Bought a used Epson 3880. No yellow ink being printed

[cirwin2010]

I just bought a Epson 3880 printer off ebay. The listed claimed it was "great working condition, well-maintained, and clean, with normal signs of use." This clearly isn't accurate as the printer appears to have been sitting for some time. There was some significant clogging on the cyan channel which I mostly got cleared with a power cleaning cycle, but the printer will not print yellow at all. No trace of yellow, none.

The ink carts expired in 2015, but still have ink in them. I tired numerous nozzle tests and cleaning cycles, but I cannot get any yellow ink to flow. I also tried cleaning the print head with a cloth soaked in a dilution of isopropyl alcohol. The cloth clearly removed some ink from the ink head, but no yellow appeared on the cloth.

Unfortunately the maintenance cart filled up and I cannot continue troubleshooting or access the printer menus until it is replace.

I tired initiating a return with the seller on ebay since clearly the printer is not as well maintained as described, but they are being difficult about it and I get the feeling I will need to get ebay customer support involved. The seller states that the printer only has had 49 prints put through it and "undeniably works" as of the last time they used it, but they so far have refused to answer when the last time they used it was. I suspect many years ago at this point.

Anyways, I'm trying to figure out what to do with the thing. The goal is to convert a 3880 to use Piezography inks, but I don't want to commit to purchasing any new ink if there is an issue with the the printer. I imagine piezoflush would help with the cyan channel, but if there is not ink flow from the yellow channel I wouldn't think it wouldn't help.

I've outlined my troubleshooting steps below:

-printed a printer status page which displays all the ink cartridges and their remaining capacity

-an auto nozzle alignment test was performed but aborted early with an error, the printout showed a clog issue with the cyan ink

-power cleaning was selected from the print menu to attempt to clean the nozzle

-another auto nozzle alignment test was performed. This also aborted early with an error, but the printout showed improvement with the Cyan channel and printed some of the other color channels such as magenta. The yellow test patches are completely missing

-ink cartridges were removed and reinserted. Verified that the yellow cartridge contains ink and was still wet at the connection point.

-observed ink in the delivery tube to the print head

-print drivers were installed on my computer and I attempted to print some yellow text. This test was to verify it wasn't an issue with the onboard print options. Yellow did not print.

-attempted to clean the bottom of the print head with a cloth soaked in a dilution of isopropyl alcohol. Ink was deposited on the cloth as part of cleaning, but no yellow ink was observed on the cloth.

-a manual nozzle alignment was selected, this still was missing the yellow test patch

-attempted further cleaning of the print head with isopropyl alcohol solution, no yellow on cloth observed

-a manual nozzle alignment was selected, still no yellow test patch

-printer maintenance cartridge filled, cannot perform any further testing or access local printer menus until it is replaced.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

It's too late - but I only can recommend a potential buyer of an inkjet printer to request an up to date nozzle check and further data - e.g. a status report from WicReset which tells you the number of pages printed and would list recent error conditions.
How did you pay ? - Paypal or credit card ? you may check with them whether it is possible to reverse the sale and get the money back. you may be asked to provide evidence .

 

[x64]

a cloth soaked in a dilution of isopropyl alcohol.

Isopropyl alcohol acts as a water displacement, the exact opposite of what you need when you try to 're-hydrate' some rock solid dry pigments.

What to use instead? According to the manufacturers, some special cleaning solution. According to a local ink filler, exclusively hot demineralised water (sold for use in steam iron etc). It's a messy, delicate process with a syringe of both pushing hot water through the ink direction, and 'sucking' it up the other direction through the nozzles, that can take a bit of time if it's a nasty clog. But unless there is some other issue any pigment or dye clogged channel should clear.

Personally I didn't have the honor of trying this procedure but he used it successfully for over a decade.

 

[W. Fisher]

I had one bad nozzle plug years ago on a 3880. I took a syringe and hose and pressure pumped some print head cleaner into the connector where it sticks into the ink cart, something like the kit sold here. I think I also used an old ink cart to do it too. It is a hard press but eventually the channel cleared. When the things plug it takes some time before the ink or cleaning solution softens it up to print, imhe, sometimes overnight.

I think if you are going to use it for piezography, there is a way in the RIP program to block out and not use the yellow channel. I think one of mine got assigned to use clear ink on a second pass through to cover the print and get rid of any bronzing look. Been a while since I fell into that rabbit hole of linearizing and percentages of ink loads.

On yours, the seller may have found out how much a new print head costs and the labor involved to change it. I had mine torn down and it took me a couple of days and a lot of photos and written doc to put it back together again. They built the thing around the print head. Had to tear down a friend's 3800 model as it was smearing black ink on the prints. Turned out it was the matte/photo black ink change-over valve that was the culprit. Epson has since gotten away from using that matte and photo black ink valve due to leaks. That was a major issue with the 3800/3880's, and it wasted a lot of ink doing the switchover. I stopped using matte black ink in mine and just use photo black ink to avoid the switch valve issue.

Fwiw, the printer ink cleaner I got out of some ink reseller in Oregon. Name on the bottle says "ND Nano Digital Cleaning Solution" and that is all. It is a light blue liquid and works pretty well. I have some of the Jon Cone's InkJet Mall cleaner too, but the blue stuff seems to work as well even when doing the tissue in the tray underneath the print-head cleaning.

Also, I use a cheap re-setter tool on the maintenance tray. Need two trays and alternate between them using the re-setter tool. I stuff it with Dollar Store paper towels for the spongy felt stuff normally in the OEM tray. The ink carts are the refillable ones that use some pirate chip under the OEM chip that keeps the printer thinking the ink cart is full. One of my 3880's is loaded with dye ink, and other Jon Cone's pigment ink. Saves a bit of money, but you need to have some luck in profiling the papers for color too (I'm not having much luck profiling now with Windows 11 for some unfounded reason.). Windows 10 was great, but not having fun or luck with Windows 11 for some reason on a new laptop. Spent two hours on Team Viewer with x-rite support last week trying to sort out the issues and no luck there either. Support guy had to pass it off to higher level, but least he saw the issues in their software (Some of it was carry-overs from old CRT days and not suited for ultra-bright white LED screns.).

Good luck!

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm doing the printhead/nozzle flushing in various situations e.g. when I convert back from a pigment ink set to dye inks as I did with various printers like the L1800/L800. I'm using a clear ink - a mix of water and glycoles as a cleaning agent. I only can report that this nozzle flushing works quite well - in case nozzles are actually clogged. But it is not effective in other cases which appear as a clog but there is actually another reason for the problem - e.g. the ink flow is blocked - the cartridge is defect, the valve at the ink outlet does not open etc or the printhead is defect electrically.

 

[W. Fisher]

There is a plastic block that holds all the tubes that feed into the top of the print head held on by a few screws. That might be telling to see if the line itself is clear. After that, on top of the print head, I think there what looks like cigarette filters before the print head itself (Dampeners?). I can't recall the name of them, but they were replaceable and some seemed to think they needed occasional changing. It was a job I never tackled - but luckily both of mine are still working and flowing ink. Some past clogs where I used the syringe and beat on it like a hammer were really bad though, but perseverance paid off.

Most of my clogs now are from the vivid magenta ink. The yellow is so faint to see in the nozzle check that I bought a bluish UV LED flashlight to see them. It also works well to see the OBC in some papers too as they will glow a bright purple under it, and a dull blue if none are present.

Qimage Ultimate has a setting where you can set individual channels to print unclog pattern or similar. I've used it just to print magenta or red at times when the magenta nozzle check show failure or breaks in the pattern. Might need to wait a couple of hours between them to soften up the stubborn ones. Good program for printers. and been using it for maybe 20 years. Keeps getting improvements too.

 

[W. Fisher]

FYI, Keith Cooper just released a video on buying used printers.