Epson RX500 Impressions

[leo8088]

A friend gave up her Epson RX500 and bought a Canon. She gave me the RX500. Well, it was left in the trunk of my car for a few weeks before I took it inside and powered it up to give it a check. It came with an installation CD. I installed it pretty much with everything set to default. In the middle of the installation it asked that I plug in the USB cable then turn the power on.

This was when everything turned ugly. Believe me, it took me a good 10 minutes or longer to find where the USB socket is. It can't be real!!! But I even turned the printer upside down many times and still I could not fint it anywhere. I almost decided to throw it out of the window. What a piece of crap. I know it has to be somewhere. I have no manuals. Even I have them I don't believe I have to read the manual in order to find where to plug in the USB cable. I had to go online to Epson's support site. Downloaded a pdf document. Read it and sure there was a paragraph that said to plug in the USB cable. But it says to remove a yellow sticker. There was no yellow sticker!!! Guess what? There was one before but not now. I still saw no socket for the USB cable. I had to read the document backward. Then it says open the scanner. Jesus Chris! The connection is inside. You have to open the scanner!!! OK, I opened the scanner. Still there is no connector.

Well, it took me a few minutes from there and I found it. What a great printer!!!. I have to wonder why they did not have the power socket in there too. I must be so dumb that I had such a good time to just to find how to make a USB connection to this printer.

Everything went OK then but of course except that there is a clog in the black or it would have been too good to be true that my friend wanted to give it to the dump. The nozzle check shows 3 lines missing at the bottom of the ladder on the nozzle check print. All other colors seem fine. Epson is so famous for good reason on this clogging problem. I fired up a few cleaning cycles and sure no improvement was visible. I printed a few large full page of purge image and there were full of banding. At that point I knew I had to stop wasting ink. I shut it off. I wasn't in a good mood after spending a good 10 - 15 minutes to find the USB connector. I did not want to deal with the clogging problem immediately. The RX500 might really end up outside of the window. The cartridges were almost new. The ink level had gone down from about 90% to 80%.

Is there any way I can unclog it without wasting most of the ink from a new set of cartridges? I also realized that RX500 has no fax on it. It is a multifunction photo printer. The scanner should be a very good one, right? I will find out soon if this is true.

 

[mikling]

A few weeks in the trunk with no use and we expect it to fire up! Come on be fair to a machine.

Here's the simple step first. You likely do have a dried ink impediment to ink flow. Move the printhead to the change cartridge position. Pull plug. Move head to the left. Notice the cup with two Xs. Cut off a piece of synthetic chamois that will fit within that cup. Remove the cartridges. Soak the chamois with favorite inkhead declogger till saturated. Distilled water will work in a pinch but Windex with ammonia is more effective. Move head back to the right park position so that the cup will come up against the bottom of the head and soak the head. The weeks of non use probably has dried up or very thick ink that have receded past the nozzles into the chamber. We are trying to use capillary action to dissolve these dried ink deposits or dilute them. Let soak for at least three hours or more. Remove the chamois, reassemble. Try a nozzle pattern. When doing head cleanings on an Epson, only do three at a time and never leave the head cleaning utility until you are done. This is because each successive head cleaning or really PRIMING is of a stronger strength or longer duration. If you close down the utility, the next head priming/cleaning reverts back to the weakest. Remember this or you'll waste your time. If the missing bars are now there but other ones empty, then we have an air problem. Rest over night and try again the following day. If the same bars are still missing, then try another soak and repeat. If after this, it still does not cure it then the big gun of a syringe and rubber tubing filled with windex to manually declog it is called for... gentle brute force. In all of this make SURE you have known good high quality cartridges devoid of air entrapment or you could be ending up like a dog trying to catch its tail. It's funny unless you're the dog.

 

[websnail]

In fairness to the printer, it's a common design "feature" with the CX6600 having the USB socket internally and manual or not you could have downloaded it off the net or asked.. But hey we're men "manuals? Ha! I say"

Miklings approach will work well although for myself I've found that some cartridges filled with a good quality printhead cleaner just sat for a few hours to days in the printer will help tackle the problem from above while Miklings suggestion will deal with the problem from below. Fixed a CX6600 which had sat dead for 6 months that way.

 

[mikling]

I looked at the situation and it had appeared that the printer was stored with cartridges with lots of ink left. This aspect then would made the likelihood that a clog from the topside would be unlikely and drying from the underside might be the culprit especially when stored in a trunk for such a longe period. In such a situation, the attack from the underside is called for.

Trigger37 has actually pointed this method of logic in the past, questioning the effectiveness of cleaning carts in clearing a stubborn clog and I totally agree with him, not just from a theoretical standpoint but also from proven results by myself.

There also lies the possibility that a head could be defective but usually that is not the case and that conclusion could not be drawn yet.

The RX500 produces print quality identical to the Epson Photo R200, R210, R220, R300, R320, R340. They are not particularly fast but they are quite durable workhorses. Photo quality is quite good under the highest quality settings with good paper and ink and can easily surpass that of a normal photolab. The scanner is actually quite good for a multifunction device as it's purpose was to be the multifunction for a photographer....not an office worker. The RX500 will produce unsharp text under the text heading in the driver...as this is optimized to acquire some semblance of speed. Much higher quality of text is produced when photo or best photo setting is utilized but the print speed will be slow because of the multiple head passes required......producing the sharpness. If you print lots of text, this machine is not suitable for that purpose. If you prints lots of images and the occasional text then the machine is then actually a wholly suitable solution.

There is good aftermarket net support for this printer with available waste ink pad resetting software and also the possibility of using it for specialized purposes such as pigment ink printing, and specialized black and white printing inks if you wish to print superb black and white photographs with no color cast. These machines are also easily and safely adaptable to continuous ink supply systems with high success rates.

If anything can be said it is that these printers can get a class heading of multifunction and multi ink printers. By simply changing the cartridges, once can go from economical dye ink printing to archival pigment ink printing and even specialized high end Black and White printing albeit................. but not a fast printer.

Oh some of the later brethren of this model suffered screen burnout by some type of fuse or something. There are fixes to this posted on the net. Being that the 500 is devoid of the fancy screen, it does not suffer this fate.

 

[websnail]

I looked at the situation and it had appeared that the printer was store with cartridges with lots of ink left. This aspect then would made the likelihood that a clog from the topside would be unlikely and drying from the underside might be the culprit. In such a situation, the attack from the underside is called for.

Trigger37 has actually pointed this method of logic in the past, questioning the effectiveness of cleaning carts in clearing a stubborn clog and I totally agree with him, not just from a theoretical standpoint but also from proven results by myself.

Well, I'll certainly not disagree but based on personal experience I've found the top down approach has worked reasonably well in the past... I've only really had to use it on about 10 occasions with C84/86 and D88 printers as well as the CX6600 and whilst the bottom up approach can work well I've found I'm not very good at it.

I think the bit we may be leaving out is the actual cleaning solution used which I purchase from my ink supplier. I've no idea what's actually in there but it does work.

Anyways, to get back on topic for this particular case it seems all the info's in this thread now

 

[leo8088]

Mikling was right and I am impressed. I could not find a piece of chamois> I cut a stripe of paper towel of 1 inch width and fold it to make a stck of 1/4" thick. Poured some Windex to soak it. Followed Mikling's tip, found the XX and put the wet paper stack there then moved the print head over it. About an hour and a half later I tried it again. The clog was completely cleared. I printed a 4x6 photo. No banding and the photo was excellent. I was thrilled how effective the tip helped clear the clog. Thanks a lot, Mikling.

The RX500 is not an office multifunction, as Mikling said. There is no fax in it. I think it was the clog that led to my friend's decision to replace it with a Canon multifunction. What she really needed was an office multifunction. I thought I received a defective give away. That's why I left it in the trunck for weeks. I could have delivered it to an E-Waste directly. Fortunately I decided to give it a chance. It turns out o be fine now.

I was a bit frustrated by not able to find the USB connector though. It is not a good common feature to have the connector hidden inside in my opinion. Believe me I turned the printer upside down twice. It does not need to be hidden like that. Besides, the power cord can not be unplugged. That is a slight neg to me.

RX500 is slower but not too slow. Some HP printers I used before were slower in fact. The colors it printed was very vibrant. I think it is a good photo printer. The ink level is now down to 60%. Last night it was still around 85%. I will print some photos today and see if ink consuption will be better under normal circumstances. I am beginning to like this printer. It produces really vibrant colors. Thanks agin guys.

 

[Trigger 37]

leo8088,... glad to hear of your success. I had to laugh out loud when I read your problem finding the USB connection. A friend brought me her Epson to fix the other day, and after she left I started to work on it. I must admit I have 10x more experience working on Canon printers than anything else but I am getting much better on Espon. Anyway, I had exactly the same problem you had. I searched and could not find it. I almost had myself convinced that this model of Epson printer did not come with a USB port. I almost gave up and then just opened the Scanning cover to check the glass and that is when I found the USB port. I didn't think it was funny either.

On your effort with the folded paper towel, I've used this trick several times and it has always worked for me. The funny thing about Epson printheads is that you think they are going along just fine, printing excellent photos now and then, and all of a sudden, bam....one or more colors won't print at all and you can waste all the ink you want but the real problem is the bottom of the printhead is so dried and clogged with 6 month old ink, nothing can be sucked through it. The hot-wet-paper towel is the fastest to dissolve the dried up ink.

By the way, you can search a lot of Epson multifuntion printers and you won't find one with a fax. Go figure. Anyway, there is a built in Fax function in Windows XP that will work just fantastic with your Scanner. Happy faxing.

 

[leo8088]

Trigger 47, glad that I am not alone. The USB port was very well hidden. Before I downloaded the manual I did look inside but I quickly told myself it is impossible inside. So I closed the cover and kept looking including the bottom. It is beyond my imagination.

So far the RX500 is working great. No more clogging symptoms. The photo quality is on par with Canon I have seen. Fax is useful for me only a few times a year average. It is useless when you don't need it. You will appreciate it when you need one right now. I still use one Ricoh old style business grade fax machine that uses a big roll of thermo paper.

Thanks for the advice about the Epson print head. I will try to use it more frequently to keep it from getting clogged.

 

[Trigger 37]

leo8088,,. If you have not had a scanner before, you will learn to appreciate your Epson even more. I probably use my scanner 3-4 times a week. Of course with the manuals I produce, I am always scanning printed images of Nozzle check patterns or Service test prints. I also have used to scan in all my old family photos before they turn to silver dust.

I don't believe you still have the old thermal paper fax. I didn't think they still sold that stuff.

 

[leo8088]

I don't believe I still have that fax machine either. I bought it more than 10 years ago from an electronic surplus place. It came with a box of the thermo paper. I believe there were 6 rolls of paper but I am still using the first roll. It can be used as a boat anchor. I kept on thinking I would give it a good use someday. But that day has not come yet.

The scanner of the RX500 will be excellent if I need to make a profile. I can imagine how useful it will be.

One last question about RX500. It uses a set of Epson t0481 - t0486 cartridges. The ink is dye based photo ink. Can I convert these cartridges to use pigmented ink in them? Will RX500 be able to handle pigmented ink? Is this a dumb idea at all?