Epson R3000 head clogging

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AndyHW

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Andy
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I owned a R1800 which suffered clogged heads a lot and I spent more time and ink in cleaning cycles and nozzle checks than I did printing my pictures. This was notable worse on 3rd party inks, pretty much unusable with a inkexpress continuous ink kit. I ditched the CIS, flushed the head and I stuck to Epson inks and it would usually unblock in 2-3 cleaning cycles.

I spoke to an Epson sales guy at an exhibition about this and he advised me to talk to their tech support, who advised me to trade in the R1800 for an R3000. They did me quite a good deal, but it was a significant investment.

So the R3000 arrives and I set it up... all is well and I make one A4 photo print which I am pleased with. The next day I was off on business travels for 10 days so I switched everything off and left it for when I got home.

So after 10 days rest the printer gets turned on and I try a print - it looks very weird - and I realise the photo-black is totally missing. I do a nozzle check and not one PK nozzle is working. I run a clean cycle and nozzle check again. This time three PK nozzles are working. Five clean cycles later - and half a cartridge of PK ink used up and all PK nozzles are working again.

So I am somewhat miffed that I've spent £££ and still have the same problem. The difference is that this time it's under warranty and has only ever been used with Epson inks.

Does anyone else have similar issues - or have any advice for avoiding using half your ink on cleaning cycles? Other Epson owners I know don't seem to have this issue. In fact my Dad owns the same printer and claims to have never needed to run one cleaning cycle, ever, in a year of ownership. I wonder what I am doing wrong? It is not near any heat sources and the temperature in my study is 16-20 degrees C and 42%-46% humidity.

So I've logged a support incident with Epson... and I wait to hear what they say.

Any wisdom on this matter would be appreciated!

TIA

Andy.
 
Hi Andy,

I sympathise with your plight. Although my current Stylus 1400 doesn't suffer from blocked heads - using a mixture of genuine and third party inks - my previous Epson printers certainly have. In all fairness though it's only been when the printer hasn't been used for a while, as in your case, so I used to get my wife to switch it on every couple of days while I was away. As Epson printers appear to do a head clean every time you turn them on that was enough to keep the heads clean ... but it does eat into your inks.

Sorry I can't be more helpful but thought you'd like to know you're not alone :D
 
Some people just leave the printer powered on, and do a test print every few weeks or so. This stops the power up clean/flush/prime cycle, and will reduce ink consumption. I'm sure most printers only use a few Watts on standby...
 
I have a vague recollection of reading on another forum - nikonians, I think - of a method of cleaning individual heads, thereby limiting the amount of ink wasted during cleaning. If memory serves me correctly, the method is to set the printer to print the highest quality photo in the print settings dialogue. Then you open a text document in your preferred word processor and change all the text to the colour you need to clean. When you print the document only the chosen colour is used and this should clear the nozzles.

Whether this works, or not, I cannot say but it might be worth a try :shrug:
 
Thanks for your thoughts.

I have come across printheadhospital before in the days of the R1800+CIS.

I was also told that cleaning the heads more than twice is not necessary - if they need a third clean, I have been advised to switch the printer off for 30-mins to 1hr instead as the ink pad will then be moist and should dissolve any dried ink. I haven't confirmed this works yet, but will try.

Epson have also responded and will treat the printer as DOA, attempt to fix it and either return it fixed or send me a new one.

Either way my expectation is that a *brand new* printer should survive 10 days being switched off without needing five cleaning cycles and half a cart of ink to revive it.
 
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