Epson Stylus Pro 7600 colors dropping at random

[jddriver]

do you know where the ink is in the tubes? There is somewhere hidden in the maintenance menu a function 'Ink charge' which should run the pump/cleaning cycle for a long enough time. It is covered somewhere in the maintenance manual, I don't have mine currently available.

Hi again, after my two cleans and power clean I can see the tubes are fully charged with no air bubbles which were there to start with so I do not think it should take too much more to get it working but I did flush the head right out. I have the manual and it gives 3 types of cleaning, std KK0, std KK1, std KK2 and Initial fill, which is designated as INK CHARGING. So I will give that a go. Thanks for your help.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

if you can judge how much the ink is moving in the tubes with one of those more normal cleaning cycles you may not need the ink charge anymore - that takes quite some ink if the tubes are already filled up. But I see you are progressing quite well overall. A Pro 7600 is not an easy piece of equipment

 

[jddriver]

Well that is the problem I can see no movement whatsoever, also the maintenance cart has very little of what looks like OLD ink in it but is showing nearly full, so the printer thinks it is used up but in reality no ink is going in there. I have squeezed in a clean piece of folded up paper towel into the cart to see if any ink goes in and now after I have done an INK CHARGE, by entering the menu on startup, and I watched all the air bubbles in the lines, with a good head torch, also the waste ink hose in the cleaning area and nothing looks to be happening at all. I am thinking that the pump may be faulty. Oh well for better or worse I have removed the Maintenance Assy and took the pump apart, it is just a roller arrangement that squeezes the clear plastic tube, I cannot work out how on earth it actually does anything. There appears to be both vacuum and pressure at play, but certainly not much of either. So after doing that then a std head clean I now have two colours. But still no evidence of any waste ink, needless to say the maintenance cart had to be reset...lol. So I guess I will just have to keep cleaning and see what happens.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

there is a gear wheel on the right side of the printhead carriage , watch all that moving when you start a cleaning - the gear wheel engages into another wheel on the right side and the wheel starts turning and activates the pumping inside the printhead, the carriage is positoned in front of a funnel connected to a tube directly leading to the waste ink container, the printhead is ejecting ink at this time through all nozzles at the same time, and there is the other part, the assembly with a piece of foam inside and pressed onto the nozzle plate in the idle position, this part is cleaned as well with a pump there, and the tube, a smaller one leads to the funnel. You may place a small piece of kitchen/absorbing paper between the nozzle plate and the funnel to see which ink lines are active during a cleaning cycle. (This roller type pump arrangement is actually pretty reliable and commonly used in cleaning units, it is not creating much pressure but that is not needed here anyway. Just remember hospital TV series, such roller type pumps are pretty common there as well. )

 

[jddriver]

Ok so I am now happy the pump is ok and nothing is broken inside, great idea to put a clean piece of paper towel in front of the funnel, this showed exactly the nozzles that were firing, and this time it did show what looked like LM, LC and some black, (feeling excited) did a nozzle check and got nearly 4 colours, with lots of missing bits, then I left it for a couple of hours, then did a power clean....then another nozzle check which came out perfect!!! God you have to be patient in this game. I am now printing out Qimage unclog patterns for all colours in all manner of settings. So far so good next will be a test image onto some good quality paper. (I am now REALLY excited) I think this machine is now working as it should just loving the reproduction to say nothing of the size. It has been great to have some back up during this process, much better than just trying to Google for info. The fact that people here are happy to share their knowledge makes things like this possible. It is just a hobby and a new one at that. Have to have something to do in my old age. Thanks so much for your help...I will come back with a couple of other questions once I am organised. Cheers.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Thanks for the feedback, you are capable to do all that work inside the printer, that's necessary for such a printer out of service by Epson since a while. I went through that some years ago on my Pro 7600 as well with similar issues like yours, it is a very reliable machine overall, but nevertheless needs some service now and then. Now you can go the next step and get the 7600 printing. It is slow, it does not have that many nozzles compared to today's printers but it is doing a good job.

 

[jddriver]

Well now that I have done quite a bit of printing, making ICC profiles as I am using later model ink, got a fantastic result on satin paper really happy with it. But now I find that before I print anything I have to do head cleans and unclog prints until I get a reasonable nozzle check, never been perfect but if there are one or two missing it does not seem to matter, however most of the time I have lots missing and get lines and poor colour. I have managed to print something everyday, I turn the thing off and when I start it everyday I am sure it is doing a head clean. But I still get many missing nozzles.

One thing I noticed is that when the printer is finished and turned off the head does not sit fully enclosed by the capping station, I try to remember to put my hand in and just move it a touch to ensure it is fitting the capping station so that the head does not get a chance to dry out. The mechanism that locks the print head seems to be broken as I never have to do anything to move the head.

The other thing is that I have reset and topped up two carts, both of these ever since have given perfect nozzle checks, I am thinking that maybe I should reset all the others. Replacing the dampers has certainly made things better and also flushing the head, which I did rather conservatively as I did not want to kill it. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I didn't have a problem with the capping station so far and don't know whether the mechanism can wear out or some parts would disengage. This model is out of service by Epson, and regular spare parts if available are pretty expensive. I have seen some spare printheads showing up on aliexpress a while ago, for somebody trying to convert to other ink types - e.g. solvent or UV, and doing other mechanical modifications, I don't know whether that all would make sense at all. Anyway, I would do cleaning actions like replacing the dampers , flushing etc on all ink channels alike but sooner or later there is a limit to all that leading to success.

 

[jddriver]

Ink stained Fingers, just thought I would update you on my efforts to get my Pro 7600 working. So quite by accident I have now discovered the problem! So simple, after leaving the thing (by now it has a not so good name) for a few days thinking that maybe I have now wasted my money, I decided to crank it up again, this time before turning it on I pulled the head away from the capping station and squirted the cap with windex, more or less flooding it, then I pushed the head back onto the cap and hit the ON button, so it went through a cleaning cycle and then I did a nozzle check, oh my god, it was perfect, all the thing needed was a decent seal onto the cap, amazing. So now before I crank it up I do the same and I am now printing all sorts of stuff and the printer has a much nicer name. (baby instead of bast*rd) lol.

I am now experimenting with the newer type inks, doing some profiles and wow I am very impressed with the pop I am getting, far better than my old R1900 which seems to give quite a dull result. The 7600 is producing great colours with the HDR OEM inks which one can get from Ebay, having said that, not all are at bargain basement prices, so chances are that I will be buying some Precision Colors ink that he has developed for the P800, very soon. So long as one can profile I think there is no reason why one cannot use the latest and greatest inks.

Many thanks for your help and encouragement to get this baby working. Greatly appreciated.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Thanks for your feedback, I'm glad you got the printer working - perfectly.

So long as one can profile I think there is no reason why one cannot use the latest and greatest inks.

Basically yes - you just would not be able to use additional colors which come with inksets for other printers like green or orange. Using those P800 like inks will give you better blacks , but you know that's not all just a matter of the inks but the paper plays an important role as well - it's the combination of ink and paper which gives you good or better or not so good looking prints. I'm using such inks as well.