Artisan 837 Huge Streaks Of Ink...

[geremyg]

I went through some bad batches of generic ink and now it appears that my print head may be damaged. Whenever I go to print the Cyan color leaves huge streaks. I bought OEM cartridges in hope that the streaks were because of the generics, but they too did the same thing. I actually went through a whole Cyan High Capacity cartridge by printing one page. The page was dripping wet with Cyan ink and Epson was beeping that there was no more ink left in the cartridge while all the rest showed full, (I replaced all the ink at the same time).

I also have air bubbles in pretty much all of my lines. I suppose that I'll need to buy some ink to squirt through the lines. Any suggestions as to a website to purchase the ink?

Also, do you guys think that I should clean my printer head? If so is there a website that has a better cleaner then other ones?

One last thing is that I'm trying to remove my printer head for inspection, and possible cleaning. I searched YouTube, Google, Epson and briefly this forum, and I do not see any instructions on how to remove this part. I removed 4 tiny silver screws and it seems to wiggle free a little bit but I don't want to pry up on it too much. Is there a pictorial, or video, showing the steps to this?

I have spent way too much money on this to just throw it out and I do pride myself on reviving broken 'things'. I am an electrician and a computer geek with almost 2 years of schooling to back me up. Any help will be greatly appreciated and I will be willing to try just about anything, within reason! I have the next 5 days off so I am hoping to be able to make some headway on this. I'll be sure to post results and the final outcome.

Thanks in advance

 

[websnail]

If I was to guess you're probably suffering from poor ink flow control in the cartridges, not to mention a lot of air in the lines..

I've written a guide up here:
http://www.wasteink.co.uk/fix-epson-airlock-clog/

... but it's pure text at the moment and needs me to get my video for the process, edited, rendered and online. It's unlikely to be something I finished before Christmas now as there's nearly 2 hours of raw footage from 7 days of working a PX720WD problem but the text only guide should still help somewhat.

I'll be sure and post on here when the video is available though and whatever you do, don't toss the printer, even if you have to mothball it, you can bring it back... Had quite a few now that have been resurrected with far worse.

 

[geremyg]

That is a great write up, thank you. I'm trying to think of where I would purchase a syringe and an ~3mm tube. I also appreciate the words of encouragement, my wife hasn't been so optimistic!

I don't understand how I could be having poor ink flow problems though. Granted on pretty much all of the colors I have air bubbles, which from your blog, would indicate the poor flow as mentioned. But it seems that the Cyan is having excessive flow problems. It became evident with an 'Ebay' generic cartridge, I thought it was a fluke so I changed it out with another generic with the same results. Now, even with the OEM cartridge I am having the same results, and this is the second OEM cartridge also... I will definitely clean my lines out but the excessive flow just isn't making sense to me.

 

[jtoolman]

Since the Artisan 700 / 800 series basically is a CIS. That is, you have stationary carts which feed ink through a tubing ribbon to small dampers in the print head, you may have a problem with the actual Cyan damper cause your Cyan ink to simply flood out?
But if it was the generics then lesson learned!!!! You should only run proven good refillable quality carts such as those sold by our two resident 3rd party business owners.
Ocotinkjet or Precisioncolors.

Air in the lines is a sure bet was caused by your choice of cheap cart.

I have an Artisan 720 ( USA model ) and I am currently running it on a CIS from PC and it is running flawlessly.

Joe