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Removing the Ejection Rollers (Pizza Wheels) on Epson Printers
PURPOSE OF THE "PIZZA WHEELS" OR EJECTION ROLLERS: The "pizza wheels" or ejection rollers in the Epson desktop inkjet printers serve the purpose of helping to guide the paper out of the printer and allowing it to eject clear from the print heads. This is especially useful if you are printing a large number of prints and leaving your printer unattended - you expect to come back minutes later and find a neatly stacked pile of finished prints. The ejection rollers also help to hold onto the paper while the print heads finish printing the last fraction of an inch near the bottom edge of the media. With the ejection rollers, most Epson Stylus desktop printers can print within 1/2 of an inch from the bottom of the paper or other media. Without these ejection rollers you should not try to print more than 3/4" to 1" from the bottom edge of the print media or the printer will encounter problems.
EJECTION ROLLERS IN EPSON'S LARGE-FORMAT PRINTERS: (7000 and 9000 series) There are none! Instead of ejection rollers, Epson uses a vacuum system to suck and hold down the media as it passes from the path of the print heads -- a very ingenious system that is much more expense than ejection rollers (one of the many reasons these bigger printers cost so much more than the smaller, desktop models)!
MUTE BENEFITS: These two benefits of the ejection rollers don't amount to much if you're having print quality problems caused by these rollers or you're using your printer mostly to produce fine art and portfolio pieces one-at-a-time, and often with substantial margins (where you don't need to go within 1/2" of the bottom edge of the media.
REASONS FOR REMOVAL: Occasionally, the "pizza wheels" or ejection rollers on the desktop Epson Stylus printers, from the old 3000 model on down to the newest printers can leave annoying tracks on your prints. Although his rarely happens with Epson inks and media combinations, it can be quite noticeable on some of the their glossy papers -- leave a track of small little holes poked into the paper. These tracks can also become noticeable where heavy ink laydowns occur and the ejection rollers track ink from a wet (heavy ink laydown) into a lighter area of the print.
Pizza wheel or ejection roller tracks are most noticeable when Epson users "push the envelope" with thicker non-Epson brand media such as 3rd party fine art papers or even using 3rd party inks (especially slower drying pigmented inks).
The Epson Stylus Photo 2000P already uses the slower drying pigment inks, so it can often produce problems with many 3rd party media products. The 2000P does not use Epson's typical "pizza" wheel style ejection rollers. Instead, Epson has employed the use of white plastic (Nylon?) rollers, which on some media (especially canvas) will literally track off Epson's slow drying pigment ink!
WILL THIS VOID MY WARRANTY? Probably. If you had other problems with your Epson printer and needed to send it back for warranty repair, Epson would probably question why the ejection rollers were missing! However, re-inserting these ejection rollers is fairly simple, prior to returning the printer to Epson for warranty work.
REMOVING THE "PIZZA WHEELS" OR EJECTION ROLLERS: While the following text is written as a guide specifically to help 2000P users remove their ejection rollers, the process is very similar for almost all other Epson Stylus desktop printers, with the exception of the 3000 (we have given separate instructions for the 3000)
Removing the ejection rollers on the 2000P does not not cause any printing problems, other than you shouldn't set your printer to print a stack of sheets unattended. However, because Epson recommends that you only print one sheet at a time anyway on this printer, this isn't a problem. The ejection rollers perform two functions: 1) they eject the print a couple of inches away from the heads, so that the trailing end of the print does not interfere with the next print (again, no problem, if you're following Epson's suggestion of only loading one sheet at a time). 2) These rollers lightly hold onto the print so that the printer can print within about a 1/4" of the bottom edge. Without the ejection rollers, you should not try to print beyond 3/4" from the bottom edge. This is usually not a problem because watercolor paper users usually like a lot of border around their images to show off the paper, and canvas users need at least an inch border to wrap around stretcher bars or masonite.
To remove the 3 ejection roller sets (made of black plastic), you may need to loosen the two screws (2-3 complete turns) on either end of the silver metal plate that holds the three eject roller sets, and the 3 ejection roller sets can then be unclipped and dropped out through the holes on the silver plate.
The black plastic roller sets come in two sizes, a smaller set of rollers and two larger sets of rollers. NOTE: There are also four additional individual ejection rollers (set into black plastic clips), but these rarely track wet ink, and should be left alone.
The screw on the left end of the silver metal plate is easily accessible, but the screw on the right side is partially covered by the resting print heads. So once you've removed the left set of ejection rollers and the center set, you'll want to push the yellow-orange button on the front of the printer (under the cover) and which moves the print heads to the left side of the printer where you would normally change ink cartridges. But in this case you'll only leave the print heads in that position until you've loosed the screw on the right and removed the right ejection rollers set. Each of the ejection roller sets have 3 or 4 plastic "spring" clips that must be pushed in with a small standard screwdriver, which releases the rollers set so that it can drop below the silver plate. You'll then need to slide the rollers set with the screwdriver towards the back of the printer and clear of the silver plate so it can be picked up and removed. Be sure to re-tighten both screws above the silver metal plate and return the print heads to their resting position by pushing the yellow-orange button again.
This is where the tabs are located, only 4 are highlighted in this illustration, but all need to be removed (image example here is from the Epson 1160).
This is what the tabs look like, these are what you push on to drop out the carriers.
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