My best EPSON PRO 3800 seems to have died!

[martin0reg]

As I've read somewhere about blank pages caused by a defective or air leaking pressure pump, I would not absolutely exclude such a mechanical failure. Simply because: there is always a first time..

 

[jtoolman]

If it is the pressure system leaking. Then you would expect that the printer would be regularly trying to repressurising the carts if you left the printer on say for hours.
But it is not doing that. When you power up the printer, it does it as it has always done it. No weird or different sounds, once the printer is "Ready" it can sit for hours and you will not hear any attempt at repressurising.
The carts and system will repressurize for a short cycle during printing of very large prints or during continuoous printing.
You will hear it work as needed as cart pressure gradually drops during printing.

Joe

 

[websnail]

Quick question... what connectivity options do you have on your printer?

USB and wired LAN correct?

If so I would try hooking the printer up using the currently unused port and see if you can get the printer to talk to your PC. As suggested earlier, swapping out cables for something that is currently proven to work with another printer is well worth doing too.

I'm not convinced that it's the printer mainboard failing but may be something more mundane such as the USB port taking a hit courtesy of a knock or a pull on the cable during the move or similar.

Fingers crossed!

 

[jtoolman]

The PC has nothing to do with this. I can not even print from the PRO 3800 LCD screen even with the printer disconnected from the PC.
I've tried different USB cables. Different USB ports and nothing. This printer does everything and I mean everything as if nothing is wrong. ALl sounds are absolutely normal. All movements are absolutely normal. Is as if there is ZERO ink in the system. But the ink lines are are 100% full of ink.
So at this time I think it is an electronic failure of the print head. The sygnals are getting to the print head but the print head is not able to spit out droplets of ink.
I actually goes through the print job. Head traverses left to right, paper advances..... just no ink.

One last thing I will do is to refill all my refillables with cheap OCP ink and perfrom a full ink recharge with the PRO 3800 adjustment program and see if either there is ink pouring out everywhere!!! Or there was a massive ammount of air in the dampers. But I honestly do not think that will work either.

Keep in mind that all I did was WHEELED the printer over to the left by about 3 feet. Nothing was ever disconnected nor tampered with.

Joe

 

[stratman]

Joe:

Yesterday some of the phones in the home stopped working. Long story short, after much fruitless troubleshooting, I replaced a telephone cord that goes from the wall jack to the cordless base station and the phones worked again. No one has touched that cord or base station in a long time as the phone is in a part of the home that rarely gets use.

The point is twofold: 1) Stuff happens for seemingly no apparent reason, and, 2) Don't give up yet.

 

[mikling]

Joe:

Yesterday some of the phones in the home stopped working. Long story short, after much fruitless troubleshooting, I replaced a telephone cord that goes from the wall jack to the cordless base station and the phones worked again. No one has touched that cord or base station in a long time as the phone is in a part of the home that rarely gets use.

The point is twofold: 1) Stuff happens for seemingly no apparent reason, and, 2) Don't give up yet.

Solder there is no substitute.

 

[The Hat]

Joe, what you’re describing is exactly how my Epson printer was behaving in its last few days.

The printer would do everything normal except put ink down on the paper, clean and it would put ink into the pads, visible by the on the screen monitor and near empty cartridges, run a nozzle check, it would do that too but with no output of ink, and when it got a print job, it went through the time and motions but once again eject a blank sheet after several minutes.

Despite wanting to pull all my hair out in desperation and not wanting to give up to soon, so ended that particular Epson printer..

 

[jtoolman]

HAT You nailed it. That is exactly how my printer is behaving!

 

[mikling]

Here's the thing. The 3800 has a series of failed mainboard diagnostic codes.Page 160 something. If the mainboard has failed, then it will likely display a code of some sort. The Power supply is at first a single supply of 42V that is further regulated by local power supply regulators to separate circuits. Could one of the regulators have failed....yes. but I think that the processor would pick this up and report a code. This is easy.
What is likely happening is that the voltage output to the nozzles is actually firing but the driver circuit to the nozzle itself is not complete. In a normal situation like a single failed nozzle, nothing gets reported back on the main board. This is indicative that the processor does not monitor current flow through the nozzle circuit. That all would actually fail in one go is unlikely. However, if the ground return for all the nozzles was disconnected all would appear failed. Hence my theory on a disconnected ground that would affect all nozzles. Would the ground for the voltage be the same? Not likely as you don't want any heavy flows of current to modulate the signal to the driver...hence a separate ground return but tied back to the same level at some point. It could even be a bad solder joint to a bridge on circuit board that ties the grounds together. I can't go much more for lack of a proper schematic.
For example there are 4 connectors on the mainboard to the printhead CN69-72. However the printhead has only two connectors. CN1 CN2 What is in the middle? My manual is incomplete.

 

[stratman]

Solder there is no substitute.

Risky Business!