Fried print head - what does this look like?

[OM2]

Can someone tell me what a 'fried print head' looks like?
(Or is that a dumb question?)
Is it possible to see and observe and say: yes it's fried and won't work?

Or is it just a case of when it stops working, it's fried?

I've got a print head from an MP830
I've cleaned using distilled water (only - nothing else used like windex or equivalent)
It looks OK to me now!

I do see some small lumps prodding out - but these aren't tears or anything as far as a I can see
I originally thought that they were tears - but upon close inspection, definitely not

I've taken some pics incase that helps, see below

Thanks

Omar

 

[headphonesman]

Sorry OM2 , this is not going to be a very satisfactory answer :-

The term "fried " refers to the fact that the nozzles rely on heating the ink and forming a bubble to make a jet onto the paper, the ink acts also as a coolant to the electronics doing this, if the ink is not flowing correctly or even worse, not at all , the head overheats and becomes " fried " and tells the printer to stop all actions.

This damage is within the head and does not (usually) manifest itself on the exterior of the head. I think it may also be accompanied sometimes by a smell of scorching if the head is submitted to your nasal area. There are no repair procedures that I know of.

Most users here who say they have "fried " their heads are baseing this ,(very probably correctly) ,on the fact that they have run out of ink during a big print run and the printer has carrried on attempting to print and ended up stopping owing to print head failure.

Sometimes the printer itself will fail and take the head with it. it should be remembered wherever a printer fails , (for an unknown reason), the head should not be taken from it to be tried in another printer nor should the head from another working printer be tried in the failed printer.

I hope this simplified explanation ,(all I am capabable of ) , has helped .

With regard to the printhead you are querying the status of , you do not make clear whether you knew it was ok or not before the clean , if it was not , do not use in a new machine

 

[OM2]

thanks a lot for the reply

understand a lot more now

before: the printer (mp830) was not printing through the main black ink
ink would come through!

i got another faulty mp830 form ebay for peanuts
my plan was to switch the print heads and see if my one came back to life
alas... 6 weeks later... i just haven't had a chance to try out yet!
+ i have compatible ink carts for all apart from one colour - so i haven't been able to test yet in any case!

i do have some original inks that must be 2 years old! i've been told on the forum that i can bring them back to life - but i haven't had a chance to do this either

question:

you say NOT to take one print head from one machine and try on another - i don't see why?
this is what i'm planning with the faulty printer that i got

let me know

thanks - much appreciated

 

[martin0reg]

You can try to clean blocked printheads when the prints are streaky.
But you have to be careful with printheads which causes error blinking.
If the printer is blinking green and orange this can indicate an electrical error in the printhead.
Such a defective printhead can cause an electrical damage in the printer / mainbord.
And a defective mainbord in the printer can cause defect in a new print head.
It may be kind of russian roulette...

 

[ghwellsjr]

Here's a picture of a print head that was damaged by me during the course of handling it during cleaning:

You can see the damage along the top edge of the dye ink nozzle cluster.

The reason you don't want to swap print heads that are known to have electronic failures into other printers is that a bad print head can damage a printer in such as way that it will also damage a good print head that is put back into it. In your case where you have two known bad printers/print heads, you don't have much to lose but you certainly don't want to swap with a friend's know good printer/print head.

But as has been already pointed out, most fried print heads don't exhibit any visual symptoms, they just don't work. In general, I have found that if any part of the print head prints, then it is safe to swap print heads with another printer, but there still could be a slight risk.

 

[OM2]

thanks. i think that helps a bit more for my understanding

advice i got from this forum about fixing or dumping my mp830 were to simply get a new print head
the new print head would have cost 50 - 60
by the sounds of it, from the replies above - it may not have been a good idea to do?