Digital BW, The Print

Peter,

> I just picked up an Epson 7600.  It's had very little use, but it
> hasn't been used in a few years...

That should be a good acquisition. 

What I have done with printers that have not been used for a long time is to put cleaning fluid in empty carts first, including adding a bit of ammonia in the form of some window cleaner ("Windex" with ammonia in the US).  With the 4000, I took the lines off where they connected to the dampers in the head assembly and pulled this cleaning solution through the tubes with a syringe.  The MIS bottom fill adapter worked fine to interface the syringe with the tubing.  The tubes cleaned up very nicely. (My hands took a bit more time to clean up.) I then re-attached the tubes to the dampers.  Before turning on the machine I allowed the head to sit for a day in Windex that had been put onto the parking pad.

When I did turn the printer on, the head seemed to clean out in a reasonably limited number of cleaning cycles and purge pattern prints.

A power cleaning seems to fully refresh the ink lines.  That is, pull enough ink through to replace what had sat in the line.

I doubt the 4880 carts will fit.  I assume the 4880 has pressurized carts that have a slightly different design.

Good luck with the "new" printer.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com 



  Thus, I'm sure there's lots of gunk
> in the print lines, dampers and heads.  I'd like to use the printer
> with a BW inkset, or, if worse comes to worse, as a way to apply glop
> to prints made on another machine. (I also have an Epson 4880.)  I
> have a set of refillable cartridges for the 4880 filled with cleaning
> solution.  Perhaps these might work in the 7600?
> 
> Before doing that, though, would it make sense to replace the ink
> lines and/or the dampers?  On the face of it, it would seem best to
> avoid trying to dissolve everything in them and running it through the
> heads.  Should anything else be replaced before starting it up? Any
> other tips? I do have the service manual.
> 
> Regards,
> Peter
>