[Hörnchen]

Printing colours has turned bad. The test indicates a dirty head (white lines in a coloered field. I made six cleanings, the last three with identical result: there are still two white lines in two of the six colours.
Is there a possibility to clean the head mecanically? With a towel? Some liquid, like alcohol or lemon juice?
Anyone has done that successfuly?

[Mediaman_12]

I hate Epson Printers. There head cleaning is crap.
If you really want to manualy clean the head you have to disasemble the printer and clean the head using some sort evaporative cleaner (My dad runs an a auto repair business so I used pre-clean).
I did this and I was having the same printing problems after less than a month (I am not a heavy printer), So the printer headed for the dump & I got a HP printer.

[loki77]

I have a 3+ y.o. 740. I have used this thing sporadicly, but when I do, I do a hi number of prints at the medium quality setting for photo grade paper. About a year ago it started printing with gaps and I couldn't clean it. I went through a new set of color cartridges trying. I looked on epson's site and found a repair place in my town, they took it, called me the next morning. There is a resovoir thing in the bottom that collects ink from all the alignments and cleanings, and that needed cleaning. Cost me $20 usd, and I have had no problems since. My next printer will be the 6 color Epson 890.

[keekeeree]

Well, cleaning your printer with auto de-greasers, it's no surprise that you're having problems. I have and Epson 740, am a professional photographer, and have never had to clean the heads (maybe just lucky). But I would never dump an Epson printer for an HP.

Anyway, back to the original problem. Check the ink levels on your printer. Even if one of the colors close to empty, it can give you bad prints. Buy a new color cartridge, and keep cleaning until the printer tells you to replace the cartridge.

[ 03-09-2002: Message edited by: keekeeree ]

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by loki77:
There is a resovoir thing in the bottom that collects ink from all the alignments and cleanings, and that needed cleaning. Cost me $20 usd, and I have had no problems since. My next printer will be the 6 color Epson 890.

Is there any way to do this myself?

Do you know exactly what was done?

I've used Q-Tips and cotton to clean out the surface of the little cleaning pad/reservoir, but cleaning the printer heads still gives me a complete lack of black (got progressively worse over the past few weeks; now it's totally dead, though color heads work).

Help.

-s*

[red44dog44]

ink4art.com has a cleaning cartridge called a deadhead that works great

[Macola]

Originally posted by red44dog44:
ink4art.com has a cleaning cartridge called a deadhead that works great

The problem with cleaning solutions is for that price ($40-50) you could get a new printer. That's what I ended up doing when my Stylus C82 got clogged. And since Epson is the only company that makes waterproof inks, I had to buy another Epson.

[Socially Awkward Solo]

What Epson Printer do you have?

[Macola]

I replaced my C82 with a C84--slightly smaller and quieter but I don't like the near-vertical paper tray. They both use the Durabrite inks.