My R3880 Could Be Dying

[Ian Barber]

It is a tough call @websnail but its one I will have to make before Monday

Im just making enquireries to see what value the 3880 printer has to offset it against the new one.

 

[websnail]

I'm just making enquireries to see what value the 3880 printer has to offset it against the new one.

Well the good news is that the printhead itself will have value if nothing else...

 

[Roy Sletcher]

The only downside to a brand new printer is the consumables options and more importantly the public knowledge on the "quirks" or outright problems/faults.

That said the R3880 has a pretty serious fault which may have been resolved in the P800... Tough call but good luck.

Having just acquired a 3880, I would like to know more about "The R3880 has a pretty serious fault".

Tried to carry out due diligence research before my purchase. On balance it seemed to be a "no-brainer" to make the purchase, but guess there has to be some downsides, or things I overlooked.

RS

 

[Ian Barber]

*** UPDATE ***

I have just spent the best part of 2 hours stripping the printer down right the way to locating the ink switching lever, motor and dampers.

Everything looks spotless and clean, no ink spatter, nothing. The ink change motor is a worm drive motor which operates a cam, which in turn operates a lever depending on whether you have ML or PK selected. The motor shaft can be turned by hand and that turns freely. I managed to rotate the motor shaft through its full duration both back and forth and watched the cam move and operate both levers. I have thouroughly cleaned the areas very delicately with windex and cotton swabs.

Whilst the top cover of the printer was removed, this gave me good access to the capping station and head wiper blade, so I took the opportunity to thoroughly clean those areas with windex.

The printer is now back together and for those that are wondering... I had NO screws left over

I will leave this overnight now for the windex to do its job and do a test print in the morning.

 

[cls]

@ian
WOW hope the best ..

 

[Ian Barber]

Here we are the next morning after the big strip down. I left some paper towel soaked in windex under the head overnight and it was saturated with black ink this morning, not sure if this is a good or bad sign.

I did a nozzle check and all is clear, so I decided to run some 6x4 test prints through it whilst I was having breakfast and here is what came out.

I did x2 Neutral through the ABW Driver and X1 Warm Tone Through the ABW

 

[websnail]

Having just acquired a 3880, I would like to know more about "The R3880 has a pretty serious fault".

Hi Roy,

I need to edit my comment because I jumped the gun... "The R3000 and potentially the R3880, have a potentially serious fault"

The fault is the one described for the solenoid which switches between the photo and matt blacks. It can fail, although my understanding of it was that it would simply fail to flip between one or other channel or jam. @cls has described additional problems that I wasn't aware of and also expanded that to the R3880 which appears to use the same solenoid design.

In terms of classing it as a "serious fault" it's probably an over-statement to a degree. It's not on the same level of occurrence as say the Workforce Pro yellow ink system failure but this is a high cost, supposedly high end printer so you would hope that something like this wouldn't happen but by all accounts it can and sometimes does.

So, mea culpa... I overstated the potential issue but given the expense of the machine you'd definitely not want it to happen or have an associated cost of £500+ to resolve.

 

[Ian Barber]

The Saga continues

My R3880 is still in intensive care, I am refusing to turn off the life support. I decided yesterday to open her up one last time and perform a laparotomy on her.

Here are the results

http://www.digitalblackandwhite.co.uk/printing/epson-r3880-revived.html/

 

[websnail]

The bit about black ink being in the yellow output was news to me so I'm not sure if it was something I'd missed.

Either way, that sort of issue traditionally means one of the following:

• The waste ink system is not pumping ink away from the cleaning station (resting pad).
  Note: This wouldn't just be on the yellow if the case though. You would see pooling in the resting/cleaning station and it would be happening to all the channels that shared that station too.
  
• There's minor overpressure on one or more of the black ink channels which is causing droplets of ink to form OR nozzle firings being collected into droplets of black ink on the printhead underside. These get absorbed slightly into the nozzles close by when the printhead is resting, and are most noticeable in the yellow channel (for obvious reasons).
  Note: If it's droplet forming then something is soiling the printhead underside and acting like a magnet. You would also see nozzles missing in the nozzle check..

It's very unlikely that this is a blown head or you'd see all sorts of issues... If this is an ongoing issue then keeping an eye on variables such as length of time between yellow printing clearly and starting to show... Usually this sort of thing is resolvable but finding the true culprit takes time, patience and a lot of hair pulling...

Key thing to note though... As this issue with the black pollution wasn't something noted earlier you may actually be making a key mistake.. ie: making things worse with the disassembly, rather than better. I have spare books, T-shirts and TV rights on this if anyone needs them, so by no means without "sin" on this point myself.

 

[Ian Barber]

After turning the printer on this morning, the first thing I did was a nozzle check and the black nozzle shows broken lines and the yellow nozzles shows signs of black.

The life support has now been turned off, all that is left to do is arrange a burial for it now, at least I have the original box to put it in.