Surecolor BK1 disappeared

[Nicolas Goosen]

Hello everyone,
I'm new to these forums - hoping to find some help with my Epson.

See pic attached - my black 1 (I think it's black 1, maybe black 2?) quite suddenly went completely blank, which I thought was quite unusual. It didn't gradually clog up, it went all at once. Basic cleaning not yielding any results at all.

I have a 4-colour configuration Epson Surecolor S30610.

I'm not very clued up with anything other than general maintenance so hoping someone could give me a few pointers?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

what happened at the time the black disappeared - did you just run a print job ? did you get any error indications on the display ? What is the ink level of the cartridges ? Do you still have warranty on the printer - or a service contract ? The printer uses 2 nozzle rows per color - do you use as well 2 ink cartridges per color ?

 

[Nicolas Goosen]

Hi ink-stained,

Thanks for your reply! Have run past our warranty period unfortunately (or I'd be calling techies in! ).

Nothing in particular happened, but there was a power-outage the night before this appeared in the morning. I didn't notice at first as it doesn't actually effect the printing too badly, luckily! However I can't do any auto feed adjustments or auto head alignments.

The cartridges are running a little low, but not on 'warning' level yet. I'll replace the black this week, waiting for one to arrive. However there is only one cartridge per colour and the 'K2' is printing fine. I'm not sure why the printhead works the way it does - two channels per colour sharing one cartridge. Only 4 or the 5 'nozzles' (?) on the head are used, but why it splits each into two I'm not sure. I can't make any grass-roots diagnosis 'cause I'm not sure how/why the head works the way it does.

The problem seems so bizarre and sudden that I initially thought it might be a electronics issue, but rebooting yielded no improvements.

I've thought to order in two cleaner cartridges and try a 'flush'? One apparently has to flush the magenta and black at the same time...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Epson is using a printhead with 8 nozzle rows for printers with 8 colors, and offer as well a printer with CMYK only and feed the inks each to 2 nozzle rows, Epson is doing a similar approach with other printers as well - e.g. with a 6 nozzle row printhead either with 6 photocolors or a printer with CMY and 2 blacks , and the pigment black on 2 rows , the rest is a matter for the driver to drive the correct nozzles. I'm not familiar with the printer you are using , which cleaning options you have , are there any cleaning instructions in the manual ? - standard cleaning vs. intense cleaning ? Did you check in another forum , more oriented to users of large format printers ?

 

[Nicolas Goosen]

I've tried all the machine's cleaning options so far, left with only an ink flush as an option for cleaning now. Thanks for your input so far. I'm going to post on PrintPlanet as well and see if anyone's had similar issues. Ciao for now!

 

[printy]

I assume that one damper of 4 has the function of dividing the black ink from one tube into two parts and that two nozzles on the head are black. Is the problem a defective damper, the air in the damper and ink system or the pump cap assy is not working well?
You need to see above the print head, whether there is air in the damper or you can normally pull the ink out of black damper with syringe (without returning the ink to a damper or ink tube, if vacuum makes problem)