Wow! Someone from Epson actually posting here. Are you sure you want to do this?
If so, can you give me any info on what may caused the heads in two of my printers to fail? Calls to Epson tech resulted in nothing but... " we've never heard of that one before..." Yeah, right. 50% of my printers have head failures and they've never come across anything like this before.
Last year I purchased a 9800 and a 4800 with very low mileage but they sat for a long time unused, and both had the bad heads when I got them. The previous owner of the 4800 used dye-sublimation ink. The 9800 came with refillable ink carts. I'm assuming not filled with Ultrachrome ink. Both printers would print maybe one or two colors clearly but everything else was a mess and it didn't take long to figure out the heads were bad.
Once I knew the head was junk, I tore it apart. Upon inspection, I could see the 'nozzle screen' (the razorblade thin sheet with the nozzle holes) had 'de-laminated' from the head body. The bond between the screen and the head body is completely broken and only a very small bit of the body remained attached to the screen. The seal between each color chamber is then compromised and results in weird colors and nozzles not spraying. In effect, one color is trying to spray and it ends up cross contaminating into the adjacent chamber.
For a while I though maybe plugged nozzles (when firing) allowed pressure to build in the head, which I could see it then 'lifting' the screen and breaking the bond, but after holding the screen up to the light, there weren't that many clogged nozzles. And that would mean 'pressure' all the way back to the damper. I've kinda given up on that theory.
I've since replaced the heads and both machines print perfectly.
But I am very curious as to what actually causes this. It's obviously a common problem. I've talked to many techs and they report replacing a lot of heads. (Most actually knew very little about how the head worked!) I do believe there is a manufacturing problem, though Epson would never admit that.
Any comments?
Photo included shows an Exacto knife between the screen and head body. ( Looks like you must be logged in to see the photo )
