I have just posted this exact same post on the Epson Wide Format IO group, not sure of the ethics involved in the same post on different forums, but I am casting a wide net, if this is frowned upon please let me know
A long tale of woe (short version) followed by a question.
My P10000 blew a damper in the middle of a print job about 5 months ago, ink spewed everywhere inside the machine.
In fact a little research has shown that this is not an uncommon fault on this model and it has been suggested that this is a known issue (known by Epson) which affects certain serial numbers of the P10000.
It was a really catastrophic failure, ink flooded everywhere inside the machine, short-circuiting many of the electronics.
The machine is still under warranty.
The problem is that here in South Africa, Epson have 'streamlined' their service program so that there is only one authorised After Service Provider (ASP) who covers all warranties and is allowed to attend to service calls.
This ASP (whose name will not be mentioned) has only one call-out technician for the entire region. And they also cover Canon and a bunch of other brands as well. And all the desktop printers sold by mass retailers.
So this technician is heavily over-subscribed as well as not really specifically trained for my model, of which there are just a handful in this country.
I will spare the long recital of details of the last 5 months of trying to get the machine working, but most of that time was spent waiting for parts to arrive (the joys of living on the southern tip of Africa). We have now replaced mainboard, printhead, damper assembly, pump cap, ink cart bay, carriage rail motor and encoder sensor and still unable to get machine to power on. The latest idea is to try replace the FFC cables running from printhead to mainboard. These cables are on their way.
I have lost faith in the technicians' attention to detail. He has taken the machine apart several times now and his professional pride seems to prevent him from following the service manual. It is a constant battle to get him to even look at the manual, let alone follow the steps.
Finally my question... If the FFC cables do solve the last error message and he is able to get the machine to power on (and he then does at least the most basic Adjustment Program settings) and gets the machine to print, is there a way to check if the printer is behaving within specification?
Do I print sharpness tests?
How to check if carriage rail assembly is functioning properly?
How to check if bidirectional is the same as uni?
Is there a stress test to print that will show potential issues?
We did save the NVRAM data from the original mainboard.
Will the machine ever be back to factory specs?
Regards
Neil
