Epson 7600, Ink Clog?

[duckrabbit]

Hello all:

My husband and I just bought a used Epson 7600. It had been sitting for awhile, so I purchased some Piezoflush from Inkjetmall. I've done a number of power-cleans, and all of the cartridges have flushed out except for the magenta. The flush doesn't seem to be making its way through the magenta ink-piping at all, and the nozzle checks come out completely clear (meaning, no ink is printing whatsoever).

Any ideas, hints, tricks?

[Tyler Boley]

Let it sit over night with the flush, do a power clean or two, let it sit again over night, clean again... etc... the fluid needs time to disolve any dried ink in the system.
If none of that works you may need to remove that line from the head and damper, replace the damper, and/or pull the flush fluid into the line by attaching a syringe at that end of the line and pulling it through.
In fact replacing the dampers would be a great idea, they are cheap.
The folks at IJM can point you to instructions on any of the above. This stuff is not as hard as it sounds, but you'll need a service manual also.
Tyler

[duckrabbit]

Great! We'll try that. Fingers crossed that it's as easy as letting it sit...

Thank you.

[Lenny Eiger]

Great! We'll try that. Fingers crossed that it's as easy as letting it sit...

Thank you.

Tyler's suggestion is a good one. However, I will add that often my 9600 needed much more cleaning than I thought possible. If you haven't gotten the knowledge of how to get in the maintenance menus, and work in there, you should. There are more powerful cleaning cycles inside of there, and better test prints (nozzle type checks).

Lenny

[Kirk Gittings]

What are peoples thinking about this problem in 2011. I've been given a 7600 with little use but has been sitting idle for an unknown length of time. Two channels are almost completely blocked and I am running out of ink for more power cleanings. I have done the Windex trip a few times and one of the clogs has actually gotten worse.

What I want to do with this is get it working and park it safely for awhile-maybe a year even-and the convert it over to Cone inks.

I have one 3800 PZ printer running now so I'm not in a huge hurry to get this converted-I just want to get it running before it clogs worse. Cash flow is an issue for the next few months (maybe 6). So I would like to do it on the cheap. I don't want to drop allot of $ into this if I cannot clear the clogs.

Does this method have any validity?

[sanking]

Kirk,

I can suggest a fairly inexpensive solution. You may or may not have noticed that I have a set of Cone cartridges for sale for the Epson 7600. See the add in the For Sale section. You could buy (or mix) some flushing solution and run this through the printer. Flushing will probably clear the printer, if not you can run the flushing cycle again and allow the flushing solution to remain in the printer until you decide to convert it to PZ.

Sandy

[Kirk Gittings]

I had not seen that listing. That is very tempting. What can you tell me about mixing my own flushing solution?

[sanking]

I had not seen that listing. That is very tempting. What can you tell me about mixing my own flushing solution?

Kirk,

A fellow on the Yahoo forum on large carriage printers gave me this formula.

90% distilledwater
5% isopropyl alchohol
5% pure household ammonia

Sandy

[Kirk Gittings]

Thanks. I will take the carts. Give me a final price with the cheapest shipping. Thanks.

[sanking]

Thanks. I will take the carts. Give me a final price with the cheapest shipping. Thanks.


OK. The carts are yours.

Sandy

[neil poulsen]

While I now use a 3880, I still have my 4000 sitting around.

I spoke with a knowledgeable Epson technician and described a similar situation with my 4000. Quite often I'll do the ink test, and maybe a small portion of one ink channel has some missing areas. So I do a cleaning, and I completely lose three more ink channels.

Explaining this to the technician, he suggested that perhaps air is leaking into the ink lines, and that would explain this counter intuitive behavior of the machine. (That is, that it gets worse after a cleaning. How neat that would be?!) He also suggested downloading the Epson 4000 repair manual and checking the symptoms of my printer against those in the book. I forget the exact name of this manual, so that it could be googled.

He also said that he has a 4000 that doesn't get much use, and he rarely has a problem with clogging. When I first got my 4000, I rarely had a clog, even after a couple of weeks of not being used. It was only after it had aged that it began having a clogging problem. This would also be consistent with the possibility that air is leaking into the lines.

So before selling it, I'm hanging onto the the 4000 until I have a chance to take it into a repair place and test this possibility. I'd rather sell a properly functioning printer.

Weren't the 4000 and 7600 based on the same technology?

[Patrick Raymore]

Incredible!! You would think after two decades plus, the mature technology of inkjet printing would have solved the problem of clogs. And we are not speaking of cheap throw away printers! Shame on the industry.