Blocked jets on an Epson tylus color 800

throw it out.

I had an Epson C62 that I took on as a "problem child" a few years back... I was determined to get that godd*mned thing going. I did all you have done, above, and more.

Then I threw it out.

Unfortunately most of the el-cheapo Epson printers have the print heads in the machine, whereas most cheap-ass HP printers have them in the ink cartridge. So whereas a clogged HP can generally be resurrected by changing out all the ink cartridges, the Epson goes in the bin instead. It's a poor design.

Dave S.

I bought an Epson jet cleaning kit from MaxPatchInk.com. It consists of a little bottle of cleaning solution, a syringe, a piece of plastic tubing to connect the syringe to the ink nozzles, and directions. So far I have tried it once and it cleaned out a lot of ink but didn't completely clear the jets. But the directions say you may have to repeat the treatment several times, and I haven't got around to doing that yet.

I did a 600 which was blocked solid. Removed the heads and dismantled it. Soaked it in ammonia for several days. Made up a pressure washer using a squeezy replacement ink comes in and some tubing. Gently 'forced' distilled water through each of the heads. Repeated the soaking and forcing until the holes looked clear under a magnifying glass.

You have to be pretty careful removing and fitting the tubing - the plastic fittings are pretty delicate.

Badly clogged heads are a known problem on Epsons. I had one a couple of years back that used to drive me up the wall. It would clog up whilst it was actually printing. The really bad thing about them is that the head cleaning utility soaks up about a gallon of ink for every colour - not just the one that's blocked, so if it doesn't clear first go, it starts getting pretty expensive. Eventually, I gave up on it and went to buy a new HP, like I had always used in the past. I'm not quite sure how, but I came out of the shop with another Epson ... It turned out that it was just as bad for head clogging as the model that I had before, and a few months ago, I drop-kicked the rotten thing down the road to the local tip, and went and bought an HP as I should have done in the first place. It has performed faultlessly so far, exactly as my old HPs did.

Arfa

That's pretty much been my experience. I did have an Epson Stylus IIs back in the day that was a fantastic printer and never clogged, even with months of disuse, but I've had two since that were utter garbage and would be clogged up solid every time I needed to print something. I've had HP's since then and have had far fewer clogs.

Blowing or sucking ? ie pushing the blockage with or opposite the normal ink flow direction ?

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

Success - (short lived ?) I cut a couple of small squares of sewing/habberdashers/miliners felt, intending to lay both on the B&W cleaning tank but unpowered moving the carrier across, one transferred and landed neatly on the RYB (not RGB of coarse) tank so left as is. Placed half a drinking straw of ammonia solution on each piece of felt, moved the carrier fully to the right to engage the tanks uplift mechanism and left overnight.

Bit of a puddle of ink in the base this morning but on running the ROM dump print test all is working fine except two jets on the black delivery - I can live with that. Had been in a loft for over 3 years.

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

I just finished refilling a Canon Black cartridge for my wife's printer and it is working like a new cartridge. The trick is to refill them before they are totally dried out, and to not overfill them so that you force ink out the jets. Placing a clogged cartridge in shallow bowl of hot water to just cover the jets themselves for a couple of minutes will unclog the jets on most cartridges, but not do much if the ink inside is totally out and dried out.

H. R. Hofmann

load of

loft

ammonia

docking/cleaning

turn

black

the

black.

from a

I have an Epson Photo 700 which stills works as it should. Last week I had to replace the black ink tank and duly went through the procedure and did a test print. Nada, nuthin, no black ink - even after a cleaning cycle! How can this be? Simple - check the tear-off tab which covers the air inlet. On mine the tab had left a patch of clear film which completely closed off the air hole. After cleaning with some isopropanol and visibly checking to make sure the hole was clear a test print was now successful.

Check the air hole is clear!