Alright I've got a pretty harrowing horror story here.
I've got an 11880 at my job that we've had for a number of years-- probably something like 7-- and while it was an awesome printer while it lasted, I think at this point I've just gotta give up on it.
A year ago or so it started exhibiting signs of a clogged yellow channel, and none of the usual methods would clear it (windex et. al). Anyway, long story short, eventually I removed the head to do a soak, and cleaned it out for a few days. However, when I put the head back in the printer, I never even had a chance to see if it was cleaned, because now I was getting a "replace cartridge" error on all carts. I realized that this was likely because I hadn't disengaged the cartridges before I removed the head, and there was probably some negative pressure which created bubbles in some of the cartridges, and they now needed to be "burped" (as I'm writing this I'm realizing that this might not even be true--- the damper assembly is supposed to prevent this exact thing, and I left the damper assembly intact when I removed it.) I tried in vain for several days to get the cartridges recognized, and eventually we called a tech in. The tech turned out to be amazingly incompetent, he spent most of two whole weeks working on the printer (by working on, i mean simply replacing expensive parts) and finally, about a month later, and $5000 down the drain, we had a working printer again. Within this repair we had obtained a new main board, and a new print head-- the two most expensive to replace items in the printer.
Fast forward to today-- leaked ink from the first repair seemed to have caused the AID board to become disconnected, and I attempted to reconnect it. I resoldered the piece that had become corroded, put it back in, and started it up-- all seemed good, then, it just shut off. Nothing, no life. The main board had apparently blown some fuses or some BS and now that had to be replaced. Another tech comes in, replaces the main board, pump cap, and AID board, but never finishes getting the printer up and running. There was an odd grinding sound during the start up, and he declared that he needed to get another pump cap (which probably didn't need replacing in the first place). Then he disappears. Eventually I got fed up of waiting, and I switched it on again to see where we were at. Started up no problem, no crazy sound, everything looks good. But now it wont print a thing. The head runs back and forth as if it is printing, but nothing comes out. About a week after THAT the tech finally shows up on a random day when I'm not in the office, undeclared, and without a new pump cap, and tells me over the phone that the previous tech had left out some kind of rubber gasket, and when he detached the ink lines (i'm not sure if this was at the damper or not) ink came pouring out all over. So this was a $3 part, easily replaced, no problem, he'd be back when the part came in. Meanwhile, I find out the next day, while he had told me it was going to be cheap and easy, he had told my boss it was going to require ANOTHER new print head! WTF! So my boss is spooked now, and wants to ditch the machine all together (guess who makes an offer on the "broken" machine) so I decide that since this is a last ditch effort, I need to take a crack at it.
I turn it on, print a nozzle check, and theres a little bit coming out of the magenta and matte black! Progress! But I know that since it's been sitting for so long, the head probably REALLY needs to be soaked-- so out it comes, and into the windex. After a few hours of soaking, I am curious, so I dry the head off, and put it back in. Aaaaand cartridge error. on all cartridges. This is the point in the story at which there is a montage of me taking carts apart, swapping chips, blowing in pressure lines, burping carts, and eventually I end up at a point where I can repeatedly get it to recognize every cartridge except for the photo black and yellow. I've gone through every combination of manually pressurizing the cartridges, pulling ink through the lines with a syringe, etc. And i've tried many different cartridges, for some colors i've got at least 3 different ones.
Additionally, not only did I get a chip resetter (which works, now I can get the cartridges that ARE recognized to read as full) but I also bought the adjustment wizard from 2manuals to see if there was some kind of counter or whatever that I needed to reset. Now I'm at a complete loss. As I write this I'm now thinking that maybe the issue actually could have to do with the head, or some electrical issue, since nothing physical seems able to solve this.
So anyway, the point here is that I wanted to put this out there to see if any other fresh minds might have any instinct-- I could go much further into detail on most of the steps of what I have done-- Including all the research and experimenting I have done on the "Ink-out sensor" which resides inside each cartridge-- nowhere can I find someone who understands how this thing operates-- I have tested it with a multimeter, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how it works.
So thats it for the moment-- If I left anything out I'll try to fill in any other details…