Epson R3000 clogged

Hi,

So yesterday I bought an Epson R3000 with 4.5 sets worth of fotospeed ink for £75.00, the problem with the printer was the ink pad needed resetting and the head was very clogged but not totally, the guy was an older gentleman and just couldn't be bothered to repair it himself or pay for someone to do it for him so he bought a new one and sold this one.

I have added a external ink tank (which is temporarily a mountain dew bottle until i sort the head problem then i will install a proper permanent solution) & I reset the waste counter.

I managed to take the head from only printing yellow and a few lines of blacks on the nozzle check to printing every color except I believe Light Vivid Magenta. The one it isn't printing is the first Magenta in from the left on the nozzle check.

After leaving head cleaned to soak on a cloth under the print head overnight the Light Magenta did start to work but after a few more head cleans it has blocked itself up again.

I'm currently printing a few sheets of a magenta scale to see if that will help shift it but I still need to do head cleans as all of the other colours are working but the nozzle check isn't fully clean yet.

So my fotospeed inks are refillable inks. So I was wondering if its safe for me to either fill the cartridge with head cleaner or mix some head clean in with the ink & either let it go through a head cleaning cycle with that or to do some printing then seat a cloth of head cleaner under the print head so it gets attacked from both sides? I also assume that just removing the ink cartridge & squirting head clean down the tubes is a bad idea? or is that possible aswell?

Any help is greatly appriciated!!

If you had flow and now you don't, it might be dampers or trapped air.

I'd work in parallel on ink system. Try getting to dampers, mix/buy a cleaning fluid with a bit of colorant to see the nozzle check (1 color for all is also ok).

I put some detail before in regards to 3800 https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4266058#forum-post-60994642 but principles remain the same.

In short - make sure to clean everything all the way from ink inlet nozzle till damper outlet. When you are sure that dampers and tubes are clean and give good flow, that there is no ink gunk in tubes and no trapped air - prime the ink system and put it back on printhead and only then start cleaning it again.

1-2 runs a day, soak the underside well (preferably with solution containing some ammonia), use only DI water to clean before you go and don't let NH3 to sit too long on printhead. Repeat.

Use no pressure (i.e. don't force fluids into printhead with syringe, unless you are super gentle). If ink system is removed, just attach some tube sections to printhead ink inlets, fill those tubes with solution and let it be drawn out by capillary effect of cloth under the p-head.

Great thanks for the advice, on my lunch break i went home and set it up with head cleaner in the carts instead of ink and run a few cleanings and some print scales then left it with the cleaner under the head on a cloth & the cleaner in the carts to sit until tonight, found it was okay to do this in one of Jose Rodriguez's videos on Youtube.

Is there anything you or someone can recommend in the UK with ammonia in it that i can use? Thanks!

I live in Germany, but I bought ammonia in Poland. It is a 25% solution - ammoniated water. I'm not sure what would be the source in UK, but you can try other solutions or buy a ready one. I have a rinse solution from OCP (I did not use it much), Inktec MCS-01LDP - with glycol for better moistening and my own mix for "heavy lifting".

Exact recipe for 0,5L mix
101 ml of Isopropyl alcohol (99% purity, 1%water)
19,9 ml of ammonia water (25% NH3, 75% water)
379 ml DI water

If printer was not mishandled too badly, I guess most things can help. Bad clogs though may be tough. My 3800 has 4 magenta nozzles clogged, but since it means nothing in print, I'm not fighting it too much.

Key component is patience and consistency - make sure all upstream of the printhead is clean and healthy and then give it a hug

So I took the print head apart & cleaned everything through. Found the blockages were the nozzles and were happily visible, so i cleared each nozzle with head cleaner slowly & gently.

I then put everything back together, it did a head cleaning happily then I tried to do a nozzle check & it gave me printer error please turn the printer on and off again. Using the WIC utility i found it was for error code "0x42 Printer head failure. X-hot detection during flushing, head thermistor detects unusual temperature, main board failure" and then a series of "0x80 circuit error or blown fuse".

So I removed the main board & cant see any obviously blown fuses. Does anyone have any ideas on what I did wrong?

When i did take the tubes for the ink off the head there was a lot of ink squirt everywhere as I am a tit & didn't think to hold a tissue or anything around it, some ink did get into the connections but I put some head cleaner on the connections & then sprayed them off with PCB cleaner & left them to dry before continuing. I have also retaken the head apart & done this again.

Did you take apart the printhead itself? That's too far for me...

If you are getting errors like above it might be a serious damage to printhead - internal leak from overpressure or something similar. I'm just guessing here, but it does not sound well.

Procedure I did and suggested was only to remove ink supply (damper assembly) and wash all the lines, dampers etc with DI water or cleaning fluid. With a bit of pressure assist on air pressurization side you can then prime the lines with ink by drawing it at the damper outlet.

If the ink was squirting there must have been some pressure trapped in the system. In 3800 I was removing air supply line to bring the pressure to atmospheric; I'm not sure how it goes with R3000, but 3800 has a common pressurization port on the left side of ink cart bay, back top corner. You only need to remove the tube and not forget to put it back on after work is done.

Ink system has several membranes (behind carts, on damper manifold, dampers - both sides, K ink valve) and has to be treated gently...printhead even more.

To allow any forward flow through dampers (if removed from manifold), the round membrane should be gently pressed to open prv.

Good explanation is here: https://community.inkjetmall.com/t/how-the-38xx-ink-system-works/4428

edit: I do not have a service manual to R3000 - do you have one / did you use it? Service manual for 3800 is easy to find and many parts/operation principles are similar; maybe you can use it as reference in case you don't get one specific to R3000: http://rtellason.com/manuals/StylusPro3800_service_manual.pdf

Example of damper work/replacement video for R3000

I lifted the dampers & print head assembly out, I didn't actually unscrew the bottom of the print head or anything like that, I then felt a tit because i could have just removed the dampers assembly which is what I was trying to do but it wouldn't come out & i didn't wanna force it so I thought I was undoing the wrong screws so in the process unscrewed the print head.

I do now have a service manual, my next job is to re-disassemble the head assembly & triple check there isn't any blown fuses or leftover ink on the electronics.

PS I am also fully aware that if i had just applied a little more force & wiggled the dampers assembly a bit more then I probably would have cleared the blockage, put everything back together and had a working printer but unfortunately I'm one of those people where life has to give and hit me around the head at the same time. ie - giving me around £400 worth of printer for £75 with a fixable issue, then making me break it even more to restore the balance of life.

Ow well, I'm sure I'll fix it eventually.

I know how it is...3 kids and full time job...planning is the key

Removing the printhead is not a best idea, especially if you have no adjustment software to help in positioning / slant tuning.

I'm not sure where the fuses are. Problem is the actual reason for fuse being blown. In case of sensitive electronics that's seldom a good thing. If you're lucky though, maybe it was just a misaligned ribbon cable. Make sure it's all clean, dry (electronics) and cables are healthy (no nicks, cuts, excessive bends etc) and connected properly. Take your time, don't haste it...

Ink assembly goes off the printhead with some hesitation, but a gentle "wiggle" can loosen it.

Either way - I hope you'll manage to fix it. If p-head is fried, you may need to look for another DX7-based "organ donor" :/

Yeah I'm very much hoping the cause was ink got in the wrong place, frankly if i'd have to spend any money on it I will just sell it for spares to get my money back.

Don't give up on it just yet! Some forum suggest it might be the ribbon cable.






80 might be also something with encoder connection. Either way - maybe you can take some detailed photos of mainboard.

Fuses are sometimes looking like nothing now, but markings may help; they are often marked with single letter and description on PCB may give a hint. Anything showing burn traces?


Good luck!

I'm certainly not giving up while there's a chance! haha

So I took apart and cleaned everything, including the electrical components on the head (not any ink part of the head though), I checked all of the fuses on the head for continuity & visually - no issues that I can find.

I removed the main board & again saw no fuse burns, discoloration or shifting, checked all of the fuses under a magnifying glass, no obviously visible issues with the main board at all.

The ribbon cables are still green from the ink but ive soaked and cleaned them in meths and made sure all of the contacts are gold and only gold and nice and shiny. Unfortunatly I did manage to bend one by doing this but I put it back and made sure it went in fine.

Put everything back together & boom! Same error.

So any ideas on what I should try next? I'm at a loss at the moment & there aren't many forums at all on this, apart from what you've given me there's a few Russian ones and that seems to be it but I will keep looking.



I also cleaned the encoder strip again.

So I removed the motherboard again & started to test the fuses but only about 5 of them register with any continuity, so I think there's either an issue with me or the multimeter, I will try some more tomorrow.

Frankly I refuse to believe that all the fuses on the board are dead with no signs of damage and a printer that still turns on.

Just a thought, fuses are the only white bodied component on the board right?

There are many components looking similar. Oscillators are often white too, some caps are hard to distinguish as they may have no coding. I would not expect too many fuses though - if you are seeing too many of them, might be you are looking at caps too

I've also seen fuses being made as thinner lines on PCB or SMD arrays of sorts.

As for the continuity - just check the UVM by putting the its cables together.

Ribbon cables sometimes give up on bends/nicks - did you test the continuity of lines there? I had such issue with barebone HDD adapter lately.

Are there any markings on the PCB? Did the components you tested have markings? Like this:







?

Any chance for main board photo?

scoman123 said:

I also cleaned the encoder strip again.

Click to expand...

I'm not concerned about the proper encoding but contact with encoding sensor in general. However keeping it clean is a good idea in general

Here are the photos of the board, If you want close-ups of an area or anything let me know!

I haven't done the cables yet that and finding fuses is gonna fill my day off today. By the sounds of it what I was testing wasn't fuses so that could explain my results haha.



Update: so I found 1 fuse on the board, right next to the big cap & heat sync labeled "F1" & had "E" written on it. It tested fine on the lower tests; 200k, 2M & 20M anything higher & it wouldn't register.

All nicely labeled - I'll take a look at it.

Which CN's go to the carriage?

All in all - I'm hoping there are some fuses

C, R, Q, L, CR, IC - these are clear, but what are the "B" items? Plenty of them on the backside, behind CN's - could those be fuses?

Quite possibly, I'm not sure to be honest. My experience with a multimeter & components is very limited - not the best thing when you consider i own my own computer repair shop haha.

below is a pic from the service manual about the connectors.

Testing the ribbon cables seems beyond awkward with a multimeter, from what I can see there are no breaks in places there would have been movement from my work.