Epson 9800 clogged nozzles

[elytahan]

I have an Epson 9800 that is a little more than 3 years old. It worked very well up to a couple of weeks ago. I do not print every day but at least once a week. The print quality went way down, showing tiny banding at high resolutions and the colors are off. i.e. I am getting green instead of deep black ect...When I ran a nozzle check, entire lines were missing in the first 2 or 3 colors. Muliple cleanings and a deep cleaning cycle did nothing to help. Just used a ton of inks and filled my maintenance tanks. On auto cleaning, it tries to clear the nozzles by running a few cycles then comes up with a frustrating cleaning error. How do I stop the bleeding!?
I ran accross the Lyson cleaning cartridges product on the web and thought that I would run a supersonic deep cleaning cycle with those installed instead of my inks as I am dismayed by the amount of ink that is being wasted with no result!!
Any advice or suggestions?
Thank you in advance
Ely

[edwinb]

You can turn off the auto nozzel check while the machine is misbehaving.
if your doing lots of cleaning the build up of ink can pool on the head giving lines,
if the blockages stay in the exact same nozzel then its the nozzel, if the blockages move around its probably dirt.
After a power clean I have heard its good to let the machine stand then do standard 2 head cleans to clean off the ink residue

[elytahan]

The blockages have stayed in the same place after 2 weeks of trying. Of course, I had to get more maintenance tanks and inks! At this point, I feel it is wasteful to do any more cleaning myself. I contacted a repair facility and will be sending them the printer as soon as I can. They said they will let the head soak with the Epson cleaning fluid...I am crossing my fingers that I won't need a new head at which point (if price of new head is too prohibitive) I may consider selling it as is

[Slammer]

please do not use supersonic cleaning, the piezo cyristals in the head use controlled supersonics to operate if you use a Supersonic bath you will have the heads dancing a jitterbug on crack, better to use freon vapour and damn the ozone layer.

[RickS]

elytahan, it sounds like you have the same problem we had. After 3 years our 9800 had the same problems you described. Cleanings sometimes worked but as time went on they worked less and less. I talked with service and was told the cleaning station needed changed. We had that done. It is working like new again. The invoice said Part number EN-1064 Pump/cap. About a week later we got an error " Maintenance required 0040" I called and apparently the service tech forgot to reset the counter as it was letting us know we needed to have the cleaning station changed.

[loustique20]

You can also try the SS cleaning. You access it when turning the device "on" while holding the "pause" button. Then go to "maintenance", then select "SS cleaning". It will "shake" the heads and remove any air bubbles that may cause clogging. The good part is that it doesn't use any ink! Good luck!

[elytahan]

I tried the SS cleaning for a second time and there still is no change in the nozzle head printout. As a matter of fact, the one I printed today (standard diagonal bars for the 8 colors) shows "color contamination" i.e.: some black bars in the blue, blue bars in the red...and still entire lines missing in 4 colors (at top and bottom) I may be looking at something more than just clogged nozzles!!

[Mark]

I've noticed more clogs with Epson printers since the ink is now coming from China instead of Japan.

[elytahan]

I have used Epson inks exclusively but yes they are made in China

[elytahan]

I finally got a technician to replace the print head and pump for 1k. So after about an additional k in wasted inks, maintenance tanks and cleaning solvents, the machine is running like new and I am a happy camper once again!