My ancient Epson Stylus C82 is suddenly delivering very poor quality
output, so far not fixable. I want to replace it quickly. (Christmas
cards, framed photos, DVD covers etc, all with pressing deadlines, some
already in the past!)
I was surprised to find the market seems dominated by inexpensive
all-in-one types. My requirements are modest and I already have a scanner
(Epson Perfection 2480) and copying utility. And the space on my desk to
the side of my 24" monitor is tight. So unless there are other compelling
reasons I've not yet seen, I think I'll simply replace it with another
mid-range dedicated printer. Preferably Epson.
Any recommendations please, in parallel with my own hurried googling
today?
From nifffystuff com
You have an air bubble within the print head.
Been through this too many times. Just installed three CISSes on R800s
in a couple of days. You must be patient.
This is the key weakness of the Epson piezo head but it is unavoidable
for consumer level printers.
For an immediate solution. Let the printer rest overnight and try
again....That's the biggest Epson secret. Three tries then wait a good
few hours. If that doesn't fix it, remove the offending cartridge and
reinsert it. Why? The Epson cartridge is completely sealed. When you
insert it, you pressurize the system a little and the last valve
inside the cartridge only opens at the last step of insertion. This
small pressurisation can burp the head.
What is happening in a head cleaning is really a head purging that
attempts to clear a clog (really it is not a clog but too many
uninformed writers on the internet think it is but 99+% of the time
it is not ... another danger of the internet)
The basic technology/principle of clearing the clog is flawed. Hear me
out. What you have are 8 sets of nozzles all connected to one suction
pad. Let's suppose there is a real clog on one of them. What happens
when you apply suction to the set of nozzles? Ink will flow out of the
ones with the least resistance and the one with a real clog will not
flow ink. So how will the clog be cleared? It will not. Yet it
works. So what is happening? Well. 99.5% of the time a so called clog
is trapped microbubbles within the printhead piezo pump. Each single
nozzle has an individual pump and chamber that drives it.
When you have air within the piezo pump, the air is compressible so
when the piezo head pump squeezes to pump ink it just squishes air and
no ink will shoot out. Hence the so called clog effect that too many
think is a clog. Just because ink does not come out doesn't mean there
is necessarily a clog,. When you apply a head clean, you basically
hope you pull the ink through the the head hoping that you will flush
the microbubbles with it.
At the factory the heads are supposed to be filled with some type of
liquid that prevents air from getting into the head. Sometimes it is
not successful. Understand though that anytime, you remove a cartridge
from an Epson you risk getting trapped air inside once you reinsert.
The risk is quite small but irritating nonetheless.
That is why my recommendation with good refillable cartridges is to
learn to refill them in within the printer. It is easy. That way you
don't risk getting air in the head once air has been removed. On the
Continuous ink system page, I wrote about temp fluctuations. This is
one possible cause of so called head cloggings on CISS, when the
temperature drops, the ink is pulled back into the cartridge and then
the piezo pump which is just at the end of the line is now filled with
air. I remember walking into my first physics class in high school and
the teacher taught us "you can't push on a rope" and that was the
trick to a lot of physics problems. Well in the world of Epson, you
can't pump air with an Epson head. You can only pull it out with a
"head cleaning". Liquid is incompressible ( within the confines of a
printhead), air is very compressible.
If you return the printer, it will go back to Epson, where the techs
will test it, flush the head and then sell it at their clearance
center for a good price with shipping included. I want an R1800 so
please return it and maybe they will drop the price and I'll get it
for a song. Please Please. I'm serious.
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/BuyE … oid=-13267
Sometimes they are marked down to $249 for the R1800 when they have
too many. Looks like they don't have too many right now as they still
are $349. Sometimes the R800 are down to $139 but at that price you
can bet they don't last long and get snapped up. Hey since I let you
guys in on this, the R1800 will never get that low again. Looks like
they sold out their R320s for $179 recently. A printer that was on
clearance at stores for $99 three years ago.
When the news of the R1900 gets around, watch the demand for the R1800
go up.
BTW
That is the very reason why Epson left lots of ink inside a cartridge
when the chip indicated empty. People got upset and some organization
in Europe was also upset, then retracted when they learned of the
reason why. It is indeterminate how much ink will be pulled out of
each cartridge when the resistance of flow determines the amount. That
resistance is not predictable. So Epson uses some guess as to much on
average should come out but it can be more or less. Secondly and more
important, is that in the event someone runs the cartridge dry until
the head is filled with air, and then goes out to buy another
cartridge, it may well turn out that over half of the new cartridge
may be used before all the air comes out to get a perfect print
pattern. So by trying to get all the ink out of the cartridge,
ingesting air into theprinthead, they shoot themselves in the foot
when they install a new cartridge and have trapped air and have to
waste possibly half of it trying to get the air out. Now why would
people do that???????????? but they do, because they don't know.
That is the reason why I offer deep vacuum prefilled refillable
cartridges to avoid this potential. Many people just put ink into the
cartridge and then ask the printer to start doing the prime to suck
ink through, then get air into the system resulting in banding and
poor print quality, not knowing what they did is fundamentally wrong.
Considerations.
BTW, the choice of a Pro9000 and R1800 are very different printers.
The R1800 I would choose for permanent prints or prints that must
last. The Pro9000 would be my choice for prints that do not have to
last. Otherwise the running costs of the R1800 is going to be higher.
No question. But if you need the properties of pigment ink, then there
is no other option in that price range.
