how much it would cost you down the road for ink wasted in the waste ink tank.

 

[mikling]

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 (really it is not a clog but too many uninformed writers on the internet think it is but 99+% of the time it is not ... another danger of the internet)

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. Each single nozzle has an individual pump and chamber that drives it.

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 effect that too many think is a clog. Just because ink does not come out doesn't mean there is necessarily a clog,. When you apply a head clean, you basically hope you pull the ink through the the head hoping that you will flush the microbubbles with it.

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 very compressible.

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. So by trying to get all the ink out of the cartridge, ingesting air into theprinthead, they shoot themselves in the foot when they install a new cartridge and have trapped air and have to waste possibly half of it trying to get the air out. Now why would people do that???????????? but they do, because they don't know.

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.

 

[Tin Ho]

You have an air bubble within the print head.

If air bubble is the problem why a number of light and deep cleaning cycles later the problem did not go away? Are you saying a clogging symptom is caused by thin air in the ink cartridge that remains there after a number of cleaning cycles? How do you explain that after replacing ink cartridges the clogging symptom persists? I believe the ink cartridges involved in this case were new unused. Are you implying new Epson cartridges may be flawed?

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.

No, Sir. Thank you very much. It is known to be a bait to get you on hook so that they get to empty your pocket for all the wasted ink. If the printer works I may seriously weigh the cost/benefit for a printer that works. But if the air bubble is stirred up and clogs the print head again I lose.

 

[mikling]

Did I not say air in the head and within the printhead chamber? Whoever said air in the cartridge. Epson's cartridges don't have entrapped air in the ink. Their design stops this.

The air entrapment occurs when the spigot is exposed to air and then inserted into the outlet. While the seal is angled and a wiping action takes place, there is a remote possibility that air has gotten in. A new printer is shipped without ink cartridges installed. On my Canon MP500 I had to go through 2 head cleanings to get the PGI-5 to fire completely upon the first install. Sometimes things happen. Did I think it was a clog? absolutely not. Because I know the ink channels in the head sometimes don't fill completely the first time around.

I am not at all implying that Epson cartridges are flawed at all in fact they burp the best and are the best. Period.

If you use some poor quality cartridges that do not have the sealing valves like ones Epson has, no burping will take place. Actually ALL compatibles do not have this sealing valve.

What I am telling you is that sometimes there is air trapped in the pump chamber and can't get out. When these bubbles are foamy, they remain and the ink goes past it during a clean or flush. However, when they combine into one large air bubble over time, the suction from the printhead pulls it out as one. That is why you leave it to rest and the foam dissipates into one big bubble that is now extractable the next time the head is cleaned upon startup.

When you remove the cartridge, this can also cause a negative pressure in the head and pull air into the nozzle chamber. Another potential source of a problem.

If you have to print pictures that have to sell and last, you have to use pigment ink. regardless of the ink wastage, you still earn money on the prints that you sell. I certainly would not pay big bucks for a picture printed with dye ink and I'm sure you wouldn't either.

If you think Canon does not want to empty your wallet or HP or any other printer mfr for that matter as well; You are certainly entitled to do so. But I think we all know otherwise. That's the printer game. Deal with it.

 

[mikling]

Here's what the inside of the R1800 cartridge looks like. Beautiful design.

Judging by its complexity, you're getting your money's worth. Wouldn't you say?
BTW that spring is the air vent sealing valve. Once you take this Epson cartridge out. It seals itself.

the air intake is on the opposite side through a filter!

 

[Tin Ho]

Yes you did say air bubble in the print head. Thank you for the correction. But then isn't it even more absurd that many cleaning cycles could not suck it out? Isn't that more like a clog than air in there? I am having a hard time to understand how air is more solid than dried ink in the print head in preventing ink from flowing and printing. I am also having an extreme hard time to believe that Epson's cleaning or purging unit in the printer is flawed. Basically you seem to be saying Epson printers are flawed. Wow, let's not make such conclusion just yet. In your description of the flaw you described how a clog out of 8 set of nozzles makes the purging unit fail to unclog. So it is a clog that prevented the cleaning cycles from cleaning it up, not air bubbles. You are confusing the hell out of me now. Is it a clog or air bubble that is the problem?

 

[mikling]

Tin Ho, please reread carefully and understand what is going on. There is sufficient detail in there.
It goes like this. If it is a true clog, then a head cleaning doesn't really do much and can't. However, a head cleaning will often work. So it must be something else going on. This is what I explained. The fact that it works means something else other than a clog is at work/play.

The basic presumption you have is that head cleaning is CLOG cleaning and it is not. Head cleaning can also be clearing the head of air and not CLOGS. Ever given thought of that? In Epson's case, it is. I will leave you to think about whether something similar applies to a Canon head. If you go by Trigger's experience with the problems he has seen with the parking pad/suction cup you may suspect that a similar situation exists. I do.

As for Epson. This is the main issue. You can't shoot blanks ( air)
Get over it. Epson's system is not flawed, the basic thinking that if it doesn't print it is a clog thinking is. The piezo head has its challenges of (getting air in the head) just as all things and people do.

A canon head cannot shoot blanks as well. So when there is improper flow from the canon cartridge tank, the canon head will shoot blanks due to insufficient ink. A head cleaning ( suction) will bring more ink into the wells and nozzle plate. thus you'll print for a while again until it starts running short. Done sufficiently enough times or sustained, you will coat the heaters and not be able to print as the insulated heaters due to the deposits will cake and burn out theheaters within the nozzle and give symptoms of a clog. But a clog it is not. That is why experienced Canon users know about flushing cartridges to prevent this situation.


As to why you cannot clear the bubbles( air) out of the head. There are various thoughts. All I will say is that it takes time. it has something do with the film strength of bubbles and surface tension. Remember that surface tension of bubbles are critical to inkjet inks that is why good ink is tested with a tensiometer to measure film strength. Color shading is not all there is to good ink.

If you've owned, used and thoroughly operated Epson printers, these misconceptions will go away. Again after three head cleanings, don't bother wasting the ink. Let the foam dissipate, some patience and eventually it will get sucked out. Personally, I have never seen an Epson printer give a perfect nozzle pattern on initial startup. I don't panic, I just give it a few tries then a rest overnight and tomorrow it's good to go. Epson can't publish that but experienced Epson users know this. It sucks ( no pun intended) but that is the nature of the beast.

If that doesn't work I bring out the big guns...my syringe and silicone tubing. But I have never had to resort to this with a new printer...only with discarded printers from the junkpile which was probably discarded because of a perceived clog and when left in storage or thrown out to the elements..turned into a real clog. But they were all cleared and printed perfectly afterwards.

Again you don't choose an R1800 for low running costs, because if you did, you've made the wrong choice. You know when you need an R1800 and it is for permanency and flexibility for media choices without switching inks AND a reasonable cost. The Pro9000 to my eye produces superior prints to the R1800. Similarly my i9900 produces superior images compared to my R800. However my R800 is used when a keepsake or permanent non fading print needs to be made and my i9900 or any of my other dyebase printers cannot fulfill that requirement.

 

[Tin Ho]

Thank you Mikling for your lengthy replies. To be honest I am very confused and remain unconvinced by many of your statements. Let's not turn it into an irrational debate. These talks may not really help the originator of this thread. I am sure he bought the R1800 for the reasons you stated. Unfortunately it seems it did not meet his expectations. I think the printer should be returned to the store. If he is willing to try another one go for it but he should expect a high operating cost down the road. It will be up to his own justification. I am sure he was aware of all the cost issues before buying the printer.