R3000 Inkjetcarts, Photo Black was but is not now working???

[wjwncpro]

I use Inkjetcarts and have refilled the Photo Black ink once and now on the 2nd refill after resetting it is not working. Here's what happened; I did a mat black print last night and today when I tried to print a glossy it automatically would change inks from mat to photo black but there was not enough ink in the cart to make that change. I refilled the cart, reset it and it showed full. The R3000 went ahead and did the change but when I did a print it came bad. I did a print head check and the photo black is did not print. I proceeded to do a cleaning cycle and then another check and still the photo black did not print. I manually switched over to mat black and did a check and also did not print out. Switched back to photo black, again did not print. I can see the ink level has gone down about an eight of the full level so the ink is going somewhere but not on the paper.
Can anyone help???

It is late here on the east coast USA so I will return here in the morning, also I have about 30 more prints to do by Saturday morning for my presentation...

Could there be air in the line, if so, how do I get it out?
After switching and cleaning several times, I have used about 1/2 of the photo black and mat black ink in the carts...

Thanks for any help that I can use

 

[siusiuenen]

I think air strapped in your print head . Copy and paste from inksupply :

"Small, very small, air bubbles can get trapped in the Epson print head. They act like a clog, preventing ink from flowing from the nozzles. The individual nozzles will not work if there is air in them. They lose their prime. A high viscosity, alcohol cleaning agent, like Windex No Drip, can be injected into the print head, through the print head post, to force out trapped air and re prime the print head.....this can (sometimes it does not work) bring the print head back to life."

Hope this help. Need to be patient then . Never deals with air trapped but ink clog when i have an epson so not sure if it work .

Ok, this guys said it work .

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1003&message=25723347

 

[jtoolman]

Here is what I think is happening. The second time you refilled the Photo Black you added ink normally through the top fill hole. But did you check to make sure the cart was still fully primed. Remember what you had to do to prime the virgin carts on their initial fill?
Maybe that last ink chamber before the ink can exit through the ink exit port could have lost it's prime. It's like when you are syphoning a liquid with a hose and you get air in the hose. The liquid stops flowing right?
Check the prime chamber in your R3000 carts and try to refill BEFORE the chips tell you their empty. These chips are NEVER as accurate as the original OEM ones and will often over estimate the ammount of ink in the cart and you will loose your prime is you allow them to run "Empty"
I have an R2000 among many others and have expereinced this with the refillable carts I am running on it which are a very simmilar in design as those for the R3000.

 

[The Hat]

wjwncpro

You problem is some sort of airlock it could be that you let the ink in the cartridges
get to low before refilling thats just a guess on my part.

But I am sure if you give Ross Hardie a ring (888 497 5289) he will talk you through any problems
you may be having and get you back printing again very quickly.

Good luck with your presentation..

 

[Fenrir Enterprises]

I have never had any luck changing refillable cartridges and not having air banding in an Epson. This is why I went entirely CIS/refill-in-place for my current printers because of how much trouble I had with this with the R220.

Cleaning, purge sheets, etc, did nothing to fix the issue. The only thing that would fix it was time. I could speed it up a little by printing a full page print of 5% grey, which seems to "shake the printhead" to get the air out of it. I tried refillables from both MIS and Inkjetcarts. I've been accused of having "bad refill techniques" on another forum but I think this is just the nature of the beast.

Of course my 1100 and 1400 are still banding (not white gaps, but ink density differences) on plain paper mode. Hoping this will eventually solve itself.

 

[jtoolman]

Tape the exit hole securely insert vent plug and vaccuum fill so the cart priming chamber gets filled. Then plug the fill hole and unplug the vent hole. Using a bare syringe ( NOT the leuer type ) suck a bit of ink from the exit port. Ross will have to push the ink through by applying pressure with a syringe or even by "Mouth" ( Unless you like the taste and the look of ink on your mouth ) through the fill hole.

Please let us know what your results are.

 

[mikling]

Here's the situation. The bad side of these remote printheads like the R3000 and Artisan series. The count on the chip matches the count on the OEM one. Unfortunately due to the construction/design of the refillable cartridges, the ink capacity of the cartridges cannot match that of the OEM. Epson had used ALL available internal capacity in the design of the OEM cartridge. The result is that the cartridge will actually run dry by the time the chip count says "empty". It appears that this has happened in your situation. Now because of the nature of the design, you now have an air gap in the tubes leading to the printhead. This air gap will need to be removed. The only way to do so is to make multiple head cleanings. On the Artisan series, we are typically looking at approx six head cleanings to clear the lines of air and if you get some pesky small bubble it could take more. On the one or two head cleanings will not do it. Epson head clean routines appear to be less aggressive (use less ink) than before so it could also take quite a few to move the air gap out.

Now in the past, Epson had only offered "High Capacity" cartridges and the refillable cartridges could match that volume. With their standard capacity, there appeared to be lots of ink left in the refillable cartridges. With the Extra high capacity, you need to be very careful as no refillables can match those...even though the refillable chip is "tuned" for the same high chip count.

With refillable cartridges there now appears to be two genres floating around. Both genres have basically the same physical external dimensions but their internal capacities markedly differ. One being approx 12 ml and the other 16ml. So a refillable cartridge is not a just a refillable cartridge and the intended capacity should ideally be matched to the intended use with a specific model of chip.

On the OEM Epson cartridge, Epson has been able to push the capacity of the cartridge to the limit because they have the PHYSICAL ink detector that can truly detect the out of ink condition. ( The PHYSICAL ink detector was born after they lost a class action lawsuit that forced Epson to utlize all the ink in the cartridge. Previously they were leaving ink inside even when the chip said empty to prevent running out of ink. Thank the lawsuit for this!!!...Canon had to tread carefully because in their BCI-6, they said empty as well but the sponge had more...then Canon brought out the chip so that after the ink tank side was empty, the chip allowed further use before EMPTY would come.)That means that even if the chip tracked the ink levels incorrectly during use, the empty condition would appear earlier than the chip predicted or later but ALWAYS when the ink is truly empty. Refillable cartridge simulate this action but NEVER actually detect the ink level. So while the Epson cartridge will NEVER allow the printer to run out of ink, the aftermarket cartridge will allow this because the ink level is simulated and cannot detect a true out of ink situation. This action is similar to the logic used in Canon printers where the chip can be wrong as it is being used but ALWAYS correct when the tank side is empty nut cartridge is low due to the optical sensor.

So as jtoolman does and had advised before, top up the cartridges anytime it gets low. Running out of ink in these new printers with remote heads R3000, R3880,R3800, Artisan AIO will inflict much pain to get them going again.

The situation gets worse when some vendors couple 11-12 ml cartridges with chips meant for 17ml cartridges. Do the math and you can see problems with lots of head cleanings way before the empty level comes up.

There are also more gotchas that Epson have designed into the firmware to make using aftermarket tedious and more difficult to the end user if they don't understand what is going on.

A better way to prime a cartridge after it has had its seal broken at the outlet is to reverse shoot ink into the cartridge with the refill hole open. The method jtoolman suggests will quite often leak pressure from the poppet valve at the outlet and you won't be able to establish a good vacuum. Also because of the large volume internally in teh R3000 carts it would be hard to establish a good vacuum without using a large syringe and finally it actually stresses the internal sheet skin of the cartridge. So that if there is a weak point, the stress will tear at that point and leak.

 

[jtoolman]

Yes indeed! You do have to be very carefull if you are trying to use vacuum to re prime these carts. I totally forgot about the R3000 stationary carts and the tubing to the head. As Mikling has expertly explained, it is very likely due to air in the line to the head due to the carts running out of ink before the chip was able to report it as empty. So even with a perfectly full and primed cart, you are still presented with a nice air blockage between your cart and the head. It is quite a distance. In this case only cleanings will push that air bubble through and out the head.
I am running Mikling's R2000 carts and I am making doubly sure to top them off before they are "reported" as being empty by the chip.

 

[Fenrir Enterprises]

I tried both vacuum from below with MIS cart adapters and pressure from above like Ross recommends, both methods still resulted in banding for 1-3 days after every refill. I kept seeing R2000 in my head when I read this thread earlier (which has similar cartridges), the R3000 is a different beast.

 

[jtoolman]

Well now that I realize we are talking about the R3000 with basically the same Cart / Head system as the Artisan 7xx/8xx series I agree 100% with Mikling and say that you have a lot of air in that particular color's tubing to the head. So just because the cart is now perfectly primed, all that air needs to be evacuated. Do you realize that about 30% of the initial ink in your initial carts is used to perform the initial prime when new? Though the chips do not initially display a 30% drop in value when you first set up your printer, They do does drop drastically later on after some use. I am not sure whether you can re initialize the R3000 to basically run a full purge cycle like when new. I think printers like the PRO 3800 / 3880 do allow for a initializing cycle even after you've used it beyond the first time. That would certainly purge out the air that is in that line.