Epson Stylus C80 problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kyle Ertel
  • Start date Start date
K

Kyle Ertel

I am having a problem with my Stylus C80 and am hoping someone might be able
to point me in the right direction. I've owned it for nearly 2 years with
virtually no problems. I do not print very frequently, and in this case I
had not used the printer for approximately 1 month. When I turned the power
on, the ink light was flashing. I attempted to print a simple text document
from notepad and the print was very streaked.

I ran the utility to clean the nozzles, but it failed. I then noticed that
the ink light had changed from flashing to solid red. I powered the printer
off and on, but the light stayed red. I then followed the procedure to
remove/reseat the ink cartridges. While doing so, I gently shook the
cartridges to verify that they had ink in them - all of them felt and
sounded nearly full. After completing the procedure, the ink light was
still solid red. I repeated two more times to verify that I was reseating
them properly - everything went as it should have, but the light was still
red.

Per someone's suggestion in another post I found, I unplugged the power and
USB cables and replugged them - no joy. Bottom line is that no matter what
I seem to do, the ink out light is on solid red, and as a result I'm unable
to run any of the utilities from the utility menu - the nozzle check, head
cleaning, and print head alignment all just queue jobs in the print queue,
and the ink cartridge replacement utility is greyed out and unavailable.

I had similar problems with my previous HP printer; the printer would have
plenty of ink but it would report that it did not. HP support told me there
were problems with the chips on the cartridges and that I would have to buy
new ones. This fixed the problem, but was very expensive given that I was
not out of ink. This happened twice - the third time I bought the Epson
Stylus C80 to replace it. Now I'm having the same issue and Epson support
is (surprise) telling me I need to replace the cartridges. I do not want to
have to spend $60 to replace the ink cartridges in this printer - heck, I
can buy a brand new cheap printer that comes with all the ink for less than
that. Printers should not be disposable devices - does anyone have any
suggestions as to what can be done and/or why the ink out light is solid red
when I still have ink?
 
- does anyone have any
suggestions as to what can be done and/or why the ink out light is solid red
when I still have ink?
Click to expand...

I've had the same when testing - pretty much to destruction - the C80 and
the 810. Usually this indicates that the contacts are contaminated or
smeared with ink. With the cartridges out clean the contact splines with a
cotton bud by stroking down. Equally clean the cartridge contacts of any
smears of spilt ink: an alchohol helps ensure a grease free contact.
That worked for me every time.
Tony
 
How long have you had the cartridge in that printer? Cartridges are
recommended to be changed after 6 months. There is a little bit of ink left
in the cartridge when empty. Which ink is reporting low? If one ink is out
the printer will not print.
 
The ink has been in there for longer than 6 months, but I can't see how that
would make a difference in this case - I could understand reduced print
quality, but the printer refusing to work simply because the ink has been in
it longer than 6 months? As stated in my post, I have no clue which ink it
considers low since the portion of the utility screen where this would
typically show is "greyed out". I attempted to download and reinstall the
Epson utility program from their site, but attempting to run the W2K/XP
version on my XP Pro computer results in a "file not found" error due to the
fact that it's a 16-bit DOS installer (apparantly). Regardless, my best
guess based on weight and sound tells me that none of the carts are less
than 80% full.

So you're saying that if even one of the carts is low, the entire printer
will refuse to print anything?
 
The viscosity of the ink may have changed. The manu. tells you to replace
the cart. after 6 months. Yes if one of the cartridges is low or out the
printer will refuse to print.
 
Back
Top