I've had my Epson p800 for about 6 years now, and unfortunately it died yesterday, the result of a broken carriage belt. It's been a fantastic printer, no problems whatsoever. I think I've had one clog in all that time, and it was easily cleared. However, there were some recent signs that not all was well. Lately, I was seeing strange, tiny particulate globs/specks on my 16x20's, which when removed would leave an equally tiny white spot that would then have to be retouched (I described this in an earlier post here). The printer was also making new banging noises that would come and go when printing small 5x7's. So I was not surprised when it quit altogether yesterday.
My question is: can this be fixed? I would think a straightforward replacement of the carriage belt would do the trick. I believe, other than the belt breakage, that the printer would work perfectly fine again if it could fixed at a reasonable rate. I guess that's the catch. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could chime in on how to replace a carriage belt, the difficulty factor, if it's something that could be done by myself, etc. As far as mechanical ability, I'd say I'm about average in that regard. I've looked for YouTube videos, but most are poor quality and describe printers I've never even heard of. There doesn't seem to be any repair shops in my area (Santa Barbara, CA), and shipping the printer down to Epson in Long Beach and the resultant repair charge probably isn't worth it.
The sober reality is that I'll probably wind up having to buy a new p900, which isn't so bad in itself, but it seems a shame to throw away a perfectly good printer because of one faulty part. Any info, comments, recommendations, etc. will be greatly appreciated!
David
