--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Bob Michaels"
<bob@b...> wrote:
> I just had to reset the flashing red & green lights on my old 1280,
> the ones that indicate by counting that the waste ink pads are
saturated.
>
> Questions:
>
> 1) anyone know what the safety margin is from when the indicator
> flashes (and locks up the printer) and when the waste ink pads
> actually are dangerously saturated?
> 2) where to get new waste ink pads for a 1280? I don't think Epson
> sell parts direct to consumers.
> 3) how to replace them?
>
> I'd really like to avoid boxing up my printer and sending it
> someplace. Of course, I'd also like some idea of when old ink is
going
> to start to seep out of the bottom of the printer.
Bob,
Towards the end of last year I did a reset on my 1290 when all lights
were flashing. I live in rented accommodation and wanted to be safe
so I bought a 2 foot long plant container base, rested the printer on
some polystyrene sheet and continued to use it confident that any
overflow would be caught until spring came and I could do the waste
pads replacement out of doors.
Spring came at the weekend. I broke the printer, terminally, as I
was reassembling. The control panel has to be removed. In this
circumstance the extremely thin nine wire electrical connection is
spot soldered to the circuit board and is also the structural
connection. The spot soldering is extremely weak and it came away in
me 'and guv. I tried inserting nine stands of IDE connector ribbon
but was unsuccessful.
It was a struggle to access the soak pad tray, and I do not know how,
in the end I accessed the central screw. One minute I couldn't reach
it and the next, after I had tweezered out two pads, it was clear in
view. There are four waste pads one on top of the other. The first
two are rectangular but the other two below are a complex shape and
the tray has to be removed first. There was virtually no free ink in
the tray after using 8oz bottle of Generation 4 yellow, which was the
ink that rub out last week. My conclusion is that more ink could
have been stored in the pads they weren't full, and even more in
the tray. I wish I hadn't touched the damn thing.
In future I will buy a tray to put the printer over. I will fix
support blocks to keep the printer up, so that I can see into the
tray and put Pampers into the tray to catch any overflow that might
occur. I'll never try to dissemble one of these printers again.
If you decide to try it and have a mangle, keep it to squeeze the ink
out of the absorber pads.
Experience is making mistakes and learning from them. As I get
increasingly older I get increasingly more experienced!
Colin
>
> Bob Michaels