"Bob Shuman" wrote in message
...
Was given two broken Epson stylus 500 inkjet printers. Both had been
sitting unused for over a year in the basement of a friend. One had a
note
indicating it would not feed. This unit did not have either the Black or
the Color cartridge installed. Second unit had the cartridges in place,
but
note indicated it would not print Black.

Decided to take a look at the paper feed problem first and found a pencil
had fallen into and jammed the paper feed mechanism. Removed the pencil
and
paper feeder appears to be working properly. I immediately moved the
cartridges from the other unit to this one and was disappointed to see
that
I had problems printing Black, and Red (Yellow and Blue appear to be
working
although somewhat streaky). I subsequently read a small note on the
inside
printer cover that if a cartridge gets removed prematurely, it cannot be
reinstalled ... Oh well, wish I had seen this first as I would have
worked
on the other unit.

Decided to use a cartridge refill kit to refill these, but did not see any
different result. Does anyone have any experience with this model of
Epson
printer? I am guessing that by having it sit idle for so many months that
the printer's ink distribution tubes or heads got clogged. Any advice to
try to get these working again? I am reluctant to spend $50 on new
cartridges before I can demonstrate that this investment would make the
unit
operable again.

Bob

PS Have not looked at the other unit yet since I did not want to remove
the
cartridges again. Help is appreciated.



If the cartridges have been out of the machine for months then chances are
it will be very difficult to get going again because ink will have dried out
and clogged the nozzles.

The reasons the instructions state that removing and reinstalling cartridges
prematurely are as follows..
1. The printer relies on calculating ink level by ink usage, replacing with
a half full cartridge, or before the previous is reported as empty will
stuff up the counter cycle & have to be reset.
2. When a cartridge is fitted to the printhead an amount of air is injected
into the printhead in the process, so lots and lots of wasted ink results
from lots of cleaning cycles to get it printing if changed in the incorrect
fashion as above.
3. The ink in the genuine cartridges is designed to absorb the air injected
into the head during placement and maintains this ability for about the
first hour of its life after being unsealed from its vacuum sealed
packaging.

BTW.... Some inks available in refills will make your problems worse by
reacting with the genuine ink and forming a jelly that clogs everything up,
this used to happen with a particular third party yellow ink constantly.

For unclogging a printhead.....

Epson do make a cleaning fluid, but not specifically for the ealier printers
such as the 500. It consisted of light magenta ink and a solvent of some
variety. It also costs ~$120AU for 1 litre, but you only need a couple of ml
for each printhead. You may have some luck by mixing a cocktail of genuine
ink, distilled water, and a small amount of isopropyl alcohol. Remove the
head from the printer & sit the surface of the printhead in this for a day
or so then try it in the printer (dont submerge the whole printhead, only
need to have the surface of the nozzles wet.) Without actually replacing the
cartrige with a new one you still should get some idea as to whether its
going to work, just keep all the nozzle check patterns and see if its
getting any better.

James

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