need some help with a 9900 epson printer

[alex from holland]

Hallo.

I have been offered a Epson 9900 printer which has been stored and unused for almost a year.
3 cartridges are empty.
A good friend of mine has an Epson 7900.
He's willing to join me and place his cartridges in the printer to make a test.
But he's worried to leave his printer for half a day without the cartridges.
will it cause any problems to leave the printer without the cartridges for half a day???

Thanks

Alex

[Tyler Boley]

his printer will be fine left without those carts for a day.
But the 9900, left unused for that long, I'd be very concerned. You may have to go through a lot of ink doing cleanings, including power cleanings, just to make sure the nozzles clear.
It still could be made functional if they don't, but will require more work with cleaning fluids etc...
Can't be done quickly.
Hope it works out,
Tyler

[Sideshow Bob]

We have had great success cleaning the heads of epson printers that dried out by printing onto their canvas paper. It's rough texture and thick substrate did wonders on cleaning itself with a few cleaning cycles.

What is canvas paper?

Mr.Gale

[Greg Miller]

We have had great success cleaning the heads of epson printers that dried out by printing onto their canvas paper. It's rough texture and thick substrate did wonders on cleaning itself with a few cleaning cycles.

Help me understand this. The print head should not be touching the paper - that would be a head strike and could damage the print head.

[Greg Miller]

I don't know what is actually happening in there, and I don't know where the other guy got the idea, but it worked on four printers that had been sitting around for up to 4 years with old ink in them. It was this paper or similar: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/757267-REG/Epson_S045255_Exhibition_Canvas_13_x.html

That's a pretty thick paper. The platen gap would need to be set wider to avoid a head strike. My guess is that the head is hitting the paper and acting as an abrasive on the head. That's sounds very scary to me if that is the case.

[Lenny Eiger]

I have a Roland and it allows direct access to the heads. On very rare occasions when it has clogged I take a spray bottle with distilled water and spray the head and it does help. The head is just a piece of metal with very small holes on it. It isn't going to break, a "head strike" is not hardly as bad as it sounds. However, if the thing clogging the head is some paper dust or powdered ink (vs thickened ink that needs clearing), you might just force that up into the hole and clog it permanently. The idea is to get moisture in there in some non-obtrusive way. If one could use some thick and wet paper, move the head over it and dab very gently, that might be reasonable.

Scraping the head across some canvas, wet or not, is not really a good idea…

Lenny