Strange Nozzle Check on Epson 3880

[MHMG]

Yesterday I installed a brand new and complete set of OEM ink in my 3 year old Epson 3880. Not all the older ink cartridges were empty, but they were low and rather old, so I bit the bullet and installed all fresh cartridges. Everything seemed fine. The printer passed a nozzle check, I made a few good looking prints. Today I ran a manual nozzle check and now things seemed a bit odd. So, I ran the auto nozzle check and got this (see attached photo)!

Several standard cleaning cycles, MK/PK ink switches, and one power cleaning later, I still get the same ink "contamination" intermittently, particularly black in the yellow, and sometimes cyan in a magenta channel. Printing a real image with yellows and cyans shows similar contamination and the print looks horrible. I also double checked the cartridge positions just to make sure I didn't accidentally put some of the new cartridges in the wrong slots. I believe the cartridges are keyed and you can't really do that, but I checked anyway. I'm stumped

Did I really just install $450 worth of new ink in an Epson 3880 whose print head just died, or does anyone have any other ideas what might be wrong before I throw this printer in the trash?

thanks in advance for any suggestions.

kind regards,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

[howardm]

can you put back the old carts and retest or does the printer insist on a cart swap?

[MHMG]

can you put back the old carts and retest or does the printer insist on a cart swap?

Well, the old yellow cartridge was totally out and forced my new ink purchase.  I don't have another yellow cartridge to try which just doubles down on Murphy's law in this situation since yellow seems to be the most contaminated channel. That said, I can see that some of the yellow channel nozzles are still printing pure yellow while others in the pattern that should be printing yellow are not, so it's highly unlikely that the new yellow cartridge is full of bad ink. I don't actually think the nozzles themselves are contaminated. It looks more like certain channels are firing when they shouldn't be, e.g., some of the black or gray ink channels when pure yellow only should be firing.

[MHMG]

Ok, I got it sorted out . First, I called Epson, and after describing the problem the Epson Tech guy, said "you need service on the printer". He referred me to the closest authorized repair facility. I called the repair facility, whereby after listening to the $135 per hour labor charges for my out of warranty 3880 and the possibility that the head might be dead (another $300 in parts), I concluded that buying another brand new Epson 3880 (there's a $300 rebated going on the 3880 at this time) with full set of new ink cartridges was a more economical approach to salvaging my current $460 investment in a new set of OEM carts.  Once the new printer purchase became my backup plan, messing with my current printer and doing draconian physical cleaning steps that the 3880 user manual won't dare tell you about, was really quite liberating. A few Youtube videos later (created by diehard third party ink users for Epson prosumer printers), and I was able to fix the problem

Turns out that the head on my printer plus the capping and wiper blade station had accumulated so much sludge over the course of time (despite the fact or perhaps due to the fact that I don't use this printer on a daily or even weekly basis), that no amount of head cleaning in the Epson driver software was going to eliminate all this gunk on the head. The buildup on the head surface was the source of the contamination in my printer's output pattern.  Resorting to a physical cleaning using a Windex soaked lint-free paper towel carefully guided underneath the print head plus Windex flushing and Q-tip cleaning of the capping station and wiper blade brought my "needs service" printer back to perfect operating condition! The printer head itself was not damaged nor clogged. It's surface was just incredibly dirty from sludgy ink build up.

I simply don't have these issues with my other Canon printers, so I wasn't really prepared at first to roll up my sleeves and go in to my Epson 3880 for a thorough physical cleaning that Epson would never advise the end user to do.  But turning an out-of-warranty printer like the 3880 in for service (where they probably would have done a similar cleanup) is just not economically feasible given how new inkjet printers like the 3880 are priced for sale these days. Given this reality, it's good that other more adventurous endusers have pioneered some of these rogue (i.e. not endorsed by the printer manufacturer) physical cleaning techniques. They worked for me. My printer is alive and well again!

cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

[howardm]

Good to hear!  That was certainly a weird output pattern.

I assume you are referencing Jose Rodriguez's (jtoolman) 3880 head & wiper cleaning video.

I wonder if I would have been able to salvage my old 3800 w/ that info :/

[Some Guy]

That pattern is indeed odd looking.

When I run the Auto-Check pattern from the 3880 LCD display I never see Magenta nor the Yellow.  I get the three blacks and the cyan, but no second row of magenta and yellow.   

Usually mine will randomly drop a black or gray nozzle in first attempt at Auto, and then continues with a cleaning cycle and prints the same blacks and cyan in another stack below the above.  Might be 4 stacks of blacks, grays and cyan, but no magenta or yellow ever shows up.  It completes in maybe 4 attempts with cleanings, etc.

It does show the other colors in the Manual nozzle check herringbone's staggered pattern though, but the Auto on mine is a very different pattern of checkerboards with the omission of magenta and yellow. 

I wonder if it could be that I'm using 3rd party inks with refillable carts, and the pirate chip over the Epson OEM chip on the refillable too?

I'm more bothered that it randomly will plug a nozzle even during a run when I run a nozzle check in between prints.  Sometimes same nozzle, but lately seems random in which nozzle and color will plug and later unplug.  Trying to profile is sort of iffy with the 3880 of mine.  Let it sit overnight and the plugged nozzle might free.  Air bubbles perhaps since the refillables do not use a bladder like the OEM carts, but I really dunno.  Just write it off to being an Epson.

SG

[Rusty]

Glad to hear the OP got it running again. I've just installed my replacement 3880, previous model was spitting PK all over prints, but MK worked ok, tried the windex clean but to no avail so a new printer.
Now I note that Epson has updated their maintenance mode to include an automatic shut down after a choice of times. This is noted on a separate sheet enclosed on top of the printer. I could be that it is best turned off when not in use which is something I did not do with the failed unit. Whether or not that contributed to my problem I'll never know but I've set the new beast to shut down after an hour of inactivity.