Doesn't work

InkjetMall Customer Support Printer Maintenance & Cartridges
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Good morning Dana.

So last week I ran out of Light Cyan when I wasn’t paying attention. And now the printer tells me that there is no cartridge in that position even though I refilled it and reset the chip.

I used an “empty” tank to finish that print, but the problem has not gone away. Matter of fact, it appears to have temporarily migrated to the next position. But that got better.

So I read your Forums last week and did the chip-swap trick. That didn’t work. And funny thing, I put the chip from your defective tank onto the Epson LCyan cartridge that I took the other chip from, and it works just fine on that cartridge. So much for the idea that the chip somehow failed.

What do you suggest?

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[QUOTE=Mattster;2580]Good morning Dana.

So last week I ran out of Light Cyan when I wasn’t paying attention. And now the printer tells me that there is no cartridge in that position even though I refilled it and reset the chip.

I used an “empty” tank to finish that print, but the problem has not gone away. Matter of fact, it appears to have temporarily migrated to the next position. But that got better.

So I read your Forums last week and did the chip-swap trick. That didn’t work. And funny thing, I put the chip from your defective tank onto the Epson LCyan cartridge that I took the other chip from, and it works just fine on that cartridge. So much for the idea that the chip somehow failed.

What do you suggest?[/QUOTE]

Hi Matt,

Dana is out today and I will try and help you.

I just checked your order history and I see that you bought a set of inks and carts from us in 2009 and a new bottle of Light Cyan this month. You are using extremely outdated inks in your printer - so I wanted to caution you against the use of five year old inks. Also, the use of your inks has been very light in a printer this old. So you will have some pigment settling issues to contend with as you begin using this printer again.

Using an empty tank implies that you may have printed without ink? Is that what you meant? Did you print without light cyan ink in the light cyan position? If so you will have some air in the ink line issues to deal with and that may be solved by running three POWER CLEANS after priming the cart. However, printing air can ruin the print head so be cautious about that.

Getting those two important and critical cautions out of the way - your current issue is that your chip is not being recognized on the refill cart. If this is the original cart from the original ink bottle from 2009 installed without frequent removing (and this does sound like the Car Guys stuff…) it may be that the pin reader has been depressed for five years and may now be less springy and have less reach. The Epson cart may be slightly larger than a 3rd party cart (which tries to avoid patents that include dimensions). However, you can not reach in there and bend these pin readers as they will snap off. Perhaps you can reinstall the cart and see if you can apply pressure by hand to push the chip into contact. This will tell you if you need to install a wedge and the pin reader is indeed a little depressed from being in contact for five years.

If the chip reading issue is migrating as you finally remove the carts - then my conclusion may have some bearing.

Still my caution about using very old inks leads me to believe that some other critical issues will soon be hitting your printer. 8 ounces of ink is what Epson recommends that you use as a minimum every six months in this printer. You have used less than that in five years - so my recommendation is to flush this printer and start over with fresh inks. If you can not run the refillable carts any longer - you may need to revert to the slightly higher Epson carts. The half mm or so may be the difference if you can not wedge the older refill carts.

In general - you have a lot of things going on with this printer that are either active or about to hit the proverbial fan!

Let us know if you can wedge the older cart.

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Hi Jon. I know all these things you said about lack of use, and I suppose that’s a risk I take with my printer. But here’s a weird data point - in that original kit you included a Matte Black cartridge and bottle of ink that I never used. When I put that cartridge in the LCyan slot, it worked fine. So I guess I need to dump the new LCyan ink out of the old cartridge and throw the cartridge away and use the MBlack instead.

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I am not certain at what stage you are at with this printer - but if it ran out of ink and air has entered into the line - there is some chance that you have some maintenance ahead of you - which I have advised on. However, I would strongly caution you against use the remaining ink supplies from 2009. At the absolute minimum you should take all of the carts out and shake them. Shake any remaining ink in the bottles and try and freshen it up - run the two POWER CLEANs and cross your fingers. Five or six year old ink is very old.

Sometimes with 3rd party chips they can be interchangeable - not always. The 7800s are often. So you can either take the chip or relabel the cart.

Merry Christmas and good luck with this printer. Let us know if you get it printing with the existing inks. I am very interested to know if you encounter printability issues such as banding. We do engineer good ink - but we have never tried to print with very old ink. We would normally caution our customers that they can expect banding or noise.