Digital BW, The Print

My own idea on this, having gone through lots of clogging and 
something very much like this on an 1160. I'm not going to claim it 
will positively fix things, as a disclaimer, but it is just what I 
tried with some sucess:

1) Toss the CIS completely. Keep the bottle rack. Toss the ink, 
tubing, and carts. You let it sit idle too long (based on the air in 
the k tubing fact) and espically the k ink has dried a bit and 
evaporated thru the tubing. And the hardware may be gummed up (like 
the carts). There are rescue techniques but I personally don't think 
they are worth it. You have a clogged CIS and a clogged printhead and 
you need to minimise the work if you're going to bring it back. It's 
easier to toss the CIS/ink IMO, but that's your descion based on $$.If 
all goes well in the next steps, replace it and try to print 
something, even a quick 30 second draft purge print on plain paper 
every few days, every day better. Two months way way too long.

Also examine the parking pad to see if it is dried out, globbed up 
with too much ink, etc. You can repeatedly irrigate it with a solution 
 to clear the dried ink (see #5 below) or even replace it but I don't 
know how to do the latter- someone else has tho.

2) Buy some NEW Epson name brand carts and put them in $$ :(. I find 
that cleaning carts do not (clean). I have never had sucess with them 
to clear clogs. Go to the MIS site and find all the purge patterns- 
the Piezo one will work fine at first, but later you will want to just 
print out a wide expanse of ONE color only- like cyan say, or black, 
whatever.

3) Run about 5 -7 purge patterns of all the colors together- MIS' four 
color purge or the piezo purge. Don't worry about a nozzle check or 
cleaning cycles. But if you don't get any ink at all in one of the 
colors, don't do more than maybe one purge pattern. The MIS pattern 
being seperate stripes, lets you see this easily.

4) Now run one or two cleaning cycles and you can start to check for 
nozzles maybe. But don't panic if it doesn't clear. And don't run more 
than two cycles. Keep the nozzle checks so you can see what is 
clearing and what isn't.

5) Put some stuff on the parking pad. I use 40%ethanol+60%distilled 
h2O. I use about 4 drops. I don't flood the pad. In this case, since 
the pad is healthy (we assume from #1 above) don't do it repeatedly, 
just about four drops once. Turn off, let sit overnight.

6) Repeat steps 3-5 next day.

7) Now start to focus in on the color that is giving the most trouble. 
Start printing the solid color MIS purge files a couple times. You 
might want to use Epson Heavyweight matte paper for this, maybe print 
at 1440 dpi. Watch for ink blobbing of other colors too during this- I 
sometimes find on my 1280 that a nozzle that doesn't print fully will 
sometimes cause ink to cough up on the page. I never really noticed 
this on my two 1160's but it could happen I guess.

8) The solid color purges are really intense on the printhead so if 
that doesn't do it, your options are to go to direct injection which I 
don't like to do, or, as suggested by others- send the head for 
replacement/cleaning. Don't remove head yourself as special software 
is needed to realign it. Here in the US, I asked three places that 
said they "repair" 1160's, and only one had the software.

Suggestion, maybe works, not tried fully yet myself, for long 
vacations: remove the CIS/3rd party ink cart(s), put EZ plugs in the 
bottom and install Epson carts. Run a few purges, get a good nozzle 
check and turn off. Have someone turn the printer on maybe once a week 
or two. Have fun and take lots of pictures.
Jim H.  


 







--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Richard Wolfson" 
<richard@r...> wrote:
> You may have dried out, hardened ink in your CIS lines. Try removing 
the
> CIS cartridge and putting in a regular cartridge, or a cartridge of
> cleaning solution. The problem may not be the print head at all.
> 
> If you get the head clear, you can replace the CIS tubes, or remove 
them
> from both ends and clean them, but that's not easy.
> 
> Richard Wolfson
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: bmercertx [mailto:BMercerTX@a...] 
> > Sent: Sunday, July 14, 2002 5:32 PM
> > To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y...
> > Subject: [Digital BW] Blank nozzle checks
> > 
> > 
> > I had a clog in my 1160 that I could not clear but had to close 
the 
> > printer down for 2 months.  I'm using the old piezo inks with CIS. 
 
> > Now I'm back to work and can't get any pattern in the black 
position 
> > or in the cyan position when I do a nozzle check. The strange 
thing 
> > is I can see some air spaces in the ink line to the black 
cartridge. 
> > How would I clear that out?  Do not know how that happened. Since 
I 
> > can't get even one mark when I do the nozzle check, do I REALLY 
have 
> > a print head problem?  
> > 
> > Have any of you had to replace print heads?  What did it cost? 
> > 
> > I bought this set-up from someone else and I have gotten some nice 
> > prints from it. I'd like to get it back up and running.
> > 
> > Billie