Epson 10600 Print Head Problem

Anorak

Member
Hi - I have an Epson 10600 which has been very reliable but recently I did not use it for 4 months - then when I started it back up the yellow did not print at all. Other colors were perfect.
I had a nozzle check error and as I had a scrap machine for parts and therefore a spare print head I changed just the yellow one out, of course lost a lot of ink doing so, got air in ink lines etc.
Now I have the same message but nothing at all is printing out, machine goes through the motions but no ink on the paper.
The manual I have is not helpful - is there a way to get the air purged and new ink through the lines?
Is this likely the problem anyway?
I can enter the config menu etc by the 3 button pressing on powerup technique but have no idea what the values all mean, they are somewhat mysterious codes.
Any helpful hints would be very gratefully received. There is no service facility here to fix these printers, we're on our own.
thanks
Andy
 
cheers,
I have a 10600UC and service manual - which you need.

It's pretty tough working blind. I do it too but it's wrong and to be seriously avoided as it can lead to other parts being damaged and ink mess and waste as you found out... :-(

I had similar problem, I left print carriage in centre position, off the capping station, when I broke and removed and re-glued one of the top carriage rollers following a head strike on curled canvas media.

So when all reassembled the black had 13 blocked jets. I'm gradually getting them cleaned. Only 3 left... now but they are damn stubborn.

Reading thru the service manual you should have used a cleaning cartridge first and evacuated all the ink from the lines before removing the print head.

Also there are several cleaning routines available in the service manual menu, where-as the operator panel only has one cleaning routine. If the machine goes through the motions and doesn't put out any ink and throws up no errors, aside the lasers nozzle blocked message on startup, over-rideable, then it thinks it's printing. So I would say there is very seriously blocked nozzles in the yellow head. Also the ink in the line to the head could be curdled and not letting the head actually get fresh ink. Of course the head needs to be getting ink, so a good cartridge needs to be getting air pressure and the ink then needs to be getting through the solonoid operated valves on the back of the ink carriage assembly. So in other words the yellow ink solonoid operated needle valve needs to be letting ink past. You can check this by holding the solonoid open with a wedge and sucking ink through the line by attaching a syringe to the line that goes onto the print head - before it connects to the steel line. Disconnect the steel line at the front of the head and suck there - by connecting to the nylon line. I have older mutoh ink lines lying about so I can use them on a syringe etc. Once established that ink is flowing, fill the steel line to the head with ink Use syringe and needle - so there is no unecessary air in the supply line) and reconnect it. Don't forget to remove wedge on ink solonoid valve. If its not wedged open then ink can't flow!!!! If you wish to try to force some ink through the head you could use a small pad of toilet paper under print head at the capping station to show and absorb any ink that flows through. I don't like forcing ink pressure on the back of the head really, so if you choose to do it, keep the pressure lowish - i.e gentle thumb pressure on the syringe is all that should be required.

My first suggestion would be to read the service manual. I have recently had exactly this problem on my Canon 6200 recently and it took a lot of perseverance to get the yellow head printing. I hooked my ink vacuum pump (it came from a closed cartridge refill depot) onto a hose (find or buy one) that fitted into the yellow heads ink inlet and placed the head nozzles into quarter inch of meths in a dish - then I turned on the vacuum pump and sucked the meths thru the yellow head - i.e backwards. What happens in effect is that the rubber balloon damper in the Canon head (all the colours have a balloon damper) evacuates all its contents first into the vac tube and then the flattened vacated balloon transfers the vac to the back of the nozzles. I had visions of ruining the head, however the vac pump is not so strong that i think it could damage the nozzles with the reverse vacuum on them. Anyway, after sucking all the old ink from the yellow head until clean meths came through, I then used a syringe full of meths and forced it gently back down the same yellow head ink inlet. With gentle pressure on the syringe plunger I held the head and watched the underside to see how many of the yellow nozzles were ejecting the meths - i.e. how many were in fact clean. Most in fact looked fine. So then I hooked it back up to the vac pump and sucked some more clean meths thru again - backwards. then I repeated the syringe pressure (forwards) with more clean meths to establish all nozzles were in fact passing meths and therefore clean.

Then I filled the syringe with yellow dye (superfine ex an old Iris electrostatic proofer) and gently fed it into the head while holding the head on it's side so I could see the nozzles - I kept feeding in the yellow dye until no air bubbles came from the head - this was as I had had thoughts that an air pocket may also have been preventing the head pumping properly. Then I wiped the head dry with a toilet paper wad. With the head still full of yellow dye I refitted it into the printer and let it complete the head replacement procedure I had started when I removed the head. After another 3 nozzle check prints, with one cleaning in between, the yellow slowly started to show on the nozzle check print. It was very faint at first but by the third nozzle check it was up to full volume. With no nozzles blocked. Yahoo!! :)) I switched it off overnight and did another check the following morning and it now appears to be running fine. $1000 head saved.

So back to your 10600; I'd say again get and read the service manual. Then since you have the head back in the machine, gently force some yellow dye through it with a syringe. I think dye is better as its thinner than pigment, since the colour is steeped and not ground, so therefore it must be thinner, right? Even though .1 micron pigment ink is fine, dye ink is finer. And the finest dye is Iris dye, but any water-based dye should work fine.

Hope this helps. If you want the service manual leave details. It's 29.6mb so it might take some downloading or else it may need to be uploaded and parked at a file holding site for you to DL it??

cheers.
 
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Thanks for that, yes I would very much appreciate to download the manual, all I have is the operator manual pdf.

It could well be the solenoid for the yellow ink original problem, I will have to try to identify it.

I have a 10mb file max size on hotmail so its too big for that, I am open to any suggestion about downloading it,

thanks again so much
 
Thanyou so much Robotnz - that downloaded beautifully and its an excellent manual, I do not know what I would have done without your help.

Andy
 
Cheers,

My 10600uc still has 3 blocked black jets. :-( All tips for a magical cleaning fluid welcome.

Maybe the Epson one in the manual would be best.... the service manual says use CR02 as follows ~ does anyone have a successful experience with this??

"The cleaning liquid used for Stylus Pro 10600 has been changed
to CR02. S46 which is used for Stylus Pro 10000/10000CF cannot
be used."
 
Thanks again for the manual, its a little strange in parts, weird English, and although I am sure the info I need is there its hard to make head or tail of some of it.

I'll persevere.

Cheers
 
cheers,

I just DL it from the link in 8 minutes and quick check all looks fine. Which pages are you having the problem with? Can you DL it again? I have a MS word version from pdf ripper, and one from PDF2word, so I can email some pages or split it up if you like.

I found my problem - the black capping station was blocked with sticky ink and not getting suction, a real bitch of a thing to remove and refit.

cheers
 
Hi, no the download was perfect, its just the way the manual is written, it does tend to assume you know at least quite a lot about how to do things, and I don't!
For example I have been trying how to find out the way to make the printer execute an initial fill routine. Its mentioned several times in the manual but I can't see how to actually do it.
Using Adobe Acrobat its easy to search the manual for references to a particular key word or phrase, that helps a bit.

Glad you got your problem fixed.
 
Hi,

I found a way to do massive head clean - this is similar to a full ink charge - turn off machine, then turn on while holding pause button - machine then shows on LCD "Hex Dump Print" and enters 5 minute clean, at end of that press Enter, machine then begins 15 minute cleaning and print to waste and high frequency cleaning algorithm.

The hold pause start routine is similar to what I read here - http://ftp.epson.com/pdf/pro16u/pro16upg.pdf

However my machine does not enter the SSCL mode as stated there on page 13/14 by selection - my machine just goes straight into the hex dump print. Then when press enter after that begins SSCL. You can tell it is a (SSCL) supersonic cleaning routine by the high frequency (HF) noise. A lot of ink is pumped and sucked during the routine - it you leave the right cover off you can see it all going to the waste bin. The routine lasts 15 - 20 full minutes.

At end of that my machine still stated nozzle check error. Cyan jets missing was 70 now on last count!!

:)
 
Caution recommended

Caution recommended

robotnz: What you really need, is a certified Epson service enginer on site.

The Supersonic Cleaning you are executing is hugely stressful to the printhead. Epson recommends to leave the machine to cool off overnight before doing anything else...

Doing things like forcing unknown inks through the print head without thorough knowledge of the ink feed system is a bad idea. The maintenance tasks described on the Service Manual also require intimate knowledge of the hardware. Often several calibrations are needed to be performed when ink delivery system is serviced.

It is strongly recommended that users refrain from performing engineering tasks. Incorrect procedures may cause permanent damage and require a costly repair.
 
Hya,

Oh great!! Very welcome ~ Thanks. I will revert to only doing one SSCL per day and let machine rest afterwards.

Does anyone have experience of the special Epson cleaning fluid for this UC unitary head? Is it possible to feed the relevant blocked head with cleaning fluid? Could an ink cartridge be flushed out and filled with cleaning fluid - perhaps slightly tinted with ink to show on printouts?? It seems that a straight compatible cleaning solution should clean better with the SSCL than using ink. also it may be cheaper?

There are crude rough recipes on the net of distilled water + ammonia and ethanol for cleaning Epson heads, but I found they don't work. At one stage I wiped the head surface with meths using a cotton bud and the blocked jets went from 3 to 70! Very annoying! :-(

cheers
 
Hi -
Thanks for that, these manuals are interesting, don't know who writes them but they assume that you know what you are doing already to some extent,
for example I could not get the enter key to do anything when I was trying to do the SSCL routine - then I loaded paper into the printer and immediately there was a loud click when I pressed the enter button and everything worked as it said it would and the cleaning started.
The level of ink in the cartridges went down substantially so it must have done it - but I am still not getting a single dot of ink printed on the paper.

I am going to remove the head again and see if I have done something stupid, I think I must have!

thanks so much for all your help
 
cheers,

I think Toweri was very right! There's no point in re-inventing the wheel!!! These machines were made by Epson and everything about them is known to those who need to know. The service manual is intended only for thoroughly trained Epson certified personnel.

I have now replaced one head in my 10600 unitary head. I have the rank number but it may be a Roland number - since it was a used head from a Roland. The printer tries to initialise but goes into a constant cleaning routine. So something is wrong. Does anyone know how to use the maintenance menu to verify the head and to try to put in the rank numbers that are on the replaced head?

cheers
 
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