Problems with Epson Stylus printer

shew

Hello everyone... I'm hoping someone may be able to help me?

I've got an Epson Stylus C66 series printer. I don't really use it too often. A few months ago all the ink cartridges ran out so I replaced them all but only the black one worked (and not in amazing quality either). The black one has now run out again, so I have replaced it, but now that won't work either! So, every time I try to print all that comes out is a blank page, although the printer seems to think it's printing something. I've checked the cartridges and the little plastic seals are broken on all of them so I'm not sure why there's no ink. I've tried a couple of test pages through the print option but all that comes out is a miniscule amount of black ink and certainly nothing like what a test page ought to be. Any ideas? It was my dad's printer so I don't have any user book or anything so not sure what else to try. Any help greatly appreciated

albertross_2

http://www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supDetail.jsp?cookies=no&oid=41662&infoType=Overview

shew

Thank you very much for the links. I appreciate it

johnmc

Epson's are notorious for this. The cartridge is just a container for the ink. The heads are fitted to the machine. Your print heads have dried up.

This could be because you've turned the power off without the carriage being fully parked (when the carriage goes all the way to the right a rubber cup comes up to the head and keeps the air out).

Another possible cause is the PVC tube that connects to the carriage. It sometimes comes off letting the air in.

Personally the advantages of cheap cartridges and ease of refilling mean it is still the only make I would use.

>>>>>>>>>>>

Fixing.
There are lots of sites on how to clean the heads. Google is your friend.

If you are VERY carefull you can take cartridges out and flush alcohol down the ink tube. I wouldn't advise this.

You can try wiping the print heads with a Qtip soaked in alcohol. This usually works, but you may have to take the top of the printer off to get at it.

You can run repeated cleaning runs until the ink starts to come through. Worth a try. It's worked for me, although you are likely to empty a cartridge set.

If you've got an empty set of cartridges you can reset the chip with one of these, fill them with alcohol and run the head cleaning MANY times.

Some promote disassembling the printer and steaming the heads (scary!).



Either way download the SSC routine, as above.