Printer Revival - A dark art

[websnail]

The past couple of weeks I've been passing on my printhead cleaning experience to one of the team who turned out to have untapped talents in electronics so, with some 40+ printers about the workshop I figured it was time to let him loose.

What I hadn't counted on was the experience was going to be surprising, educational and seriously beneficial to me in ways I hadn't counted on, so I figured I'd pass some of the nuggets on.

The best bits included firing up an RX685 that had sat without cartridges in its box for near enough 3 years. No printing done, no reason to think it would be anything other than completely clogged, mashed and, in need of some serious head cleaning. We nearly went straight to passive head cleaning but Darren figured what the hey and went straight in with a set of refillables with IS Claria compatible ink in. I think his expression was something like "Well pluck me!" and he wasn't kidding. When he showed me the nozzle check it only had about 20 missing nozzles in the whole lot and all bar one of those was cleared after a single head clean and a 4 colour test sheet print. So lesson number 1 was never to assume, it may surprise you.

Next up was an R1900 where a LOT of time went into it, but again there was a whole year of non use, although it did have cartridges in. Two things we noted. First up, the cartridges had originally had a cleaning solution in, then been replaced with pigment inks. It seems this may have resulted in the ink separating out (although not immediately) and this in turn left the cartridges heavily clogged with pigment at the internal inlet segment.
Lesson 2, don't use cleaning cartridges as ink cartridges without flushing them out first, if at all.
With this resolved we used a mix of: installing cleaning cartridges (fresh ones) and passive head cleaning (the cleaning solution soaked pad under the head) to work its magic for over 2 weeks. In the intervening period there were single head cleans + nozzle checks then replacement of the passive pads. After the 2 weeks were up, we filled another set of refillable carts with IS inks and after a little basic colour printing, single head cleans and nozzle checks, everything came back beautifully.

Those were a couple of the wins... There were a couple of failures as well but still useful in their way.

An R2400 we had was expected to be akin to the R1900 but it seems that the waste pads had become clogged, which in turn had resulted in ink splashing back into the resting pad and presumably this is how some of it got into the ribbon cabling that connects to the printhead. Throw in some well meaning active head cleaning attempts that may well have splashed into the same cabling and we ended up with a mess. The exposed contacts on the cable along with the receiver on the heads circuit board were both found to be heavily corroded and at present we're not sure it'll come back without replacement parts. A timely reminder that we were dealing with chemicals in close proximity to electronics. Along the way we're rewriting missing guides on accessing and removing the printhead as it seems resources that once existed are no longer available with a lot of dead links. In that sense the lesson is never to rely on the Internet to always have old resources. Stuff is lost, deleted, or similar all the time.

Last one I'm going to write-up as a completely separate thread, as it's a real piece of work that really needs exploring further but just for brevity... So far we've hit this issue with PX710W, PX720WD and PX730WD models. Two customers with the same issue and we recreated it on Thursday. It seems something will bork the chip recognition in these models and stop the cartridges being recognised. Not found a solution yet, but we'll see what breaks loose once I've been able to share all we've worked out to date (Thread to follow once the write up has been completed).



All in all, been quite an interesting one... Oh and just one last nugget... If you hadn't realised already and have old Canon printer models. Canon have been retiring production of printheads for quite a few printers with the iP4200, iP4300, iP4500, MP800, MP830, MP500, and more all affected. If you need new ones then look out for spares ASAP. Time for a serious look at printhead resurrection for Canon printers maybe?

I'll update as we get into the other printers we still have sitting around. Doubtless there will be more to learn along the way..

 

[PeterBJ]

I look forward to your findings regarding Canon printers

 

[fotofreek]

Here's my experience with an IP 4300 yesterday. I bought this used printer for $40 over a year ago - primarily for the OEM ink carts in it plus another set that the seller had in reserve. When I brought it home I checked the nozzle printout and it was perfect. Testing it with plain paper text and with a photo print on matte paper was also perfect. I set it up with newly refilled carts and was going to give it to my granddaughter, but I found another perfect used one online and gave her that one instead.

I set it aside and was planning to run a nozzle check on it at least once a month. Unfortunately, I forgot about it and finally dug it out of the closet when doing some necessary thinning out of possessions yesterday. It had been idle for more than a year. I installed it on my computer, did a nozzle cleaning, and got a perfect nozzle printout on the dye based inks but had partial blocked nozzle on the pigment based nozzle. Not bad as I never use the plain paper setting - all my text printing is done on laser printers. I did a full cleaning of the print head with several Windex baths, followed by plain water washes. I vacuumed out all the moisture I could and set it aside to thoroughly dry. I plan to store the printer without carts and keep it as a spare for my wife or granddaughter with the advice that they avoid the plain paper setting if the pigment based nozzles are not cleared. It works fine with text printing and dye-based inks.

I haven't bothered to test the print head at this point as I'd need to do another full cleaning before storing the printer. Anyone have advice on what chemical cleaning we can do when the pigment based nozzles on these printers clog? Although I don't really need those nozzles for what I use these printers for I wouldn't mind trying to clear them before storing the printer. Who knows --- maybe they are already cleared from the cleaning I did yesterday!

 

[The Hat]

@fotofreek If your going to store the printer again, then soak the print head in warm water with a spoonful of washing–up liquid and add a few dribbles of Windex to it.

Leave for 24 hours to soak and then rinse it under soft running water for a minute, dry it with a paper towel and then wrap in in the same towel and put it somewhere safe.

But before you do all this don’t forget the printer, it needs a quick clean and rinse also, just give the purge unit a good fill of Windex and run a head clean without the cartridges, that should clean the purge pump of any waste ink, everybody usually forgets about the poor Auld purge unit !

 

[fotofreek]

@fotofreek If your going to store the printer again, then soak the print head in warm water with a spoonful of washing–up liquid and add a few dribbles of Windex to it.

Leave for 24 hours to soak and then rinse it under soft running water for a minute, dry it with a paper towel and then wrap in in the same towel and put it somewhere safe.

But before you do all this don’t forget the printer, it needs a quick clean and rinse also, just give the purge unit a good fill of Windex and run a head clean without the cartridges, that should clean the purge pump of any waste ink, everybody usually forgets about the poor Auld purge unit !

good advice, The Hat, as usual! The printer in question was not destined for storage but was to be maintained with periodic nozzle checks and cleaning cycles to keep the print head healthy until the printer was needed for regular use. I stupidly lost track of it and neglected it for over a year. In retrospect I should have prepared it for storage. Frankly, I hadn't thought about cleaning the purge units when storing printers. I'll now add that to my storage protocol.

 

[websnail]

@The Hat 's advice regarding the purge units applies equally to the Epson pigment ink printers as well as they really are a complete pain if left to dry in storage. Our experience with the R2400 was proof of that and I suspect in situations where the printer has sat for extended periods without cartridges or use (read: years) then the first part of the attack plan should be as follows:

1. Access the waste tubes
2. Use a syringe and adapter to gently flush cleaning solution up into the tubes
3. Soak resting/cleaning pad with cleaning solution
   
4. Allow to work overnight
5. Use same syringe to take slightly more forceful approach to push/pull of cleaning solution until any plugs release and solution in cleaning/resting pads can be pulled through successfully.

The printers do use a peristaltic pump type of assembly via the paper feed so there's no need for extensive force.. Patience as ever..

Beyond that as Epson printheads remain in situ, there needs to be cartridges installed to stop the ink receivers drying out and the printhead needs to be properly parked by the printer itself, not merely shoved over to the right manually.

 

[websnail]

I look forward to your findings regarding Canon printers

Heh heh... me too... Looking at a bunch of things with Canons over the coming months..

Even selling a few of them!! (Oh the humanity!)

 

[websnail]

Smaller update this time around but we nearly tossed an R800 because it had a motor error and a ton of gunked ink on the cleaning pad. Being tired and in triage mode, that initial inspection meant we nearly discounted it as not worth bothering with.

I had to re-document the thing for waste kit installs anyway, so I pulled the cover off and discovered the reason for the motor error was one of the wires had broken off the motor so it wasn't getting any power. Sorted that out and predictably it worked and became worth the effort.

Cartridges in this model had been left, empty, but in the printhead cartridge bay, so the ink receivers had not dried out. It's still in the process of being cleaned but a single head clean and nozzle check after the motor fix was more than 60% complete which for a Durabrite printer after 18 months was impressive.



Oh and the PX series issues I mentioned... I'm holding off on that until we've explored a couple of possible avenues. There's a niggling feeling that a short may be responsible due to fluid spillage, so a complete tear down, clean-up and rebuild is set at some point in the next couple of weeks.

 

[websnail]

Something to add for the R800... These printers have a dump area way over to the left where the printhead will jet ink out into a sponge area.

In our case this area is completely gunked up with very old pigment which has never been properly absorbed by the pad area underneath. Looking at ways to refresh those pads but it does show that you're not automatically out of the woods if you get the printhead and resting/head-clean pads cleared out.

Beyond that we've resurrected an R265 today and a BX935FWD both of which had been using dye inks (the latter normally uses Durabrite). The R265 was completely without cartridges and had a loose part which was forcing the printhead to jump at the far left side but with both printers we were back in business with minimal effort despite 1 - 2 years of non use.


We're also starting to realise that "clogs" in many cases are actually likely to be one or a mix of the following:

• Particulate matter that shouldn't be in the head in the first place
• Pigment ink that has been allowed to dry at both nozzle and receiver ends
• Printer has not been allowed to park printhead properly
  This results in the resting/cleaning pads not being in contact with the printhead so the nozzles are far more open to air than normal
• Air (poorly primed cartridges)

On the first one, we're experimenting with an initial cleaning routine where we gently push a small amount of cleaning fluid into the head (after a lot of passive cleans) and then pull everything out of the receiver before dumping the removed contents and flushing the syringe. This seems to resolve or at least reduce some of the problems where an ink has something that won't flush through. Not tested thoroughly yet but where feasible it has had very positive results. The only down side is that it's then necessary to reprime the printer to remove then air in the head.


We also learned that it's important to check whether the reason the printer is not recognising the cartridge(s) is because some doofus* didn't check the cartridge chips when they picked them out of storage. *looks slightly red faced*


Interestingly enough we have also been comparing output from the various models and I have to say that I'm starting to wonder why the heck people are paying for some of the new model printers currently available when the older units have excellent quality output. I'd forgotten how good some of them were..