R2880 - can't maintain a good nozzle check

InkjetMall Customer Support Printer Maintenance & Cartridges
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41

Mine is KFLE000051. There’s also another number which is not marked as a serial: CA1640000HR8523284. FWIW. I think what you really want in order to test my idea is the serial number of the print head, if such a thing exists.

I’m going to reply to this post of Jon’s here reporting Kelly’s test results so far, rather than continue to hijack JMiller’s thread. I assume that those tests were with JMiller’s carts, but I can’t be sure. Eventually you’ll have my carts and it will be interesting to see if you get the same.

The subtext of Jon’s post is that testing indicated that the problem appears to be printer cleaning. If I were to try again, which I’m not about to for the moment, here is what I could send you as proof of cleaning:

[ul]
[li] I could use a macro lens to photo the capping station after cleaning. I use several rounds of flush to dissolve any ink and then distilled water to help syphon it off. Gentle paper towel after each application of fluid. At the end the capping station is pretty much white. Is that clean enough? [/li][li] I could also shoot the wiper blade. This is a bit harder to see, but eventually nothing much comes off the top or sides onto the q-tip. I run my gloved finger along the blade and it feels smooth and nothing comes off onto the glove. Ditto. [/li][li] I could shoot the cartridge bay to show that there’s no dried ink around the nozzles, although that’s hard to shoot clearly as well I’d imagine. [/li][li] It’s harder to show a clean print head, but what I could do is shoot the series of paper towel strips. The first would show some gunk, since there’s been some leaking. The second would show less. But the third or fourth there’s nothing, other than a few small spots where the towel is pulling a bit of ink from the head. [/li][li] I could also do a scan of the nozzle check before taking out the flush carts to show that there’s no clogs. [/li][/ul]
I’m starting to lose count of the number of times I’ve done this, perhaps 4-6? I do it before each fresh attempt, since it’s the only way to maximise the chances of success if there’s been leaks.

Perhaps Jon is right - I may have bought someone else’s problems, or at least a printer that refuses to work with refillables. We’ll find out when I get the instructions, send the carts, and you test.

42

Hi everyone, Jon posted my testings/findings in #22 under the New User - Cart Drained w/out Printing - Epson r2880, these threads are getting very lengthy with conversation and speculations about what could be the problem(s). I am going to work on putting together one main thread that will show all the users complaints, then post the testing results at the end. This way if a customer is looking for this issue through a search, they will be able to see all the users common concerns in one place, without having to look at several separate threads.

My conclusion and the common denominator here is older printers with worn out Capping Stations/Wiper blade and pumps. I am ordering a Pump assembly today to replace in our OLD R2880 to verify the repair (fingers crossed), this is an inexpensive solution to get another year or 2 out of your older 2880 printers. Compass Micro sells these pump assemblies for $48.78 and can be ordered here https://www.compassmicro.com/parts_detail.cfm?ID=4846&form.mfg=Epson&form.printerstyle=Inkjet&form.printername=Stylus%20Photo%20R2880

I will post my progress and results after replacing the pump assembly, until then I would recommend cleaning your printer thoroughly every 100 prints or so, BEFORE you have leaking ink all over the inside of the printer.

Thank you all for being patient as we work this out and come to a resolve and offer our users a solution. Keeping your printers running, clean and trouble free is our goal, same holds true for our printers here in the studio and R&D, without that we wouldn’t have a product to stand behind.

Kindly,
Kelly

43

Brian, have you tried to OEM high-breed approach yet? If so, please report your findings so I know if it worked. As for your 2400, I am not exactly sure if it’s worth your time or money in replacing anything, the pump assembly is $93.90 for that printer and it is a much older model. We have sent our old beat up 2400 to the recycling center and keep one on had that is in decent enough shape to test on when needed.

Dan, How clean have you kept your 20 month old 2880? Does it sit for periods of time more then 5 days with pigment ink installed and no usage to the printer?

tjnCooke, are you experiencing any concerns with your new Refurbished 2880 using our refillable carts? Or are you just curious about learning how to make sure you don’t experience these problems done the road?

Note-I exclusively use a Refurbished 2880 that I set up about a year ago, I test inks (ALL of our inks) for periods of time ranging in 1 day to 7 days. Once I am done I leave it sitting with flush carts installed, sometimes up to a month (which is a long period of time around here). I have experienced these same problems described in these posts when I leave it sitting with pigment inks installed for more then 7 days, it just doesn’t tolerate it. My personal feeling on Refurbished printers is this, you know the printer has been tested by Epson and you know it will arrive in working condition. They are less expensive, they have new parts (if any were worn or faulty) and they have been tested by the manufacture. I have yet to have an issue with a Refurb. but have seen different problems with brand new printers.

My workflow for keeping our printers in working order:
-Printer is stored with Flush carts if left used for more then 5 days
-Verify good NC BEFORE installing test inks
-Run 3 head cleanings after installing test inks
-Verify good NC
-Clean bottom of print head, capping station and wiper blade every 3rd time I change test inks OR every 100 prints, which ever comes 1st
-I don’t wait until the printer shows problems, I have learned my lesson the hard way when it comes to neglecting printers!

New, Refurbished or used printers cannot tolerate not being used, or at least exercised daily. IF they have to sit unused for more then 5 days, store them with flush, this ensures the pigments won’t dry up causing stubborn clogs and build up in lines or print heads, including the Pump assembly waste ink line.

I will have the capping station on Tuesday of next week, I hope to have it replaced by Thursday and will document my workflow and report my findings when I am concluded with the replacement. So, for now sit tight we are doing what we can to make sure this is solved and there is a solution in place for our 2880 users.

44

I haven’t tried the hybrid approach yet. I’ve been waiting for some OEM carts to come in, hopefully today. If I try the hybrid approach, then I’ll need to keep my existing refillables for at least a few more days to try this out rather than post them back. So as per my email, which would you prefer - post back 4 of 5 presumably faulty ones now, or wait until I’ve tried the hybrid approach and the post back the 12 I suggested?

45

Kelly, I have kept the capping station of my printer pretty clean since I got it. One area that I did not clean until this past week was the foam pad on the left side of the the printer, it had a lot of old ink in it. I did not realize that was also considered a wiping station till I saw this video by Jose Rodriguez.

In the past, I had left the ink carts in the printer longer than five days. Late last year, I bought a second set of carts that I keep filled with piezoflush. I have not had a problem keeping a good NC with the piezoflush carts, so I take that as a good sign. Thanks for posting your workflow, I will follow it, in particular the 5 day limit for ink carts in the printer.

Thanks again for your attention to our printer issues.
Dan

46

Thanks for checking. I’m just lurking and giving my ideas when they seem reasonable. I’m hoping I don’t have to deal with any of this in the future with my R2880. So far its behaving well.

47

A further update. No OEM carts today. Grumble, grumble. Since it’s now Friday in this part of the world I wait until Monday I guess.

I am still a little uncertain what to send back and when. In separate correspondence you said only to send back the carts that I think are leaking. Problem is that’s not entirely clear. For the R2880, I have strong suspicions about the Magenta cart from the first set I used and the MK and PK carts from this current set. I could send these back today. But I am a little wary also about the LK and Magenta carts from the current set - LK seemed to be empty ahead of time and you can see Ma in Y in the last nozzle check I posted. If I’m going to try the hybrid approach then I’d rather keep these two here a few more days until I get the chance to do so. So I’m going to wait until the OEM has arrived. Shipping is likely to take a week or two anyway, so a few more days won’t make much difference. But they are coming …

I’m surprised by your 5-day suggestion. That’s fairly short. I thought that we were supposed to be able print a small purge pattern once a week to keep the printer ticking over.

But that said, most of these recent R2880 problems have happened within a couple of days of cleaning and putting in refilled carts. The exception was my last round where it took 11-12 days, but in that time I had been using the printer most days, so that it never sat for more than two days untouched.

So when you get my carts, my suggestion is to get them working and do some printing and then let them sit for 24-48 hours. They generally don’t leak immediately, but do so within the first few days. Doing a lot of printing with them isn’t going to prove anything - that just delays the problem in my experience.

Re the left side wiping station, I’ve asked about this several times recently on this forum and never received a reply. I’ve seen leaking carts dump a huge amount of ink there, and so despite not getting a reply I’ve been inclined to clean this area too when cleaning the printer before the next fresh attempt. See for example here in my first thread and here in this one.

48

Kelly, thanks for the cooments on the refurb as I just bought one. Would you recommend using Qimage as a way to keep the printer in use as it can be set to print, periodically, automatically? Similar to Brian’s question, is there a maintenance procedure for the “capping or wiping station” (or whatever it is called) that is near the left end of the printer?

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Brian, Yes if you would like, keep the carts in question and test in combo with OEM carts, once you have an idea if this will work or not then please go ahead and send me the cartridges you believe are the culprits.

As for cleaning the pad located at the left of the printer, you can simply clean it in the same manner as the capping station by soaking a paper towel in flush and dabbing it clean. This is simply a place where the head goes during cleaning cycles to squirt small amounts of ink out, it does NOT act as the capping station, it is a very simple piece of felt like material and it’s only function is to absorb tiny amounts of ink, which add up to be quit a bit of ink over time. Cleaning this is only benefits the look of the inside of the printer, I only clean this when it’s very gummed up and I can’t stand the look of it anymore, otherwise, it serves no function in the printers abilities what so ever.

50

Hi Brian~

I know the Australian model 1400 and 1430 printers use different chips/carts than US models of these printers, but I don’t believe we’ve run into any other models with differences.

~Dana :slight_smile:

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This is what I was wondering about. Does the print head actually touch this area? It is called the wiping station after all, which suggests that it does, but you’re saying that it doesn’t. Ink is deposited there, so how? If the print head doesn’t touch it then does it do a little discharge? Even on a well-functioning printer there’s clearly a pattern of deposits that can’t come just from the print head sitting there passing the time, surely? I was concerned about the possibility of gunk being transferred back to the head, but you’re saying no, and you know more than I.

But in one of my recent leaking cart experiences (the really badly leaking shade 2 MK cart on the R1900), I saw ink gushing out here and that can’t be good. I cleaned it.

Those videos by Jose Rodriguez are long and a little self-indulgent. They’re also a mixture of good and doubtful information. But his one on fitting a waste tank was really helpful. Dana’s are better.

@Dana. Thanks. That’s what I thought. At the moment freight is the killer. Fedex prices tend to negate much of the saving. It’s just an idea if ultimately I can’t get the refillables to work. You’d be surprised at the price difference between here and the US, although exchange rate movements can make it seem better or worse, depending on which side you’re looking from.

52

I believe that the printer shoots ink from all channels into that area. Why? Maybe to give all ink motion through the print head even if you’re only printing one color? Anyway, it’s rather annoying. You said it was flooded on yours? Was it only flooded there, or all across the platen? If the former, that seems strange. To actually touch that area would require changing the platen gap, which is slow and noisy, so I’m almost positive that doesn’t happen.

As for Jose, I think I’ll try his OEM refillable 3880 carts method when I can be bothered to spend the money for an OEM cart set. I do like the idea of accurate ink monitors, but I don’t think that’s worth $50 per cart. And since I’ve removed the ink door, I can monitor ink visually now :slight_smile:

53

A brief update. My OEM carts have arrived at last. The flush carts are out and I’m currently running in hybrid mode, with an OEM MK cart and refilled refillables in other slots. Initial nozzle check is good. I’ll need a few days to know whether I should add to the five suspect carts that I have packed ready for shipping back.

Prior to putting in the ink carts back in, and while I still had the flush carts in, I tried Kelly’s test of whether the capping station is in good condition. I put some flush on the capping station and then put the chord back which triggered a head clean. I’m not sure when the pump is supposed to suck. At the first few noises which sounded like the pump the flush didn’t move, but once the head clean started there was even more flush on the capping station and then it was sucked away very quickly. Using this as a test I think it’s ok.

For what it’s worth I’ve attached a photo after all this testing and just before I put the ink carts in. Note also the wiper blade, although slightly out of focus. I don’t have a real macro lens and so I did the best I could. I didn’t do a capping station clean on this occasion as is didn’t seem to need it - it’s mostly flush coloured. I’m not sure what losing its “loft” means. I don’t recall what a new one looks or feels like. I wouldn’t say that it’s soft like cotton wool, but it’s not hard either. Time will tell I guess.


54

I posted my findings/testing conclusions on this thread, closed it and added a new thread in the discussions to keep the discussions off the COMMON thread http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?1246-COMMON-THREAD-Older-2880-Printer-Cartridge-issues

55

An update. The summary is that I’ve been running in hybrid mode (OEM MK cart in the K slot and IJM refillables with ConeColor inks in the other seven slots) for over two weeks and the printer has been pretty well behaved. I’d be tempted to say that I have finally solved it, but the printer might hear and start reacting badly in response.

In more detail, here is what has happened since the last update.
. I didn’t do a full clean this time. The capping station had been cleaned recently, and after several head cleans with flush carts it looked pretty clean to me, as per the above photo. I gave the wiper blade a quick wipe with my gloved finger, also pretty clean. There was a bit of dried ink around the ink nozzles that I cleaned off with q-tips and flush. No head clean this time as the nozzle check with flush carts looked good, and the head was cleaned recently and I didn’t allow any major leaking to occur after the last attempt before I put the flush carts back in.
. Good nozzle check after the mandatory head clean with the ink carts back in (incl OEM MK).
. I needed to do a second head clean a day or so later to stop Cy dropping in and out - perhaps not surprising after a changeover from flush to ink.
. The printer showed no problems for the first week - not a single nozzle gap.
. After one week, I got a couple of missing rows in K and Cy - printed them out with singe channel purge patterns.
. [On the same day I also got a couple of missing rows on two channels on my normally very well-behaved piezo R1900. An odd conincidence that may point to climatic factors.]
. Next day same for Ma - this time a head clean was needed to clear it
. Thereafter all daily nozzle checks were good.
. A week later and I came back from three days away and was greeted (much to my surprise) with a perfect nozzle check. I did run an 8-channel purge pattern just before I left to maximise my chances of coming back to this.

So there are no signs of the problems I had before - no sudden draining and no cross-channel bleeding. On the last attempt I had 12 days where the printer would mostly work, but with nozzle gaps randomly appearing and disappearing on the K channel, before it finally started leaking and cross-channel bleeding. This time, although one head clean has been needed, there haven’t been any random gaps and most importantly no sign cross-channel bleeding.

This would seem to confirm what I’ve always suspected - that the K channel wasn’t behaving with refillables and ConeColor. So what is to blame - an out of spec printer head on one channel, or a series of faulty carts? You should have my carts soon and you can help decide. Of the R2880 carts that I sent back, I expect that the PK will leak fairly quickly, and the MK cart, if it does start to leak, will do so slowly. If you really can’t get them to leak on a “good” R2880, then I guess the problem is one channel on my printer.

56

I received your cartridges on Monday of this week, I tested them in our “New” Re-furb 2880 and the VM cartridge leaked right away, I can verify that was/is a faulty cartridge, this is honestly the 1st and only 2880 cartridge I have witnessed personally being deemed faulty out of at least 100+ carts I use in R&D continually for testing. As for the PK cartridge, it worked perfectly fine for 2 days, even left it sitting over night, perfect NC 1st thing and printed throughout the day yesterday perfectly fine. I do not think this cart is faulty, this verifies your head is out of specs, I can predict if I was to install this cart into our OLD worn out 2880, it would leak. For sake of time consumption that has already been dedicated to this matter, I am choosing to not run that test. I am not going to perform a test on the MK cartridge for the same reason I am not going to test the PK cart in the old printer.

I have applied a credit to your account for the shipping expense and the replacement cartridges. When you place your next order, please send an email to wells@inkjetmall.com to remind him of the credit.

Thank you for all your testing, for sending us your cartridges to test and you thread posts with all the detailed information that helped lead us to the problem…old, worn out print heads. I am happy to hear you are running successfully in “Hybrid Mode”, still able to use a combo of OEM & ConeColor Carts! Cheers to that!

Best Regards,
Kelly

57

Kelly, thanks for testing these carts. I know you’ve put in a lot of time and effort already, but is there any chance that you could leave that PK cart in a while longer and see how it behaves after being left unused for a couple of days? Given the difference in behaviour between it and the MK cart there must have been some difference between them, and I really thought that you would find something.

Any comment on the two R1900 carts? I was fairly sure that they were leaking, as replacing them solved my problems. These leaks were not dramatic like the VM cart, and one was faster than the other, but they both leaked in a well-maintained printer running K7 from new. Again, you may not see this overnight, but you should over a couple of days.

In my experience, some carts start to leak quite quickly and some are slow to exhibit problems. When you test them, the ones like the VM cart show up quite quickly, but given the time and effort costs to you, I imagine it is hard to test for slow leaking carts. But it doesn’t mean that they don’t happen.

58

I guess IJM have ruled a line under these R2880 printers, so I’m not expecting a response. But I thought others might be interested in a progress report.

For the past four weeks I’ve been running with an OEM MK cart and seven ConeColor refillables. I’ve had very few problems in that time. I had to do a head clean after one week, but since then until today I’ve been surprised how well the printer has been behaving with light usage. I’ve just been away for 4½ days. I printed an ink separation page and nozzle check before I left. I came back to the first of the two attached nozzle checks. This is the first sign of any issues for three weeks, and the first worrying sign in four. I guess I was a little disappointed in the cross channel bleeding, which I thought I had solved by swapping in the OEM MK cart.

So I printed another ink separation page and got a good nozzle check. Interestingly in that separation print there were no signs of Cyan in the K channel, but some black in the Cyan channel. This surprised me a little as I felt that the nozzle check implied that Cyan was leaking. Hmmmm.

That was last night. This morning I did another nozzle check and was greeted with the second result below. More gaps, but only a very slight sign of bleeding. A further ink separation page this morning cleaned up the black, but I had to print a larger single channel purge pattern to clean up Cyan.

So I am a bit puzzled by this. Why after four weeks? And which channel is misbehaving? I think it’s the Cyan, but can’t be sure. Further updates may follow.

Kelly: There is one thing I’d like a response on. It’s not clear from your last post whether you tested those R1900 carts I sent back. This was from an R1900 that I’ve had as a piezo printer from new and I would say has been well maintained. The printer has been exceptionally well behaved, except for the relatively short time when those MK-Shade-2 and Red-Shade-3 carts were in. So I really think that there was a problem with those two carts. As per another thread, I’m thinking of doing some ink mixing and will use fresh carts, for those two channels as it happens. Before I do so I’d like some confirmation of what you found re the two R1900 carts I sent back.


59

Brian, This nozzle check looks all too familiar! This is an indication of failing head, the ink mixing is a dead give away. At some point it’s no longer a return on your investment to keep cleaning over and over again.

I tested your 2880 carts in our old 2880 for more time then I needed to, verifying that our cartridges were not faulty. I do not feel it would be a benefit, in fact, it would be more of a diminishing return for me to drag the 1900 out of storage and test your cartridges. We know these 2 carts for the 1900 are bad, from you replacing them with success, you stated the replacement carts were working so far in the 1900.

Kindly,
Kelly

60

I thought that perhaps the R1900 carts could be tested in an R2880, since they’re the same carts (and essentially the same printer), but with different chips. What I found to be odd with these carts was having two faulty carts out of one set. But you’d probably need to leave them in the printer for several days to see slow leaks. It wasn’t clear from your final report that you’d given the R2880 carts enough time to see any slow leaks.

Let’s drop it, unless I find that others from that set also faulty (I only used four of them so far, as I was switching from SE to Neutral), which must be unlikely.

I hope you’re wrong about the head. Time will tell.