How To Ressurect A Dead Brother All In One?

[cooltouch]

I own a Brother MFC 685CW, which a "friend" gave to me. I don't know how long it had been sitting over at his house, but it's been sitting here at mine for about a year now. My regular printer died a sudden death recently so I've decided to see if I can get this Brother going. It has fresh ink cartridges loaded in, and everything seems to be working normally. I just installed the latest drivers from Brother's website and tried my first print job. As soon as I did, it booted a cleaning cycle, which lasted about 10 minutes, and then it printed out the document -- which was white as the driven snow. It should have been full color, but it did not have even the tiniest speck of dye.

So is it a big pain getting to the print heads to attempt to clean them, or is a there a better way to accomplish the same thing?

 

[ghwellsjr]

You've probably already tried this, but does the printer have a nozzle check function on it? This should work even without a computer hooked up. Also, most printers have their own built-in head cleaning functions, doesn't this one? I would advise just doing these two functions until you get it to work or until you give up rather than trying to print something from your computer.

I hope you didn't spend a lot of money on a set of new cartridges.

 

[cooltouch]

Thanks for your reply. I'll take a look at the manual and see if it has anything besides its cleaning cycle. As I mentioned in the above message, when I went to print the very first time, it booted a cleaning cycle that lasted about 10 minutes. From what I've read so far about the Brother printers is that their cleaning cycles use a lot of ink (similar to Epson, I guess. The Epsons I've owned used a lot of ink for their cleaning cycle). So I'm hoping to avoid having to put it through multiple cleaning cycles if there is a way to clean the heads manually.

I have a fair amount of bulk ink. I learned from an old thread here (which is how I came to discover this forum) how to refill my Brother cartridges, so that's what I did. My printer was missing the magenta cartridge, so I ended up buying a MicroCenter brand cartridge for about 8 bucks. So, no, I didn't spend much. And if this printer ends up being toast, I will syphon the ink back out of those cartridges for re-use.

I'll go take another look at the manual and the software that I installed for this printer, and see if they offer some additional options. But I'd still like to know if it's possible to manually clean the print heads, and how I would go about doing it.

 

[cooltouch]

Well, I have some good news. I managed to get the Brother's print heads unclogged. And I didn't even run out of ink doing it.

So, off I go to give it a workout. Hopefully it will provide decent, high-resolution color because that's what I need.

 

[cooltouch]

Just to add to the above -- well it took several tries, but I managed to print out my first 8.5x11 photo print. This printer did an excellent job -- as good as the Epson R300 or Workforce 600. The biggest problem I had was getting the printer to reliably feed the thicker photo paper.

If you have any experience with this type of Brother printer and you've done some printing using the 8.5x11 size sheets, I'd sure like to know how you're doing it. If I put the paper in the regular paper tray, I'm only running about a 16.67% success rate.

 

[Smile]

Use sticky tape to attach a sheet of plain paper to feeder so printer will not be able to load this page, then inset photo paper as usual. The paper surface helps to feed thicker paper if you feed one by one.

This is not required if you insert whole pack of paper, my MFC-5895Cw can load 200gsm paper.

 

[Squarepusher]

How did you get it to print? Were the print heads clogged, what was your procedure? I am having a similar problem on my MFC J430

The problem with a lot of Brother printers are, if you use refillable ink and its not the right type/quality, it will clog the printheads. I have not figured out how to unclog them yet once this happens~!

 

[cooltouch]

I bought a cleaning kit from an eBay seller for my epsons, but I used it for the brother too. A component of the kit is a small bottle of cleaning fluid. I used this with a syringe that came with the kit to inject the fluid into the ports for the heads. I'm a little fuzzy on the details now. But as I recall it was a fairly simple process, much easier than with the epsons. One of the tricks is getting the print head(s) out where you can get to them. Again I'm a bit hazy on exactly what I did with the brother, but I know the trick with the epsons was to get the heads moving and then to unplug the printer. Once they are undocked, you can move them back annd forth, which makes it easier to reach in there to clean them. Sorry I'm not more specific. Perhaps another member who has done this will chime in with specifics.

Oh, and I haven't had any problems with ink clogs using ink I bought years ago. In fact, I just refilled my cartridges a few days ago. I've used the printer mostly for regular print jobs, but I also printed out probably 50 photos using 8.5x11 glossy paper, and honestly it did a better job than my Epson R300 Photo printer.

Oh, and an additional FYI, the MicroCenter cartridge I bought was a breeze to refill. The only thing holding the two halves together was the paper label. When I cut through it to get to the seam, the cartridge just opened up. The cell that holds the ink is reversed from the brother ones, where the hard plastic side is the left and the thin stuff is the right side. It just lifts free from the outer shell, so it's not hard to get to.

 

[Smile]

How did you get it to print? Were the print heads clogged, what was your procedure? I am having a similar problem on my MFC J430

The problem with a lot of Brother printers are, if you use refillable ink and its not the right type/quality, it will clog the printheads. I have not figured out how to unclog them yet once this happens~!

Well try OCP ink from Germany, no problems with my brother, and Brother has self cleaning routine if you keep it on (plugged to the wall) so it cleans itself. Printer wakes up from suspended mode cleans then goes back to suspended (sleep) mode.