Epson MainBoard Problems

[mazy_pishi]

Problems of Epson Mainboards -Power Supply - Formatter Board - CICU & Etc...

 

[mazy_pishi]

You can fix the electronic problems in EPSON inkjet Printers Easily, so don't give up and replace!! Just try to repair it first.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I can't help but I didn't have any electronics problems with Epson printers - quite a lot of them actually - over a very long time, it's a no-issue for me

 

[printy]

Dirty , defective paper sensor or little fuse on MB are the problems that you can solve. On the L series you can try to change the transistor if the main board does not work anyway. The most common cause of the transistor burning is a burned print head.

 

[mazy_pishi]

Some of issues are so called silenced electronics malfunction.
I may post if i see any issue that could be related to these malfunction.

 

[jfcarbel]

Just pulled a CB53 mainboard from Epson 1400, can see no physical caps with issues. What to check? The printer was showing connected on USB but not communicating with PC and ink levels showed all disabled. Someone indicated that is typical mainboard failure.

 

[mikling]

First check with another USB cable.

Yes, this is a typical motherboard failure. I experienced this on my R2880. It is likely a communication chip somewhere on the board. Initially when the printer was not responding, I used to disconnect the USB, power off and then on etc. and for a period I would get it going again, till it finally would not respond. Then I took it into an Epson service center for a major city in NA. The cost was $300 to repair. For an R2880, it sounded fair BUT I wanted to make sure that the printer would return to factory specs. So I questioned exactly what would be done and thus began an outline I discovered in another post.

If you just want the printer to run, in addition to the Mainboard replacement, you will need to obtain a program adjust.exe for the 1400.
This you can probably find somewhere on the internet, you will then need to enter some numbers that is printed on the printhead for the 1400 and enter this onto the mainboard. You are not necessarily done yet. Because you will hope that the physical adjustment for the paper handling is the same on the mainboard of the old one as the new one or else you will get paper handling issues. If you want the printer to print like it was printing before, then you will have to perform another adjustment that trims the color output. If you do not need precise color then this step can be left out. Epson outside the factory skips this part anyways.

What is the effect of skipping. Well, I remember that over ten years ago, I do remember Epson touting the Stylus PRO series as being trimmed in the factory like the wide formats to within 2 or 3% in what parameter? They never said but I do know it was color matching to other printers. The Stylus 1400 is not a pro model, maybe it is trimmed to withing 5% or ????, Epson never published it. What I can tell you is that I have a 1400 and 1430. They are identical print engines and they should print very very similar. To this eye, side by side I can discern differences. The 1430 prints a touch cooler than the 1400 and both of these are factory trimmed to what level ???? I have seen the output of two Epson refurbished R2880s and they did not match at all! At the time, I could not explain why but I know exactly why now...they were not trimmed. So skipping is clearly hit and miss.

The other oddity is that the 1400 on default prints with a gamma setting of 1.8. The 1430 prints with a default setting of 2.2. If you use the default on the 1400, the prints look too warm by a mile as compared to the 1430. So you should make sure the gamma setting on the 1400 in the driver is set to the correct value. Why the change? The only thing I could think of is that the 1400 was introduced before widespread use of LED/LCD screens. This aspect initially threw me for a loop.

Here's another reason why I would caution chasing after the 1400 if the mainboard costs a lot of money. The printhead on the 1400 will likely eventually slowly cross contaminate between the yellow and black. You may notice this in nozzle checks after a period of no use. Initially it will be slight requiring just some printing to flush out the discolored yellow. Until a clean is called for and then it happens even during printing. Every single machine I have had since the R260, 4 of them, the RX series eventually suffered this. My current Artisan 50 has this problem. My 1400 and 1430 are seldom used so....it has not run into this as yet. A new printhead is called for when this happens.

My advice is to go out and purchase a Pro-100 for $133 USD after rebate for a Pro-10 for $199 after rebate. The 1400 is not worth chasing at this point. B&H photo, Murphy's camera and call in.

 

[jfcarbel]

Wow thanks for the info, I did not realize the motherboards were married to the printheads via a configuration setting. I have heard that many of the adjust.exe out there have malware, so if anyone here has a clean version then please PM me. I assume to trim controls are to tune in print color, but as long as pictures are pretty good I am not that picky.

My needs are just good color printer for photos but quality does not need to be professional just sharp. Don't need medium format printer as largest I print is 8x10. But I do want CD/DVD printing. Also want a printer I can use refillable carts in. Canon seems a bit pricey for that Pro-10 ($675) and was hoping to meet these requirements and stay under $400 if possible.

The main board is only $80 so going to give that a go. But first going to try communicating to printer just from wireless to see if maybe that works.

 

[thedeazy]

You can fix the electronic problems in EPSON inkjet Printers Easily, so don't give up and replace!! Just try to repair it first.

I'm having a problem with an Epson printer that's showing all blinking lights. On WIC reset it's not showing any Fatal errors, is just saying IDLE or communication error in the epson status monitor. I want to try to fix this and can pay for your help!!