I know its not really worth the trouble but I recently picked up a load of
inks.
The previous owner, now throwing it out, had put the printer in the loft
when the black started running out a few years back.
No trace of black on refilling and many blocked jets on the R,G,B
Doing the utility cleaning dance made no difference.
Manually sliding the carriage over 6 sheets of cardboard soaked in ammonia
solution made no difference, same with ammonia in the docking/cleaning
hoppers.
It is quite easy to remove the large round slide-way bar on these and turn
the inkjet heads upside down.
Then putting enough ammonia solution to cover to meniscus level, the black
and RGB heads, and very lightly moving a piece of cardboard around in the
ammonia water cleared the blocked RGB jets but no change on the black.
What is the next in line for agressive attacks ?
Repeating the upside down process with a more agressive chemical.?
Putting an old ex-HD (Winchester size) air filter in ducted exhaust from a
domestic vacuum cleaner and blowing backwards ?

--
Diverse Devices, Southampton, England
electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on
http://home.graffiti.net/diverse:graffiti.net/

"N Cook" wrote in message
...
I know its not really worth the trouble but I recently picked up a load of
inks.
The previous owner, now throwing it out, had put the printer in the loft
when the black started running out a few years back.
No trace of black on refilling and many blocked jets on the R,G,B
Doing the utility cleaning dance made no difference.
Manually sliding the carriage over 6 sheets of cardboard soaked in ammonia
solution made no difference, same with ammonia in the docking/cleaning
hoppers.
It is quite easy to remove the large round slide-way bar on these and turn
the inkjet heads upside down.
Then putting enough ammonia solution to cover to meniscus level, the black
and RGB heads, and very lightly moving a piece of cardboard around in the
ammonia water cleared the blocked RGB jets but no change on the black.
What is the next in line for agressive attacks ?
Repeating the upside down process with a more agressive chemical.?
Putting an old ex-HD (Winchester size) air filter in ducted exhaust from a
domestic vacuum cleaner and blowing backwards ?

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.

In article ,
N Cook wrote:
Then putting enough ammonia solution to cover to meniscus level, the
black and RGB heads, and very lightly moving a piece of cardboard around
in the ammonia water cleared the blocked RGB jets but no change on the
black. What is the next in line for agressive attacks ? Repeating the
upside down process with a more agressive chemical.? Putting an old
ex-HD (Winchester size) air filter in ducted exhaust from a domestic
vacuum cleaner and blowing backwards ?

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.

--
*Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
N Cook wrote:
Then putting enough ammonia solution to cover to meniscus level, the
black and RGB heads, and very lightly moving a piece of cardboard around
in the ammonia water cleared the blocked RGB jets but no change on the
black. What is the next in line for agressive attacks ? Repeating the
upside down process with a more agressive chemical.? Putting an old
ex-HD (Winchester size) air filter in ducted exhaust from a domestic
vacuum cleaner and blowing backwards ?

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.

--
*Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.


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

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.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote in message
...
In article ,
N Cook wrote:
Then putting enough ammonia solution to cover to meniscus level, the
black and RGB heads, and very lightly moving a piece of cardboard around
in the ammonia water cleared the blocked RGB jets but no change on the
black. What is the next in line for agressive attacks ? Repeating the
upside down process with a more agressive chemical.? Putting an old
ex-HD (Winchester size) air filter in ducted exhaust from a domestic
vacuum cleaner and blowing backwards ?

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.

--
*Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.


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
http://home.graffiti.net/diverse:graffiti.net/

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
http://home.graffiti.net/diverse:graffiti.net/

On Oct 23, 10:15 pm, "James Sweet" wrote:
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.

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

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:55:47 +0100, "N Cook"
wrote:

I know its not really worth the trouble but I recently picked up a
load of
inks.
The previous owner, now throwing it out, had put the printer in the
loft
when the black started running out a few years back.
No trace of black on refilling and many blocked jets on the R,G,B
Doing the utility cleaning dance made no difference.
Manually sliding the carriage over 6 sheets of cardboard soaked in
ammonia
solution made no difference, same with ammonia in the
docking/cleaning
hoppers.
It is quite easy to remove the large round slide-way bar on these and
turn
the inkjet heads upside down.
Then putting enough ammonia solution to cover to meniscus level, the
black
and RGB heads, and very lightly moving a piece of cardboard around in
the
ammonia water cleared the blocked RGB jets but no change on the
black.
What is the next in line for agressive attacks ?
Repeating the upside down process with a more agressive chemical.?
Putting an old ex-HD (Winchester size) air filter in ducted exhaust
from a
domestic vacuum cleaner and blowing backwards ?


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!