Daryl, I collected quite a bit of info when my Epson 740 was acting up. I'm pasting it all below. It is quite lengthy. I hope you'll find it to be of some value. You'll recognize some of the contributor's names.
I have had an Epson 640 for 7 years and refuse to adopt this disposable culture we live in. So, to clean my Epson, I would furtle about in the insides with a cottonwool bud to get rid of excess ink, then I would spray a piece of paper, both sides with WD40 and run it through a couple of times, then I would put some 3in1 oil on a cloth and wipe the silver patten.
See how you go! -Frances
USING THE HEAD CLEANING FUNCTION ON A EPSON PRINTER WITHOUT WASTING INK.
I, too, have used alcohol to clean the heads on my Epson printer. I have only had problems with the black ink heads. It helps if you fill a eye drop bottle with alcohol and keep it handy. Also have a flashlight handy. Take out the black and color cartridges. Put them on a suitable dish or tray upside down. Put a few drops of alcohol in the ink holes to keep them wet. Repeat as needed - don’t let them dry out. Keep plenty of paper towels handy. Put the black cartridge filled with alcohol into the printer. Look into the color cartridge holder. You will see a shiny metal tab. When this is depressed it tells the printer that a cartridge is in the printer. Look at the indicator light next to the power switch. The green light will be on. Push the tab, it will go off. This tab must be depressed for the cleaning function to work. I took a piece of cardboard from the back of a tablet and folded it so it would keep the tab depressed . This will take some experimentation to get right. The indicator light will be off when you get it right. Put several drops of alcohol into the colored ink wells before blocking the tab and closing the lid. You could use an old, cleaned-out, colored ink cartridge for this if you wanted. With the alcohol cartridge in place and the colored side rigged, clean to your hearts content. You will run alcohol through the black side and not waste any colored ink in the procedure. The above technique can be reversed or varied to clean the colored heads. Happy cleaning.
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I clean and repair all types of printers as a business. The surest way to unblock ink-jet print heads is to take out the cartridges, (cover the outlets with some damp material) put some absorbent paper under the print heads and partly fill Black and Colour receptacles with ink flushing fluid, leave over night, then using a cooking baster, gently force a stream of fluid onto the pads that the cartridges sit on, replacing the absorbent paper when necessary; providing the print head hasn't been damaged or worn out in the first place. This procedure will always work.
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I discovered PEROXIDE about two years ago. I tried everything in my medicine cabinet including Witch Hazel, alcohol, nail polish remover (acetone), peroxide, water, etc. Peroxide was the last thing I used and it worked like a charm. For my Canons, just a drop of peroxide applied with an eye dropper to the bottom side of the cartridge works wonders. For black it requires 2 drops and a few cleaning revolutions. For Lexmarks sometimes you have to let the cartridges soak in a mug in an inch of peroxide from 1 day to 1 month. Lexmarks cartridges are stubborn if you let them start to run out of ink and then refill. Always refill before empty. What I found most successful with Lexmark was the vigor with which I rubbed the contacts with a cotton facial pad (Coet) dabbed in peroxide. It seems the black ink especially hardens on to the contacts. Just a little extra elbow grease does the trick. The Epson is next so I will follow the tactics people mentioned above but using Peroxide not alcohol. I honestly found alcohol to be almost worthless in comparison to peroxide. Now I imagine that if one wanted to get really aggressive, Peroxide is probably available in a heavy duty strength at the beauty supply!
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This article saved my printer. I had such bad clogging on my Epson 860 that paper was emerging completely white - no ink at all. I had run many many cleaning cycles to no avail, then I used the alcohol in a dropper solution and it made no difference for at least 20 more cleaning cycles. Did more alcohol, more cleaning, suddenly a little bit of red , then more cleaning and all the nozzles cleared. I have a couple of additional pieces of advice - on an Epson printer, the cleaning cycle intensifies in groups of 3. If you clean then print, then clean, then print, you only ever do the light cycle. You have to run 3 consecutively, without printing in between, to get the more intense cleaning to kick in (this was from an Epson technician). The other thing he told me (that I should have known) is that you have to turn off the printer between jobs if you can - he said that leaving it on is like leaving the cap off a marker. Sounds like bad design to me - turning the printer on and off causes booting problems for some of us but there you are. Too bad he didn't tell me about alcohol too! Thank you so much for putting this solution out.
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Epson Stylus Color 800 clogged print head
PROBLEM: Dried black ink clog-up in the tube leading from the black ink cartridge to the print head. Black ink flow totally halted. New cartridges won't work.
BACKGROUND: Epson uses very fast-drying, water-soluble, inks in this printer, and if the printer sits idle for some length of time the ink feed tubes and the print heads become clogged with dry ink. Epson issues dire warnings about potential damage to the printer if attempts are made to flush these parts with any solvent, and recommends factory repair only.
On the advice of someone who has vast experience with such problems, I successfully used the following repair. procedure.
REPAIR PROCEDURE: Use a clean small hypodermic syringe with NO needle. Press on to the syringe nozzle, a 3/4 inch long piece of model airplane gas engine fuel tubing. This tubing is available cheaply from your local model hobby shop. It is a pale light blue colored plastic tubing. The MEDIUM size is the right one. The bore (ID) of the tubing is less than 1/16 of an inch. It makes a very tight fit when pushed onto the syringe nozzle.
Remove the cartridge from the printer, and pull the power plug immediately to prevent any further printer movement.
Load the syringe with 2-3 CC's of scalding hot water, preferably distilled water available at your grocery store. Then press the other end of the tubing down over the little black nozzle in the bottom of the cartridge holder. It must be a very tight fit.
Forcibly inject the hot water into the printer. If the clogging is really severe, you may have to press the syringe plunger very hard. Continue injecting until the syringe is empty, while making sure that the tubing does not slip off the syringe or the printer nozzle. Repeat this injection procedure 1-2 more times with more hot water if necessary.
Once the hot water goes through easily, the clog has been dissolved. It may be necessary to wait 24 hours for the water to evaporate, but in my case it was not. I simply replaced the black ink cartridge, and ran the Epson's head-cleaning utility several times until the black ink started coming through. Running the nozzle-check utility, to make a test pattern print, will let you know when the ink flow is OK.
This same procedure should work equally well for the colored inks of this printer. I suspect that the procedure will also probably work for some other Epson inkjet printers as well.
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Cleaning clogs
1. How to tell what the heck is the Nozzle test really showing you
2. How to tell the difference between a air pocket and a true clog
You see if you get a lot of random skips when doing a nozzle test you more that likely do not have a true clog you really have a few air bubbles in the print heads. Just doing clean cycle after clean cycle is not the best way to purge out the bubbles. you are far better off just letting the printer sit overnight or printing random test and a few pages of color blocks.
2000P nozzle pattern
Also if you still get random skips then it is time to reseat the cartridge all you do is lift the blue cartridge locks and push then down. This will burp out those air pockets that have been known to lock up a print head.. In the worst case you can remove the cartridge and knock it on the table top yes ink will spill out but this is what you want to see...ink spilling out of those feed holes. Now once you do this the ink counter or ink low lights will not work so you have to keep a close eye on the printer when you see the ink stop flowing stop the printer!!! These print heads do not like to be run dry!! Now if you always have the same nozzle that skips then you may have a real clog. The Windex trick really does blow out just about the worst clogs. And Windex is cheap and it will not hurt you or your printer.
The cleaning pads are those foam pads located under the print heads when they are in the parked position (power off) The pads are colored with guess what ....the ink you are using!!! The are about 1/2 x 1 inch and they are under the carriage or print heads when they are parked! But please be careful. As I have posted before, do not contact those cleaning pads; they are spring mounted and they can be knocked out of position very easy! Once you have knocked them out of position it is time to send in your printer to Epson!
After trying cleaning cycles, you can try my trick of carefully dripping only 5 or so drops of Windex (from a new bottle) on the cleaning pads. Just drop about 5 to 6 drops of Windex [A better solution is a mix of distilled water, household non-sudsy ammonia, and cheap vodka. An ounce or so of the vodka and ammonia to a liter of water (It doesn't seem too critical)] on the pads (unscrew the sprayer and drip the windex out of the feed-tube) and then make sure you turn off the printer this forces the pads up to the print heads and the Windex will do it's thing very quickly! About 1 hour works most of the time - overnight on the clogs from hell.
You can also drop windex on the ink inlets in the carriage, but try the pad trick first. After you tried the pads trick 2 times: You can drop Windex directly on the spikes in the bottom of the carriage. These will be seen when you take out the cartridge. You must remove the cartridges to see the spikes. Here is what you do:
1. Make sure that you turn off the printer before you drip on the spikes!
2. do not drop more than 7 drops from a clean eye dropper!
3. Wait at least 10 minutes and drop 5 more drops on the spike, You also should put 2 drops on the other "good ink feed spikes" to prevent them from drying out (it happened to me!)
After this, install the cartridge making sure that when you install the cartridge the ink out light goes out!
You may have to run up to 2 to 4 clean cycles, this is normal in your situation Just make sure that you do not exit the clean menu and continue doing cleaning and nozzle checks
You must stay in the utility menu for the printer to use increased suction, you must also run a nozzle check between cleaning cycles, or the printer won't actually clean its self, just spin the roller. Each time you repeat a cleaning cycle without exiting the menu, the printer will use increased suction (contrary to popular belief, the print heads aren't actually spraying ink out during the cleaning cycle, rather ink is being sucked through the heads by a pump).
3000 nozzle pattern
This works very well and should be tried before you go trying windex! This not only will clean the heads but this will align the heads, it is a procedure I use for both cleaning & head alignment. Compare the test prints as you go to see if you are making any progress. Follow these closely:
1. while the printer is on hold down the button with the ink drop icons on it for 5 seconds. This will do a clean cycle by the printer. Do this a couple times.
2. Now shut off the printer and while holding down the paper advance button, turn on the printer (don't release the paper advance for at least 5 seconds) this will print a nozzle check pattern.
If you have a clog or head out of line, repeat the first procedure AT LEAST 3-4 times. Then repeat the second. If the heads are REALLY BAD you may have to keep going, as long as you can see that the heads are being moved or the test pattern changes with these cycles.
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Epson Stylus Color 800 clogged print head
(From: Alan G. Pope (agpope@phonetech.com).)
PROBLEM: Dryed black ink clog-up in the tube leading from the black ink cartridge to the print head. Black ink flow totally halted. New cartridges won't work.
BACKGROUND: Epson uses very fast-drying, water-soluble, inks in this printer, and if the printer sits idle for some length of time the ink feed tubes and the print heads become clogged with dry ink. Epson issues dire warnings about potential damage to the printer if attempts are made to flush these parts with any solvent, and recommends factory repair only.
On the advice of someone who has vast experience with such problems, I successfully used the following repair. procedure.
REPAIR PROCEDURE: Use a clean small hypodermic syringe with NO needle. Press on to the syringe nozzle, a 3/4 inch long piece of model airplane gas engine fuel tubing. This tubing is available cheaply from your local model hobby shop. It is a pale light blue colored plastic tubing. The MEDIUM size is the right one. The bore (ID) of the tubing is less than 1/16 of an inch. It makes a very tight fit when pushed onto the syringe nozzle.
Remove the cartridge from the printer, and pull the power plug immediately to prevent any further printer movement.
Load the syringe with 2-3 CC's of scalding hot water, preferably distilled water available at your grocery store. Then press the other end of the tubing down over the little black nozzle in the bottom of the cartridge holder. It must be a very tight fit.
Forcibly inject the hot water into the printer. If the clogging is really severe, you may have to press the syringe plunger very hard. Continue injecting until the syringe is empty, while making sure that the tubing does not slip off the syringe or the printer nozzle. Repeat this injection procedure 1-2 more times with more hot water if necessary.
Once the hot water goes through easily, the clog has been dissolved. It may be necessary to wait 24 hours for the water to evaporate, but in my case it was not. I simply replaced the black ink cartridge, and ran the Epson's head-cleaning utility several times until the black ink started coming through. Running the nozzle-check utility, to make a test pattern print, will let you know when the ink flow is OK.
This same procedure should work equally well for the colored inks of this printer. I suspect that the procedure will also probably work for some other Epson inkjet printers as well.
Use this procedure at your own risk. All I can tell you is that it worked beautifully for me. There was NO printer damage.
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Methods for Resetting Epson Cartridge Chips -
1. Auto Reset Chips - Auto Reset Chips will reset the ink level to full when the printer power is turned on or when a cleaning cycle is completed. They are now used exclusively in the MIS Continuous Flow Systems. Not recommended for refilling.
2. F-16 Chip Resetter - This is our chip resetter that was used before the Auto Reset Chips were available. It works without having to lift up the cartridges. Works on MAC's and PC's and it will reset the printer even if the Red "out of ink" light is on. It is meant for use with Continuous Flow Systems only, not for refilling.
3. Universal Chip Resetter - The SK168 is a self contained unit, with an internal battery and 7 small pins that contact the cartridge chip. When held against the chip for 6 seconds, it will put the chip back to its electronic FULL setting. This device requires that cartridges be removed from the printer. Not ideal for use with Continuous Flow Systems. Great for use with Refilling. There is also a competitive device on the market called the IRLS Resetter. It is similar to the SK168, except the chip has to be removed from the cartridge to reset it.
4. Swedish Reset - This is the manual method of resetting a cartridge chip. It requires that you have another good cartridge. The data from the good cartridge chip is transferred to the empty cartridge. This method is good for those doing refilling. Read the full procedure below.
Swedish Reset Method
An avid Epson user in Sweden has discovered how to reset the Intelligent Chip on the Epson printers. The procedure appeared on this website. What this means to all of us who own an Epson 680, 777, 870, 875, 1270, 1280, 1290 or 2000P printer is that we can now refill and reuse our empty cartridges. Following this procedure and refilling your cartridge is not illegal, nor will it void your warranty. But, you must understand, it is not an approved Epson procedure and they will not smile on you if you tell them you have been doing this.
The Procedure -
1. When the black or color ink out light flashes or is on steady, the indicated cartridge is low on ink. Make sure you have your "Designated Full" cartridge on hand. Either follow the on-screen help or press the orange button, visible when you lift the printer cover. When pressed, the print head will move to the cartridge removal position and the power light will flash. You must have a set of new Epson cartridges to use for resetting the chip. These are what we call the "Designated Full" cartridges. You do not print with these, the are only for resetting the chip. Mark DF on these cartridges. They are not included as part of our refill kit.
2. Flip up the clamp and remove the cartridge. Then, after removing the pull tab on your "Designated Full" cartridge, put it in the printer and close the clamp. If you have a continuous flow system, you will have to reinstall the original cartridge clamps so the cartridges will make contact with the chips. If you are using the modified cartridge clamps with your CFS, put piece of folded paper under the color clamp so it will press the color cartridge down tight. Without clamps you will not be able to proceed.
Next, push the Orange Button and the print head will move to the right and perform a cleaning cycle. The red light should go off. If it does not go off, make sure the cartridges are seated all the way down so the printer makes contact with the chips. If there is still a red light, turn off your printer, disconnect the printer cable, turn the printer back on an try pushing the orange button again. When the carts move right, check to see that they are seated down all the way. Push the orange button again. When the cartridges return to the right, turn off the printer power and reinstall your printer cable. Turn the power back on and the red light should go off. If it is still on, give Epson a call, there may be something wrong with your printer.
(Note: If you have used your "Designated Full" cartridge a number of times, it may not show as totally full when you run the status monitor test.)
3. If you get the red light off, do not turn off the printer power. Also do not start printing yet, you need to preserve the ink in your "Designated Full" cartridge. You will use this same cartridge every time you perform this Reset Procedure. Eventually, after about 20 times, you will have to get a new cartridge to run this procedure. Keep your "Designated Full" in a safe place and don't print with it.
4. If you are not using a continuous flow system (CFS), take your empty cartridge to your bench and refill it following our Chipped Cartridge Refill Instructions. Let it rest for an hour or more (overnight is better) in a perfectly level position. Use a match book or something about 3/16 inch thick to prop up the back end.
If you are using a continuous flow system (CFS) then you do not need to refill your cartridges. Just keep them at the same level as the bottles while the DF carts are in the printer.
5. If you have a CFS or after your refilled cartridge is aged, return to your printer. At this point the printer power should be on and the cartridges should be parked in their right hand position. Find the small white lever under the black cartridge holder, see photos. Using a small screw driver or pencil, move the lever towards the front of the printer until it is below the surface. Now slide the cartridges to the left hand cartridge removal position using your hand.
6. Remove your "Designated Full" cartridge and install the CFS or refilled cartridges. Make sure the clamps are down tight or that you have fresh felt pads on the sides of the CFS cartridges. The cartridge must not rise up, not even 1/32 of an inch. This next step is very important... Slide the cartridges all the way to the right, using your hand, so they are in their original parked position. If you don't do this, your printer may become damaged when it starts to print. Don't worry about the lever, it can stay down. Do not turn off the power or push the orange button again.
Now, tell your printer to make a color print of any type (purge4.tif or purge6.tif is fine). When the first print is complete, the data from the new chips is transferred to the old chips. After this first print the old chips will read full just like the chips on the DF cartridges did.
7. That's it, your printer is now ready to use. The ink monitoring system will report that the cartridge is full or at the same level as your "Designated Full" cartridge. Print something, if necessary run a nozzle check. If nozzles are missing run a cleaning cycle to correct. Remember, don't run more than 3 consecutive cleaning cycles. Then print a multi-color print and run 3 more if needed.
8. Review our recorded data if you would like to see how much ink is used during the reset procedure.
