I set up a waste ink system, then tried adding 3 drops of piezoflush to the pad in the parking station. I had read elsewhere that this can prevent clogs if done regularity. When I turned my printer on to return the head to the capping station, it went into an automatic cleaning cycle and pumped out 1 to 2 ml of ink.
Is this a normal behaviour of the R3000 to go into head cleaning after adding piezoflush to the capping station? Is this even a recommended or useful process to add piezoflush like this? If so, how often should I consider doing this? I usually print 1-2 colour prints each day.
Hi Larry, Yes it is perfectly normal for your printer to perform a cleaning cycle after start up, all Epson printers do this to my knowledge. If there were a way to turn this feature off I would have by now, it wastes ink for no good reason in my personal opinion. The only way to prevent this from happening is to simply leave you printer ON while not in use.
As for the “Parking Station” are you referring to, I take it you are speaking of the Capping Station? In which case, it is perfectly fine procedure to squirt Piezoflush into the Capping Station to keep it from drying out with pigments, they will gum it up eventually and the cleaner you keep the capping station and wiper blade, the longer your printer will last. You can also clean the capping station by squirting the Piezoflush onto the sponge like pads, let sit for a few minuted then dab it up with a paper towel (one that doesn’t contain lint, such as bounty). It is always good policy to perform this type of cleaning procedure at least once every 6 months. If you are going to let the printer sit for more then a month, I would also perform this cleaning before leaving unused.
I’m glad you asked and are being pro-active about the care/maintenance of your investment, you know the saying “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”
Interestingly, my R3000 hasn’t done much in the way of head cleanings when turning it on, as long as I print at least something each day. There are only a couple of times it’s done this. Whenever I leave the printer off for more than a day, or when I added the drops of piezoflush. This leads me to surmise that there is a sensor somewhere that detects the need to clean the head.
If it continues this type of behavior, I’ll be quite happy. According to others, it does a head clean when powered up everytime. This was what lead to my questions because I really only got the head clean cycle when adding the piezoflush to the capping station pads, and if this is going to happen each time, I don’t think I want to do this every night. Should I consider this weekly, or monthly, if I’m printing about one photo each day?
No need to do this every day, once a month for the application of flush to the capping station and 2x a year for cleaning the capping station and wiper blade thoroughly, that should keep your printer in ship-shape.
Kindly,
Kelly
Many thanks to you, Dana, and the whole team. I was nervous about getting an R3000 after reading about all the clogs and “faulty” print heads. After reading various threads adressing all the problems, I soon realized that pretty much of them could have been avoided with fairly easy maintenance. (Shame on Epson for not supplying a maintenance guide .) I am confident that this printer will be great. Thanks all!
Well Larry, that is fantastic news to hear on a friday afternoon! All the work put into this Forum, all the continuous preaching about maintenance, maintenance, maintenance made a lasting impression on a customer! Best of luck to you and your R3000!
Cheers! Kelly
Can I clarify my understanding of a few points? Kelly can correct me if I’m wrong.
Epson desktop printers (not sure about the pro ones) generally do at least a “mini-clean” each time they’re turned on. The amount of ink that is discharged is minuscule, but you’ll still hear a lot of noise, which is mostly just the pump working to drain whatever happens to be contained in the capping station. Is that correct? Some people leave their printers on to avoid these mini-cleans.
Epson desktop printers have an algorithm which determines how often it needs to do a regular head clean. I’ve never really understood how this is programmed. If you leave your printer off for a week or more and then turn it on you’re highly likely to trigger this. But you won’t avoid it by leaving the printer on, and even with regular, heavy printing you’ll find that head cleans are triggered at moderately regular intervals. The printer seems determined to push ink down the waste tube. But if you turn the printer on regularly then you shouldn’t get a full head clean on every such occasion.
I don’t know how Larry was managing to put a few drops of flush on the capping station (don’t have a 3000), but if it involves unplugging the printer and moving the head, then on my printers at least that will almost always trigger a head clean when turned back on.
You also shouldn’t fill the capping station with flush and then turn the printer off, leaving the capping station full or mostly full. If that moisture comes into contact with the print head, it can provide a conduit to the ink in the carts and start a capillary action that will wick the ink out of the carts and drain them. An expensive lesson.
[QUOTE=Brian_S;6751. . .
I don’t know how Larry was managing to put a few drops of flush on the capping station (don’t have a 3000), but if it involves unplugging the printer and moving the head, then on my printers at least that will almost always trigger a head clean when turned back on.
You also shouldn’t fill the capping stion with flush and then turn the printer off, leaving the capping station full or mostly full. If that moisture comes into contact with the print head, it can provide a conduit to the ink in the carts and start a capillary action that will wick the ink out of the carts and drain them. An expensive lesson.[/QUOTE]
I had to turn the printer on then unplug it once the head was off the capping station. Your comment explains why it went into a head clean cycle. It’s too bad it does this because I would have done those 3 drops every few nights otherwise. Instead it simply wastes ink. I’ll just do the recommended adding drops then blotting once or twice a month.
I’ve read before to not fill the capping station without blotting out the excess. Thanks for adding that word of caution.
I have sometimes managed to avoid a mandatory head clean after an unplugging by first putting the head in the ink exchange position, and then making sure that it’s back in the exact same position before replugging. But not always and not that often TBH. It may have just been random behaviour. I guess that doesn’t apply to the R3000 with cartridges not on the print head.
You may be able to get the same effect by being quick and putting your drops on the capping station when the head moves to the left briefly, but you would have to be quick and you’d need to find some way to predictably trigger the head movement before turning the printer off. Perhaps a nozzle check
I’m not sure what the 2-3 drops approach is supposed to achieve. Flush on the capping station is intended to dissolve dried ink and blotting then removes it. Unless you’ve got a leaking printer I find it hard to see that you need to apply it so regularly. Perhaps it is supposed to prevent build-up, but I’m still not convinced. If you’re going to clean the wiper blade regularly then you’re going to trigger a head clean from the unplugging, and so you may as well give the capping station a thorough head clean at that point as well. It may be that people who suggest this are trying to keep the moisture levels close to the print head high. Low humidity can be a problem but I’d have thought that there were more convenient ways to control it.
[note that I don’t have an R3000, so these are general comments.]
Brian, you are I believe your description of how the automatic head cleans occur during start up is accurate and well said. You also correct that during this process, very little ink is actually dispersed into the capping station, most of the noise you are hearing is the pumping station aka.Capping station sucking the ink out into the waste area. When you do an actual head cleaning, this is when the head will actually move off to the left side of the capping station, on the R300 there is a large plastic cover surrounding this area, making it hard to get too. But, when you 1st start a head cleaning cycle, the head will move off about 1/2 across the printer, at which point you can access the capping station to squirt a small amount of flush onto the pads, I only do this type of procedure when I am dealing with an older used printer that is known to have bad nozzle checks due to pigments caking the pumping station up (again after many many prints). I do however clean the capping station as described with the paper towel blotting on average once a month, to keep it in good working order.
And, yes I agree to not leave any fluid sitting in the capping station that could result in the ink in the cartridges wicking out while sitting unused. I should have mentioned that previously, thank you Brian for pointing that out!
Brian,
just to clarify, the R3000 actually does have the cartridges away from the head. Not that that really changes anything here.
Your probably right that if I’m going to add those drops, I may as well clean the wipes and pads properly. My only idea was if adding a few drops keeps the pads cleaner, and the pump too, over the long term, and it didn’t fill it up with ink from a head clean, it might be worth doing every few days. However, the process runs to cause a head cleaning cycle that uses several mililitres of ink, definitely not something to do every day. Also, as you say, it’s overkill as long as I clean the wiper and pads in the capping station monthly.
InkjetMall Information
Why buy from us
My InkjetMall account
Contact Info