Epson Stylus Photo R800 ink not flowing - I've tried everything

[Matt2000]

Some of you may have seen my 'Epson' video. I'm going to keep this snappy.

For the last few days I've been trying to get a Stylus Photo R800 that I got free beacuse it wasn't working, working. It was used until the ink dried up as it always does in Epsons, and I went online to buy a ?20 kit to flush it out and get it working. At the same time I decided to fit a CISS to make printing with pigment ink cheap.

I flushed it out last week and removed no end of gunk, apparently getting all nozzles clear. One of the existing cartridges was showing as empty so I couldn't test it at that point. The CISS arrived and was fitted, tanks were filled and purged and a head clean was done. It didn't seem to do a very good job, but I though that since it was the first since using the cleaning fluid I'd keep trying. All of the colours came up clean apart from the yellow, which degraded and stopped completely. Cue 2 days of messing around.

So I've cleaned the yellow nozzle several times with the fluid to the point where clean ink is coming through followed by clear fluid, so I know I'm unblocking the nozzle. Today I cleaned the sponge pads and afterwards I could see yellow on the pad. There were some bubbles in the tube from the CISS tanks when I replaced the cartiridge, I could see them moving when the printer was doing a head clean but not when printing. When printing a full nozzle check, no yellow comes out. Occasionally there is some orange, which is odd. Once when I was running fluid through the yellow nozzle the paper towel underneath was orange, not sure if it was picking up ink from the magenta nozzle but something must be going wrong for it to print orange instead of pure yellow.

I'm currently stumped, I was hoping this thing could replace my R300 which is misfeeding. In theory I could get the light cyan and magenta inks and still use the CISS, cutting off two of the tubes to bring it down to the six that the R300 uses.

Any help is greatly appreciated. I don't really want to buy a new head for this but if the price is right I'll consider it. Cheers.

 

[argatoga]

Sadly most inkjet printers are garbage and the ones which aren't are prohibitively expensive. Unless you need to print color on a regular basis I'd buy a colorless laser printer and go to a print shop on the occasions you need the colorful stuff.

 

[NecroJoe]

Sadly most inkjet printers are garbage and the ones which aren't are prohibitively expensive. Unless you need to print color on a regular basis I'd buy a colorless laser printer and go to a print shop on the occasions you need the colorful stuff.

Yes indeed, would agree with that...but I do print color fairly often, and I do live pretty close to Walgreens and FedEx/Kinkos. If I didn't, I might consider an inkjet, but only because I do some color printing.

 

[MWF]

Here's your solution.

Seriously, by the time you've finished farting about you're better off getting an up to date machine. The Brother does everything your Epson does plus wireless printing, LCD screen, scanning etc. Plus it will come with a year's warranty. Then you can make a new video of you murdering the R800 with your Disco. Win:win.

 

[Matt2000]

Here's your solution.

Seriously, by the time you've finished farting about you're better off getting an up to date machine. The Brother does everything your Epson does plus wireless printing, LCD screen, scanning etc. Plus it will come with a year's warranty. Then you can make a new video of you murdering the R800 with your Disco. Win:win.

Yep, the sensible option would be to buy a new Photosmart and ditch this, it's a shame to waste the ?50 I've just spent on ink but I suppose you win some and lose some.

The only reason I have it is because it was a top end printer in its day and since the only things I'll really be printing on it are photos I wanted that quality boost from my R300. I've also been printing vinyl sheet and the UV resistant ink would make a big difference. I think I'll look for a disassembly guide online, I don't have anything to lose. If I can find a cheap used (working!) R1800, R2100 or R2400 I can use the CISS, but I suppose those will be even more expensive.

 

[Matt2000]

I think I've cracked it. I've been looking for my cartridge reset tool to reset all of the original cartridges (some were empty so it wouldn't print) and see what happens with the yellow. If it works, it must be the CISS cartridge. Well I can't find it so I was ready to buy another, when it occurred to me that I could just swap the cartridge with another colour and clean out the nozzles afterwards. This would basically give me the same test, with the added benefit that if nothing flowed through the other nozzle (magenta in this case) it would confirm a cartridge problem.

Turns out I didn't need to go that far. When I took the yellow out I noticed that there appeared to be something orange inside, just above the exit nozzle. Bingo. An hour later it's fully washed out with water, dried as much as I can (damn getting water out of the one way valve with the eye of a needle is tedious) and yellow is flowing again. It still isn't perfect, some of the individual nozzles still don't work but that has happened to other colours too. I'm going to give it some time to settle and I'll try again.

So I'm currently much happier with the machine and it looks like it might not be a waste of money after all.

 

[Matt2000]

So this saga continues. I thought I had it sorted last week but the amount of yellow ink getting through slowly dropped until nothing was flowing again. No obvious blockages this time. Tonight I've been dicking around with it and it's clear that the nozzles for the yellow ink are completely blocked and no amount of cleaning fluid is going to fix that, so I took all of the cartridges out ready to move the printer. As I did so I noticed 3 screws, so I undid them and found that I could remove the whole print head assembly from above - perfect.

I'm at the point now where I've wasted most of the pigment ink I bought and so I have almost nothing to lose, so I've dumped the print head in my ultrasonic cleaner with normal tap water. 10 minutes and 2 water changes later and some yellow is still coming out of it so it's doing its job. The question is has it cleared the head? I'll find out when it's done. If this doesn't work I'll look up the part number, if it's cheap I'll get one and it's guaranteed to fix the problem.

Edit: Nope, it's properly fucked. With it all apart it's as clear as day that nothing is getting through a number of the yellow nozzles and no amount of cleaning and pushing fluid through it is going to fix it. If I can get a good print head for cheap then maybe I can save the printer but the cheapest at the moment is more than ?100 on eBay. The printer definitely isn't worth that. I'd rather just get a CISS for my R300 or just ditch the pair and get a new machine with a CISS.