Problem after power clean 7880

[Elizabeth_Moreno]

Hello,

I have a 7880 with half the inks with cone color and the rest with epson. The light gray went out, and after several cleanings decided to change the damper. had that done with 2 lines, light gray and llk, and yellow a couple months ago. After replacing the damper followed the instructions and did a power clean. Ran a nozzle check and had just a few strikes of each color. pretty much nothing.
So I did a couple of regular cleans, but noticed no ink is being placed on the capping station (I cleaned it before). I already cleaned the head with the paper towel method too. The thing is that before the power clean I pretty much had all the colors ok except the lk and now after several nozzle checks ended up with nothing at all.
I am thinking on replacing the capping station but I noticed it does drain the cleaning fluid I put on the cap, so I am wondering if it might be the pressure pump the one that is giving the problem. There is simply no ink going through the head, but I see no air bubbles in the lines.

Is there a way to know if I should replace the capping station first or the pressure pump?

thanks for any help. I am kind of desperate, and working about a head failure, which I can’t afford right now.

[robwignell]

Hi Elisabeth
A couple of years ago I bought a 7880 from a deceased estate. It had been sitting unused for a long while and even though it was seven years old had only printed 100 metres of paper. I replaced all the dampers and got 7 of the 8 channels working well. However, the Vivid Magenta wouldn’t print anything. I did all the paper towel things and considered the capping station and finally bought a set of ink lines to replace the existing ones. However, that seemed to be more complicated than my lumpy hands could manage. Instead, I undid both ends of the Vivid Magenta ink tube and, with a 60ml syringe filled with hot water and a needle that wasn’t quite large enough to snugly fit inside the tube, I wrapped a microfibre cloth around the leaking tube/needle joint and applied pressure to the syringe. It took a few goes but I ended up with 15 inches of solidified ink on my floor. Fortunately I was doing this in the garage where a magenta stain on concrete wasn’t as unacceptable as a magenta stain on the carpet inside the house. I flushed additional hot water through the tube until it came out clean at the other end. After that I reconnected the tube at both ends. I don’t remember whether I did an initial fill process after that or a power clean (I think I did the latter). Either way, the printer has been working reasonably well since. As an additional comment, I have found that the 7880 is much more sensitive to being left unused than my 3880, but that is a different story.
I have not seen anyone else suggest this step before declaring the problem to be a dead head. I haven’t flushed the other lines but, I think that I would if I decided to put the printer into storage with Piezo cartridges for any extended period, or if I were to consider changing ink brands.
I hope my experience is relevant to your problem.