Epson 3800 bad nozzle check - all nozzles spray

[smthopr]

I've just developed this issue where all the nozzles fire, but one step in the nozzle check in the black ink, and one in the cyan ink, print out of alignment--way out.

A cleaning made no difference, but of course the prints look bad.

Any advice?

Thanks.

-bruce

[John R Smith]

Bruce

instead of running a head clean, try printing an A5 sheet of solid black, and solid cyan. This worked for me when I had a similar problem on my R2400.

John

[madmanchan]

Have you tried running an Auto Nozzle Check?

[smthopr]

Have you tried running an Auto Nozzle Check?
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Thanks Eric and John.

I tried the auto nozzle check and it just showed the same problem.

Then I tried john's suggestion, and it improved the black a little. Tried one more cleaning cycle and voila, everything is back to normal. The nice people at Epson were about to ship me a replacement when the problem resolved. I cancelled the replacement as I thought a referb might have some other issue which would just complicate things...

Thanks guys,
-bruce

[Farmer]

Rather than blockages, you were getting deflections.  Something (or multiple things) were on the head.  To do an entire line like that, it points towards something like a hair (human, pet, whatever) but could have been many things.  Ink dries along the matter and then deflects the fired nozzles.

Regular cleans don't move enough ink to displace objects with such mass.  Typically, this is done by the wiper blade when the head goes to home, or through the clean process, or when capped as a result of switching it off.

If it contines to happen, you may need it serviced, but I could suggest a good vacuuming (have the unit off, disconnected from power) and make sure you don't suck up any of the padding material.  If there are other particles around waiting to be picked up, hopefully you'll remove them first!

Just a guess :-)