I have an epson 3880 that I have had for about 5 years. It has always worked just about flawlessly until this past month... and as an aside, I print with it at least weekly, and typically much more often then that.
I have been buying refilled cartridges from ClickInks for a couple of years, and they have always worked without a hitch.
Back in July I had to replace my Photo Black cart and duly installed a Click Inks cart, which the printer acknowledged and read the chip showing the ink level to be full.
After running the cart for about a month or so, I had to print a poster for a customer and at the last inch at the bottom, suddenly there was no black. I thought "Clogged print head", so ran a nozzle pattern, and sure enough, the photo black was almost entirely gone, did a head clean, printed the nozzle check again, and it looked great.
I then attempted to print yet again. This time, very soon after the print started, black disappeared again. I ran another nozzle check, PK was totally blank. Ran a cleaning and another nozzle check - still totally gone.
For whatever reason, I decided to look at the PK cartridge - when I pulled it out - IT WAS TOTALLY EMPTY - BONE DRY!! - this even thought the printer showed that it was more than 90% full!
Ok, so I get on the horn with ClickInks, tell them that I had a bum cartridge and they ship out another. After a week of waiting, it came in, I installed and figured I was good to go. I installed it, printer acknowledged it as a new cart, duly showing cartridge full on the little graph.
I attempted to print today - no black - all other colors perfect, but PK still totally blank on nozzle check.
So I figured it was a really bad clog. Had gotten a head cleaning kit and solution, and cleaned the head as per the official video from InkJetMall or some such - no change.
So, after having read how the system works on the Epson 38xx printers, I am now leaning toward the idea that the system actually sucked in a bunch of air when it was sucking on that faulty cartridge...
Anyone who has lived with an Epson 38xx printer have any thoughts on whether this makes sense, and, what is my best course of action?
Oh, but here's another piece of info that may contradict that: I notice when the printer is printing now, every few seconds, it make a two cycle sound of what it does when you first turn it on - like, if you are familiar with these printers, it is attempting to pressurize the system or something - it just keeps repeating that process every 5-10 seconds, dont think it was doing that before...??
I have been buying refilled cartridges from ClickInks for a couple of years, and they have always worked without a hitch.
Back in July I had to replace my Photo Black cart and duly installed a Click Inks cart, which the printer acknowledged and read the chip showing the ink level to be full.
After running the cart for about a month or so, I had to print a poster for a customer and at the last inch at the bottom, suddenly there was no black. I thought "Clogged print head", so ran a nozzle pattern, and sure enough, the photo black was almost entirely gone, did a head clean, printed the nozzle check again, and it looked great.
I then attempted to print yet again. This time, very soon after the print started, black disappeared again. I ran another nozzle check, PK was totally blank. Ran a cleaning and another nozzle check - still totally gone.
For whatever reason, I decided to look at the PK cartridge - when I pulled it out - IT WAS TOTALLY EMPTY - BONE DRY!! - this even thought the printer showed that it was more than 90% full!
Ok, so I get on the horn with ClickInks, tell them that I had a bum cartridge and they ship out another. After a week of waiting, it came in, I installed and figured I was good to go. I installed it, printer acknowledged it as a new cart, duly showing cartridge full on the little graph.
I attempted to print today - no black - all other colors perfect, but PK still totally blank on nozzle check.
So I figured it was a really bad clog. Had gotten a head cleaning kit and solution, and cleaned the head as per the official video from InkJetMall or some such - no change.
So, after having read how the system works on the Epson 38xx printers, I am now leaning toward the idea that the system actually sucked in a bunch of air when it was sucking on that faulty cartridge...
Anyone who has lived with an Epson 38xx printer have any thoughts on whether this makes sense, and, what is my best course of action?
Oh, but here's another piece of info that may contradict that: I notice when the printer is printing now, every few seconds, it make a two cycle sound of what it does when you first turn it on - like, if you are familiar with these printers, it is attempting to pressurize the system or something - it just keeps repeating that process every 5-10 seconds, dont think it was doing that before...??
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