Tuesday 9 March 2010

Fix My Printer, Anyone?

I have an Epson SX600FW which has started printing grey stripes. Ran head cleaning more times than enough, changed ink, lashed copious amounts of Isopropyl alcohol in for good measure, which resulted in the little bit of black coming through to cease (but blue is working perfectly, now) No yellow or red at all. Is it time to buy a new one? Is Isopropyl nice with coke?

11 comments:

  1. I think that the print head is clogged up and dead. When I had the same problem I looked around and found some printers have replaceable print heads, so you can replace that without having to replace the printer. The one I got was a Kodak as the ink price was less than 1/2 of the price for all the other brands and the images where as good or better (as you would expect)

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  2. Scott, when I bought the printer, the choice was made on ink economy, but have since found Epson have a real problem with clogging up. Had a Brother printer before that, same thing happened and both of them lasted around a year. Two days out of warranty, in fact, grrr! Any particular Kodak models you would recommend, or are they all pretty decent? Thanks.

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  3. Try windex instead. Get an children's ear syringe, shove it down on the ink nipple, and blast away. If that doesn't work, leave it attached for a couple of hours, then try again. That's what's saved my various Epson printers in the past.

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  4. Ink nipple = the little point that pokes up into the ink cart. To do this you have to remove the cart, obviously.

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  5. Whilst I don't currently have problems, I do have two Epson printers one being an A3 which I can certainly not afford to replace. After that talk about nipples, I shall keep this in mind for when I have print problems. Thanks

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  6. I really love my Canon Pixma IP3300.
    It warns me when ink is low, but keeps printing perfectly till the ink is ALL gone. I mean to the very last drop. I've never had to clean the printheads.

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  7. Joanne, I suggest just going to the shops an having a look for the cheapest model that does what you want from the Kodak range. They cost a few dollars more to buy BUT when you compare the ink cost you are already in front after about 1 refill. When I looked at the amount I spent on ink compared to the printer the cheaper ink price was the obvious one.
    The thing that kills inkjet printers is not using them regularly. They need to have ink run through the print head to stop it clogging up. But as I said it helps if you can replace the clogged head and not the whole printer (as you can with the Kodak)

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  8. Michael, I'll give that a go, nothing to lose!...the ink nipples, they have ran dry :-)

    Keith, now you know how to fix them when the nipples get blocked.

    Sue, I'll add the Canon to list of printers that haven't annoyed anyone, hehe :-)

    Scott, just going to try the ink nipple injections and if that fails, will go out to investigate. I used the printer at least once a month, strange thing was the first few pages were fine, then it gradually turned out terrible after 10 or so pages.

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  9. I was given a panasonic Workio DP-CL21 with install disk for DP-CL21 which has one media drawer and DP-CL21P which has 2 media drawers. Printer is recognising ny one drawer as 2 drawers and gives paper jam error in tray 2. This printer is not supported by Panasonic anymore, and I did update the drivers with the latest update. At one moment I got it right and it did print beautifully. When I turned the printer off, it went back to paper jam error. Can any body help me? Lessly

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  10. Had a look but as I know nothing about them at all, not much help. Did see a mention of paper feed rollers wearing out or being faulty.

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  11. Great idea and for sure a very helpful improvement.Thanks for your amazing work.

    fix print head

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