R2000 carts draining

InkjetMall Customer Support Printer Maintenance & Cartridges
1

My R2000 has arrived and Brian has kindly lent me a set of carts to get me going. I changed the batteries and filled them yesterday. I started getting blobs of ink, and could not get a clean nozzle check so I left it overnight. This morning, the nozzle check is still all over the place so I took the carts out to see if they looked OK. I found that three carts have drained overnight. They are M,MK and R which sit next to each other.

I know that there isn’t a lot of experience with these carts but I’m hoping that you may have a suggestion. Three draining is pretty spectacular, even for me. I have not put the Epson carts in, and don’t intend to unless it is needed to prove the printer.

2

I trust your capping station is clean, and the bottom of the head as well, right? :wink: Wicking can occur if anything either on the head or the capping station contacts the other. However, the ink blobs are worrying, in that it seems to be leaking during printing. Is that correct? Maybe do a pressure test of the carts: Remove them, plug the vent hole, then push a bit of air into the fill hole. Does ink leak from anywhere? (Don’t push too hard; you don’t want to break anything!)

3

Thanks. It’s a new printer. The IJM carts are the only ones that have been in it, and they are also new.The ink may well have wicked out if one cart was leaking. I find it suspicious that they are in a row so I suspect the middle one. To try blowing into them would mean filling then again, and I don’t want to go there yet. Unless Dana comes along with another suggestion, I will wait till my other carts arrive and fill a set with flush. If I’m going to pour liquid down a drain, flush sounds like a better idea.

I suspect that the IJM folks are heading for the exit as I type. My track record with carts has been a little troubled. I’m thinking of driving 300KM each way so that Brian can watch me fill them and can then testify on my behalf.

4

At least the coffee will be good when you get here.

5

It is always wise to start with the OEM cartridges for your initial setup of the printer. I have experienced head failures with NEW and Refurnished printers right out of the box, if I hadn’t started with the OEM carts I would have never been able to determine the printer as a fault. Epson is normally very good about replacements when this happens if reported in a timely manner. So, I would absolutely recommend installing the OEM carts the printer came with and getting a Good Nozzle check and a print out using an Epson profile and paper to verify the 100% operation of the machine before proceeding.

We do not have much history with these cartridges, we’ve sold very few of the carts we have in stock currently with the battery style chips we really can’t say yes, they have problems or no, they’ve been fine. We tested a couple sets in our R2000 when developing the system originally and haven’t had the need to test or use the R2000 since and we didn’t have any problems with them.

I see you have a sales order that has shipped to you with 5 sets of these cartridges in it, I will issue a RMA for this set if you would be so kind to ship them back to our office for testing. I will ship out a replacement once we receive the RMA and you can simply replace Brian’s set with one of the sets you receive. Does that make sense or does that work for the both of you?

6

Thanks Kelly. i’d like to experiment a little more before returning these carts. My order was last seen in Dubai a couple of days ago so it must be close now. I’ll come back as soon as I’ve had a chance to try them.

7

I have put the Epson carts in the R2000. After a little fussing around from the drained carts. I now have a good nozzle check and can print happily in colour so it looks like the printer is OK. Actually, it’s surprisingly good with the canned profiles and a sample of one image in matte and gloss. I have reloaded the IJM carts, tapped them and will leave them overnight before trying them again.

8

After leaving the carts overnight, I put them in yesterday morning and went through the process of getting rid of the colour staining. On head carts are a joy for that too. I printed targets and ink seps so that I can linearise the curves this morning. I didn’t see any ink blobs, and there is no sign of leaking. After leaving it overnight, I got a good nozzle check this morning.

I have no idea why the carts drained before. Obviously, I did something wrong but I’ll go to my grave not knowing. As an aside, being able to switch between gloss and matte with zero ink usage, from using P2 rather than K7, is brilliant.

Thanks again. I hope to be able to report that all is well in a week or so.

9

Great news! Fingers crossed for a good report in the weeks to come…

10

Thanks Kelly. After a couple of days of perfect printing, a mysterious shade 4 blob appeared on one print. That is nowhere near the draining carts from before so I am a little mystified at the moment. Other than that, P2 on an R2000 is brilliant. I have just about finished building curves for my odd papers.