Ink Everywhere - Getting rid of black streaks?

[irishdaisy]

I was printing a 54" canvas banner on my Epson R3000 today, and after awhile I noticed it wasn't feeding correctly. I canceled the print and ejected the canvas to find puddles of wet ink where the printer had continuously printed in the same area without advancing the canvas. What a mess!

I'm trying to get my printer to print normally again, and I'm not entirely sure what to do. I ran plain paper through 15+ times to help reduce/remove the black streaks. I ran several passes with cleaning sheets containing alcohol. Once I finally saw a sheet come through cleanly, I tried to re-print the banner, only to find it still had huge black streaks. More cleaning. More streaks.

I'm fairly clueless about the inside of my printer (though I want to be more knowledgeable), so opening the cover didn't do much except confirm what I already guessed: ink everywhere. The rollers still have ink on them. The sponge at the bottom of the printer is saturated. The metal plates that sit in the sponge have wet ink sitting on top, though I've tried to wipe them off as much as possible with cotton swabs.

I don't know how to properly address this issue and perform the necessary cleanup to allow me to return normal operation. My Google searches haven't produced anything terribly useful. Can any of you point me toward good articles/videos that may be helpful in my situation--or perhaps offer your own advice?

Thank you,
Megan

[BrianWJH]

Megan, is it still under warranty?

Brian.

[darlingm]

Uggh!

I've had a mess to clean up three or four times when my Epson 9900 prints when it thinks there's paper loaded, but there isn't... But those times were admittedly my fault and I was right there.  Some of it goes into the borderless printing drainage system, but much of the the platen area is black plastic where rolls aren't made at that width.  (Design team, what if I want to custom cut a roll?...)

So, my jobs aren't as bad as yours sounds.

I got through it with lots of non-shedding paper towel and rubbing alcohol.  Kept rubbing until the paper towel comes off still looking ink-free.  Takes forever.  Mine's a roll printer, so I was able to put in cheap plotter paper and just move it forwards and backwards a bunch.  Perhaps you could print a blank document and tell it 500 copies, and just keep feeding the sheets back into the tray as they come out... If you're past the point of where they'd be saturated and putting ink back in.

Not sure that helps much, but hope it does.  I like Brian's warranty idea.  Bet it expired last week though.

[philbaum]

If you go to Inkjetmall.com, home of Jon Cone Inks, you can buy a larger container of piezoflush liquid.  There are other sites that sell cleaning fluid like InkRepublic.com but these are the only two i have ordered from to date.

This cleaning fluid is good at dissolving ink.  Also look at the several video tapes on the Cone site where they show steps for cleaning smaller printers.  They recommend Bounty brand paper towels which are designed to be more lint free than typical paper towels.  http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.362672/it.I/id.222/.f

The videos on inkjetmall are under Tech Support Tab and sometimes require some hunting to find.  Also they have discussion forum you can join.

I have the 3000 too and so far the largest print has been 36" but had good luck with those.  Two things that have been problems  1: Somes the canvas corners catch on something internal and skew the banner to one side.  Not a big issue but i've been cutting a 1/8" to 1/4" corner out of each side to prevent catching.  2: Also, i don't let canvas sit in the printer overnight - it seems to cause some deformation of the canvas which then smears ink - perhaps from the print head, i don't know for sure.

Hope this helps - let us know how you are faring with this and if you discover the cause of the misfeed.