New to printer maintenance

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1

Working on an Epson 9880 that as near as I can tell has never had any maintenance performed on it. I picked up a full kit from here and set it running. It was on “Init Fill” forever. I could see the injection pipes on the back of the print head assembly slowly clearing up, so I figured it was doing something good but after a quick email to help@inkjet and I was told to turn it off.

Simply put, what is next?

All my research in to this process was the following:

fill & install carts
system initial fill (start 20 min wait)
physical cleaning maintenace (finish wait 20 mins)
power clean (no paper needed)
manual nozzle check (paper needed)
wait 24 hours
power clean (no paper needed)
manual nozzle check (paper needed)

And I each of those steps laid out. But as the init fill went long, I’m not sure what is next?

2

If this printer has never had maintenance you need to first clean the flush box and cleaning unit (the part under the head) including the tube that goes to the waste ink tank.

Then you need to replace your dampers:

https://compassmicro.com/products/inkjet/stylus-pro-9880.html?dir=desc&order=referencenumber

Only THEN will you actually be able to suck out the old gunk and replace it with flush to slowly loosen the remaining gunk.

best,
Walker

3

Waste ink tank and its tube? Did that video call it by another name?

4

The video did not mention this part but for very old printers you do need to look at what is UNDER the cleaning area (aka, the tube that goes down to the waste ink tank that has 10 yr old ink in it).

-Walker