I have had 2 Epson printers (one a 740) - both failed due to clogged print heads. I switched to Canon & have had no such problems. Here's what some others have tried.
Cheers, Tom
HERE'S A WAY TO USE THE HEAD CLEANING FUNCTION ON A EPSON PRINTER WITHOUT WASTING INK. I, too, have used alcohol to clean the heads on my Epson printer. I have only had problems with the black ink heads. The first time the heads became clogged, the printer was on warranty. Epson sent me a
replacement over night and paid to return the old one. (It was one of the best consumer experiences I have ever had) A year later when it stopped printing black, I figured I take a crack at fixing it myself. I removed the black cartridge, cleaned it out and filled it with 99% isopropyl alcohol. (I
asked the pharmacist for the 99% alcohol) I put thecartridge back in and ran through the cleaning procedure. I took many attempts but the head was finally cleared. I also used a lot of colored ink. The next time I needed to clean the heads, I came up with following way to save ink. It helps if you fill a eye drop bottle with alcohol and keep it handy. Also have a flashlight handy. Take out the black and color cartridges. Put them on a suitable dish or tray upside down. Put a few drops of alcohol in the ink holes to keep them wet. Repeat as needed - don’t let them dry out. Keep plenty of paper towels handy. 🙂 Put the black cartridge filled with alcohol
into the printer. Look into the color cartridge holder. You will see a shiny metal tab. When this is depressed it tells the printer that a cartridge is in the printer. Look at the indicator light next to the power switch. The green light will be on. Push the tab, it will go off. This tab must be
depressed for the cleaning function to work. I took a piece of cardboard from the back of a tablet and folded it so it would keep the tab depressed. This will take some experimentation to get right. The indicator light will be off when you get it right. Put several drops of alcohol into the colored ink wells before blocking the tab and closing.the lid. You could use an old, cleaned-out, colored ink cartridge for this if you wanted. With the alcohol cartridge in place and the colored side rigged, clean to your hearts content. You will run alcohol through the black side and not waste any colored ink in the procedure. The above technique can be reversed or varied to clean the colored heads. Happy cleaning.
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I clean and repair all types of printers as a business... the surest way to unblock ink-jet print heads is to take out the cartridges,(cover the outlets with some damp material) put some absorbant paper under the print heads and partly fill Black and Colour recepticals with ink flushing fluid, leave over night, then using a cooking baster, gently force a stream of fluid onto the pads that the cartridges sit on, replacing the absorbant paper when necessary. providing the print head hasn't been damaged or worn out in the first place. This procedure will always work. Regards Don
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I discovered PEROXIDE about two years ago. I tried everything in my medicine cabinet including Witch Hazel, alcohol, nail polish remover (acetone), peroxide, water, etc. Peroxide was the last thing I used and it worked like a charm. For my Canons, just a drop of peroxide applied with an eye dropper to the bottom side of the cartridge works wonders. For black it requires 2 drops and a few cleaning revolutions. For Lexmarks sometimes you have to let the cartridges soak in a mug in an inch of peroxide from 1 day
to 1 month. Lexmarks cartridges are stubborn if you let them start to run out of ink and then refill. Always refil before empty. What I found most successful with Lexmark was the vigor with which I rubbed the contacts with a cotton facial pad (Coet) dabbed in peroxide. It seems the black ink
especially hardens on to the contacts. Just a little extra elbow grease does the trick. The Epson is next so I will follow the tatics people mentioned above but using Peroxide not alcohol. I honestly found alcohol to almost worthless in comparison to peroxide. Now I imagine that if one wanted to get really aggressive, Peroxide is probably available in a heavy duty strength at the beauty supply!
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This article saved my printer. I had such bad clogging on my Epson 860 that paper was emerging completely white - no ink at all. I had run many many cleaning cycles to no avail, then I used the alcohol in a dropper solution and it made no difference for at least 20 more cleaning cycles. Did more alcohol, more cleaning, suddenly a little bit of red , then more cleaning and all the nozzles cleared. I have a couple of additional pieces of advice - on an Epson printer, the cleaning cycle intensifies in groups of 3. If you clean then print, then clean, then print, you only ever do the
light cycle. You have to run 3 consecutively, without printing in between, to get the more intense cleaning to kick in (this was from an Epson technician). The other thing he told me (that I should have known) is that you have to turn off the printer between jobs if you can - he said that
leaving it on is like leaving the cap off a marker. Sounds like bad design to me - turning the printer on and off causes booting problems for some of us but there you are. Too bad he didn't tell me about alcohol too! Thank you
so much for putting this solution out.
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Epson Stylus Color 800 clogged print head
PROBLEM: Dryed black ink clog-up in the tube leading from the black ink cartridge to the print head. Black ink flow totally halted. New cartridges won't work.
BACKGROUND: Epson uses very fast-drying, water-soluble, inks in this printer, and if the printer sits idle for some length of time the ink feed tubes and the print heads become clogged with dry ink. Epson issues dire warnings about potential damage to the printer if attempts are made to flush these parts with any solvent, and recommends factory repair only.
On the advice of someone who has vast experience with such problems, I successfully used the following repair procedure.
REPAIR PROCEDURE: Use a clean small hypodermic syringe with NO needle. Press on to the syringe nozzle, a 3/4 inch long piece of model airplane gas engine fuel tubing. This tubing is available cheaply from your local model hobby shop. It is a pale light blue colored plastic tubing. The MEDIUM size is the right one. The bore (ID) of the tubing is less than 1/16 of an inch. It makes a very tight fit when pushed onto the syringe nozzle.
Remove the cartridge from the printer, and pull the power plug immediately to prevent any further printer movement.
Load the syringe with 2-3 CC's of scalding hot water, preferably distilled water available at your grocery store. Then press the other end of the tubing down over the little black nozzle in the bottom of the cartridge holder. It must be a very tight fit.
Forcibly inject the hot water into the printer. If the clogging is really severe, you may have to press the syringe plunger very hard. Continue injecting until the syringe is empty, while making sure that the tubing does not slip off the syringe or the printer nozzle. Repeat this injection
procedure 1-2 more times with more hot water if necessary.
Once the hot water goes through easily, the clog has been dissolved. It may be necessary to wait 24 hours for the water to evaporate, but in my case it was not. I simply replaced the black ink cartridge, and ran the Epson's
head-cleaning utility several times until the black ink started coming through. Running the nozzle-check utility, to make a test pattern print, will let you know when the ink flow is OK.
This same procedure should work equally well for the colored inks of this printer. I suspect that the procedure will also probably work for some other Epson inkjet printers as well.
