Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: svds on January 30, 2013, 07:35:52 pm
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Must be a bad printhead? Or maybe something simple to clean??
(http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x309/scottmn_photo/slingingblack_zps37e34066.jpg)
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What I would do ( i have a z3100)
start the printhead replacement procedure
clean all the heads and the bottom of the carriage
look at the sides and clean everything there too ( use a flashlight)
put the heads in place and try again....
( When i see your print - the heads seem to be doing fine- must be solved with some cleaning- MK?)
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Thanks for the idea. I did as you suggested, only pulled the black printhead, some drippy ink on it. LOTS of ink on the landing pad (or whatever it's name is) I think a service call is in my near future :(
What I would do ( i have a z3100)
start the printhead replacement procedure
clean all the heads and the bottom of the carriage
look at the sides and clean everything there too ( use a flashlight)
put the heads in place and try again....
( When i see your print - the heads seem to be doing fine- must be solved with some cleaning- MK?)
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Hi kers-
I have similar marks, ruined about $100 of paper.
How do you clean the bottom of the carriage?
Thanks, Bill
clean all the heads and the bottom of the carriage
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I have a Z2100 service manual on PDF if you want I can email it to you.
Mine was finally repaired after and new service station, carriage assembly and new printheads.. $2400. in repairs! Thankfully insurance covered it as freeze damage.
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Thanks, I have the repair manual. It tell me how to take out, buy, and replace all the parts, but not how to do routine cleaning.
Makes sense, as the repair techs would be unlikely to do what I'm looking to do, they would just replace the whole thing.
Bill
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My z3100 started to leave some unexpected black spots on prints so I did a typical cleaning that included
Removing each print head and cleaning with distilled water and q tips, but one can use lint free towels or even coffee filters.
Next I cut the heads off of several q tips and used forceps to get the q tip to the location where the print head passes through the bottom of the carriage. I wet the q tips with distilled water and cleaned where the print head fits in the carriage, plus around where the print head pokes through the carriage bottom. I did this until the damp Q tips came out clean. After that I used several dry q tips to finish up and remove any left over water. This took quite a while as Its been about year since the last cleaning.
Another way to do part of this is to remove 2 print heads that are side by side and loop a damp lint free towel between the 2 openings and move the towel back and forth to clean out stuff between the 2 openings. This approach will only clean the sides, however, and the front and back also need to be cleaned.
Next I did a cleaning of the carriage docking areas on the left and right, using lint free towels and distilled water, and removed all the ink I could see.
After that I used air in a can to blow out any dust, canvas, cat hairs and other debris that could be removed. I did this from the top of the printer, plus the front and back.
After that I printed head alignment test and a couple of test prints to make sure all was okay (it was) and now I won’t need to bother with it until the carriage starts to drop ink again.
BTW, get some exam gloves from Costco and use them during this process. It’ll keep your hands clean but most importantly, it will make it nearly impossible for your skin and the oils and other stuff skin carries to contaminate anything in the printer.
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It happens after a certain period of use - as others said, no real big deal - pull the print heads and wipe everything off, it'll take you 30 min.
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In my case the root cause was a bad MK head, of course, the only head I didn't have on hand!
It happens after a certain period of use - as others said, no real big deal - pull the print heads and wipe everything off, it'll take you 30 min.
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i just cleaned mine...always the MK ..!
I took the MK head out and used some earcleaning sticks ( do not know the english word) to go through the MKprintheadhole to clean the bottom of the carriage-
a lot of black dirt came off! Now it works perfect.
Silly they did not make it more easy to clean the carriage...