Epson 4000 clogged nozzles. Any other solution?

[yvzzz]

About two months ago my matte black nozzles suddenly started misfiring and gave a consistently uggly banding in my mat prints. This was particular to that ink, presumably because I use it less often.

The short story is that I was told I need to change the printhead by the official repair service. Epson offered me to exchange the printer for a refurbished one at $1000 (it has a 4 or 6 month warranty, forget which).

As you can imagine, I tried many solutions to recovere the nozzles, and I thought I would share them here because it is difficult to find this info on the web:

1) I first run many automatic cleaning cycles (most conveniently accessed directly from front panel, press menu, go down to "test print", and hit enter 3x. I had read that doing this on a daily basis for about a week had solved problems for many. Adding solution 3) to this procedure is even better.

2) I run two deep cleaning cycles over time, and of course wasted a lot of ink needlessly.

3) Loaded the parking foam pad with Windex and parked the head over it overnight. This helped cleaning the other nozzles, not the ones I needed!

4) Soaked some sturdy paper towel rolled to about 2-inch wide with Windex and passed the head over it gently. Did that several times, but without result. You can easily move the printhead from parked position by pressing on the cutter blade lever under the hood of the printer (or just go to Menu -> Maintenance -> Change Cutter Blade). It unlocks the head and lets you move it to the left.

5) Purchased a Lyson cleaning cartridge for the matte black position ($35 + shipping) and flushed the line by printing a 1/1/1/ deep black sheet with an mat art paper profile. Had to print 2-3 dozen 8.5x11 in office paper sheets to get almost clear pages. At that point, auto cleaning cycles started to give better patterns (no smudging of black in the matte black position, although a very minute amount of black ink leak still persisted at a couple of squares, probably due to the dried up ink dissolving). When finally this was practically gone, I switched back to the regular matte black cartridge and got prints that were satisfactory, but not really 100%.

6) Well, after a few days of use, I got the banding again!

7) I finally figured out how to dislodge the cart off its railing guide. The four sets of wheels are pressed against the rails with springs, so pressing the whole cart towards you (towards the front of printer) with enough pressure lets you bring up the back (move the cart to the space 2/3rds left where there is a cutout letting you take it out!) You need to be careful with the attached transparent tape and rubber band so that they don't get caught or break. I did not try to detach them from the printing cart. You can pull the bottom of the cart forward and up by rotating the whole unit. You have then full access to the print head. It looks like this:

http://www.inkjetart.com/3800/gallery/large/03.jpg

(this is the 3800 printhead, but they look the same)

I found that even with sturdy "lint free" paper towel, cleaning the head with Windex leaves a lot of fibers behind. However, female sanitary pads are wonderful for this, although I can't tell if they are really good at picking up tiny fibers potential lodged in the nozzle channels. I suspect that this was what precipitated my problems. At the time, I was printing thick art paper and forgot to raise the printhead, getting it in contact with the paper on which I was printing and getting a lot of "bumping" of the printhead on the sides of the paper. I think this may have left fiber residues in the nozzle channels.

Anyway, the printhead looked really clean under an 8x magnifying glass, and I placed it back into position. You NEED to be very careful doing this, not forcing the cart down in any way!

The printer is now better, but still not quite there. I am at a point where I am about to give up.

Hopefully someone can suggest another solution. How about changing print head myself? I would not mind doing this if it seems feasible, but where do I buy the printhead which must cost about $600.

Of course, I can try to sell the printer as is for a few hundreds and get a 3800 or 4800.

Thanks!
Yves Rubin
http://rubinphoto.com

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[ttreppa]

Yves,
The folks at http://www.fixyourownprinter.com have a solution that they claim is used by the Epson service people. It smells like a mild soap. I used it and it seemed to work just fine.
On the other hand printing on a thick art paper might be the real problem. Maybe another printer is more suited to print on the medium that you are using. On the other hand it might be time to upgrade to a 3800.
Best in you cleaning endeavors.
Terry Treppa

[yvzzz]

Thank you Terry. I did try the solution from them. It did not seem to do a lot more than Windex. A printer technician at Lexjet recommended that I use 1% ammonia in 10% alcohol/90% water, which I did not try yet, but that is essentially what Windex is (+ some detergent).

Yes, it may be time to upgrade...

[onenose]

yvzzz,

if you ever fix your problem please post and let us know. i'm ready to buy the 3800, but want to know that if any nozzles clog there is hope.

bernadette

[ednaz]

Head strikes on the edges of paper, or on other materials you may print on (I print on aluminum... you can BELIEVE I have a checklist for resetting head height that rivals that of an airline pilot) will destroy your head. Your problem MAY be little bits of paper that you can't see, but it could also be a damaged print head itself. We don't think paper could damage much, but when you're down to the size of a print nozzle in an Epson 4000 print head, the strength of that paper edge is pretty significant. I know of two guys who are experimental surface printers like I am who have destroyed print heads on a 4000 - both times, it was on a handmade paper.

I think the $1000 refurb is one heck of a deal. I had problems with my 4000 a couple months after getting it, and the refurbs they sent were just fine. Yes I had multiple, but that wasn't because the refurbs were bad, but because Epson hadn't figured out the problem that made it look like the printer was bad, but was actually a cartridge problem.

[yvzzz]

Thank you Ednaz! This may be the problem, especially if the resin coating on the luster papers I was bumping (due to upward curling on dry days) got stuck into the microchannels. If it is not fibers but the resin that's stuck in there, perhaps a non-aqueous solvent would work?

[ednaz]