How to avoid Epson ink clogs
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From: Mark Conrad on 23 Jul 2007 00:36 Contemplating a 4 month vacation trip to a friends house, do not want to come back to a clogged Epson 4800 Pro. Thinking of several approaches: 1) Remove print head, feasible? Void my warranty? 2) Try to find 3rd party ink vendor who sells some sort of ink 'flushing' scheme - - - but think this might be risky. Offhand, any flushing solvent that might work would likely attack the ink supply hoses. 3) Forget about it altogether and hope the ink head does not clog. Just trying to avoid the cost of shipping that 100 pound printer back to Epson to recover from any persistent ink clogs. Heard bad stories about damage to big unwieldy printers during shipping. Thanks for any suggestions, Mark-
From: Arthur Entlich on 23 Jul 2007 08:14 Head removal is extreme and will certainly void your warranty and likely not protect the heads from clogging, and put the printer out of alignment. There are a few things you can do to help prevent clogging. Firstly, if you are using Ultrachrome inks they are slow to clog. You can add some water to the cleaning station just as you shut the printer down. This will keep the heads more moist. You can wrap your printer in a large plastic bag which you close, to maintain humidity. You can even go as far as to set a sponge damped in water OUTSIDE the printer in a small disk, but inside the same plastic bag to keep humidity levels up. You can remove the ink cartridges, purge the system, and then place cleaning cartridge in to replace them and run a refilling. This is quite ink costly, however, on the 4800 Pro. Do NOT remove the cartridges and leave them out if you are not going replace them with cleaning cartridges. The 4800 Pro is less likely to develop clogs than some because of the inks it uses, the bulk supply of ink, and the head and cleaning station designs. Art Mark Conrad wrote: > Contemplating a 4 month vacation trip to a friends house, do not want to > come back to a clogged Epson 4800 Pro. > > Thinking of several approaches: > > 1) Remove print head, feasible? Void my warranty? > > 2) Try to find 3rd party ink vendor who sells some sort of > ink 'flushing' scheme - - - but think this might be risky. > > Offhand, any flushing solvent that might work would likely attack the > ink supply hoses. > > > > 3) Forget about it altogether and hope the ink head does not clog. > > > Just trying to avoid the cost of shipping that 100 pound printer back to > Epson to recover from any persistent ink clogs. > > Heard bad stories about damage to big unwieldy printers during shipping. > > > Thanks for any suggestions, > > Mark-
From: Jan Alter on 23 Jul 2007 10:30 "Arthur Entlich" <e-printerhelp(a)mvps.org> wrote in message news:sY0pi.138344$xq1.99289(a)pd7urf1no... > Head removal is extreme and will certainly void your warranty and likely > not protect the heads from clogging, and put the printer out of alignment. > > There are a few things you can do to help prevent clogging. > > Firstly, if you are using Ultrachrome inks they are slow to clog. > > You can add some water to the cleaning station just as you shut the > printer down. This will keep the heads more moist. > > > You can wrap your printer in a large plastic bag which you close, to > maintain humidity. You can even go as far as to set a sponge damped in > water OUTSIDE the printer in a small disk, but inside the same plastic bag > to keep humidity levels up. > > You can remove the ink cartridges, purge the system, and then place > cleaning cartridge in to replace them and run a refilling. This is quite > ink costly, however, on the 4800 Pro. > > Do NOT remove the cartridges and leave them out if you are not going > replace them with cleaning cartridges. > > The 4800 Pro is less likely to develop clogs than some because of the inks > it uses, the bulk supply of ink, and the head and cleaning station > designs. > > > Art > > > Mark Conrad wrote: > >> Contemplating a 4 month vacation trip to a friends house, do not want to >> come back to a clogged Epson 4800 Pro. >> >> Thinking of several approaches: >> >> 1) Remove print head, feasible? Void my warranty? >> >> 2) Try to find 3rd party ink vendor who sells some sort of >> ink 'flushing' scheme - - - but think this might be risky. >> >> Offhand, any flushing solvent that might work would likely attack the ink >> supply hoses. >> >> >> >> 3) Forget about it altogether and hope the ink head does not clog. >> >> >> Just trying to avoid the cost of shipping that 100 pound printer back to >> Epson to recover from any persistent ink clogs. >> >> Heard bad stories about damage to big unwieldy printers during shipping. >> >> >> Thanks for any suggestions, >> >> Mark- Four months is quite a long time to leave any inkjet printer dorment, much less an Epson, and expect it to not develop some sort of drying effect in the head unless steps are taken. At my school we have over 80 Epson inkjets and when we go on summer break for 10 weeks I have the teachers bag the printers. So far its worked since starting this procedure since '99. We've never lost a printer due to head clogging over the summer. I used to have the teachers add a damp sponge into the bag as well, but one teacher thought I meant to put it in the printer, and when she complained to me in September that the printer made grinding noises when it started I discovered the sponge lieing next to the print head leaning against the head travel bar. The rust and corrosion were beyond repair. The options that Art has suggested are mentioned from very knowlegeable experience he has had with Epson printers, so one might consider using them as a foundation to how to deal with your problem. Additionally, to those thoughts (and I know this is a reach) you could hand the printer off to a knowledgeable neighbor and ask him/her to print something on the printer once every two weeks. -- Jan Alter bearpuf(a)verizon.net or jalter(a)phila.k12.pa.us
From: Mark Conrad on 23 Jul 2007 11:48 In article <noneof-1ACFCF.21381122072007(a)news.west.earthlink.net>, Mark Conrad <noneof(a)urbusiness.invalid> wrote: > Contemplating a 4 month vacation trip to a friends house, > do not want to come back to a clogged Epson 4800 Pro. Thanks guys for the excellent advice. I am a little hesitant about jacking up the humidity of the entire printer, in fact I go out of my way to keep the humidity very low, to avoid any corrosion of electrical contacts etc. Generally turn on a dehumidifier here when humidity gets above 50%. In my experience, any relative humidity over 60% is asking for real trouble as regards corrosion. That leaves me with a few choices: 1) Tape a 'custom plastic baggy' around the print head, do not know if this is feasible because I have not looked at clearances around the print head. 2) Run an automatic schedule of printing once a week, printing a 'simulated-black' page to exercise _all_ the ink holes in the print head. I would much prefer the custom fitted plastic bag taped around the print head to keep the 'local' humidity there as high as possible in hopes of avoiding clogs. Makes me very nervous having anything on an automatic schedule, because of several factors, not the least of which is lightning storms in this mountain area. My immediate (rural) neighbor had to spend thousands of dollars rewiring his house; lightning found his buried phone line about 200 feet away from his house, followed the phone line into his house, melted all his house wiring, zapped the wiring of the pump in his water well, etc. Phone company people buried his phone lines one foot deeper, in hopes of avoiding any future damage. Anyhow, the advice here stopped me dead in my tracks as regards removing the print head from the printer, that would have resulted in a real disaster. Mark-
From: John McWilliams on 23 Jul 2007 16:35
Mark Conrad wrote: > << Snipped bits out >> Here's an entirely different tack: Find a neighbor and or friend to "loan" it to, condition being they will print something once a week. Far safer, cheaper than anything else. -- john mcwilliams |