I have an Epson 4900 thats 3 years old. Last week it reported 1/3 clogged nozzles for VLM and LC colors.
I was able to fix it perfectly!
Below is how I did it. You can find the PDF on my website using the Tutorials link, at
www.workinout.comand I have attached it here too.
thanks,
James
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James Danforth
March 4, 2015
Cleaning the Epson 4900
It can be done, and not to costly
I spent $30 for some Windows software that let me do an INITIAL INK CHARGE on the printer again, that used about $50 worth of ink. But now, my nozzle report is as perfect as the day I bought the machine 3 years ago. Here is how I did it….
1. About a week ago I printed a 13” x 19” photo on the Epson 4900 (“4900”) and it came out awful. There was faint dark banding horizontally (parellel to the ink head travel) and vertical lines of just crappy fluorescent like color that seemed to come from space.
2. I ran a Nozzle Check, which showed all colors were perfect except the last two, labeled VLM and LC. These two reports showed about 1/3 of their nozzles were blocked. I nearly had a heart attack.
3. I ran several cleaning attempts with 4900 tools, from Epson, but these did nothing but waste my time,
4. I ran several pages of color matching the VLmagenta and Lcyan but this did nothing to the improve the nozzle report
5. I found some YouTube videos that recommended soaking the head with a paper towel soaked in an ammonia / windex solution. I mixed a batch of 2 parts ammonia and 8 parts distilled water without minerals added, and let the head soak on this for 4 hours. I was skeptical of this from the start, because I have a lot of experience manufacturing ink for inkjet printers, I had a couple years of chemistry in college, and I know ammonia could react weirdly with one of the many chemicals that make up Epson’s ink. I did try it anyway.
6. Number 5 above was absolutely Worthless. It had no effect on unclogging the nozzles and the nozzle report was just as bad as ever. Not worse, but no improvement at all.
7. I did some Google queries and discovered a post on luminosity.com that recommended buying a windows program called “service program” that would allow me to run another initial ink charge on the 4900. The post made sense to me and of course is far less expensive than buying and installing a new head for a printer that essentially was a paperweight at this point. Just a few nozzles clogged RUINS photos printed at sizes larger than 8” by 10”
8. I bought the program here for $30 and change. The site was ok. Not perfect but ok…I got the program downloaded and installed on a windows laptop fairly easily and set it up to run in Windows Vista mode. This worked fine.
9. I connected the 4900 to the laptop and launched the Service Program. It worked. I followed the instructions I found here to find the right procedure to run the Initial Ink Charge.
10. A few seconds into the effort, the program reported I did not have enough ink in a couple of cartridges in order to complete the Initial Ink Charge. So I shutdown the program and bought some more ink on eBay. I don’t consider this a cost of fixing the program since I would have purchased the ink anyway.
11. Afte all the ink arrived about a week later, I replaced the cartridges that were low and put in the new cartridges. I saved the low cartridges for later. (See below)
12. I ran number 9 again and selected the 4900 from the Service Program’s drop down list. This woke up the printer immediately.
13. I clicked the large button titled “Adjustments Individual”. This opened a list with many numbered Items. I clicked Number #3 as per the instructions I found on the web (link above) and this highlighted that item
14 I reviewed the instructions I found on the web again and clicked the link titled “Ink Eject + Initial Charge” in the Service Program. This highlighted the item
15. I clicked the “OK” button at the bottom of the Service Program.
16. A new dialog box popped up. There were two radio buttons (Ink Eject and Ink Charge) so I selected the button titled “Ink Charge.” There were two radio buttons to choose either the left bank of cartridges on the 4900 or the right bank. I chose the left bank since that is where the VLM and LC cartridges are.
17. I clicked the “RUN” button on the Service Program and crossed my fingers at 5:26PM
18. A dialog box popped up warning me not to do anything else. I clicked its “OK” button to get rid of it
19. The 4900 then reported on its built in LCD screen a progress bar and a message that said “Charging Ink”. The printer made lots of funny noises as it worked.
20. The printer went through about 4 cycles, starting a new progress bar with the same “Charging Ink” message. I just let it run and did nothing.
21. At 5:38PM the printer finished. So the Initital Ink Charge took 12 minutes.
22. I ran the Epson Nozzle check again and it printed out its report.
The VLM and LC nozzle patterns reported were PERFECT!
23. I switched the printer back to my Mac and launched Photoshop
24. I printed three 13” x 19” photos that I also had printed when the nozzles were clogged
The 3 photos I printed after charging the 4900 per above were perfect quality and ready to deliver to the customers. All the dark banding and weird colors were gone. I checked the new prints with a magnifying glass under bright LED lamps. The prints were Perfect.
25. Based on the before and after ink readings on the 4900’s LCD, I’d estimate about 5% of the 200 ml cartridges were used to do the “Initial Ink Charge”.
CONCLUSION
For $30 of software and about $50 of ink, I returned my 3 year old 4900 back to perfect operating condition, thereby avoiding the only other choice I would have had, which is to spend $2000 on a brand new 4900 printer.
