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View Full Version : Epson. You will Not believe what happened next.


Loose rivets
11th Oct 2005, 05:15
Following my rant(s), I sent my second e-mail to Epson. In short I explained that the failure of my printer, and my ongoing angst, was going to make a catastrophic difference to Epson—world wide. I forgot about it for a few hours, then started to eye up the nice looking piece of kit in the corner of my office. It really is a superb piece of design work and my time in the industry lets me know that the general mechanics are good. Pity the bleedin thing don't print.

Nothing to loose......so, time to try to resolve the issue with some DIY.

First time it took me about ten mins to take the head cluster out. ( 40 secs the next time )

I happened to have some sleeving--that I had pulled off some house wiring--that just fitted the input nozzles. This just happened to fit into a length of clear plastic pipe from the car squirters

Half a dozen bottles of fluid were taken from the household cupboard, and it turned out that Windex dissolves the ink better than...well, most ink dissolvers. It also has some soap in it which the real stuff does as well.

I split the head and cleaned the ducts to the head separately, now time for the actual head.

Blowing Windex into the assembled head caused bubbles–in neat lines–to form on the head surface. All the clours came through except one...and it was just as I was blowing extra hard on this one than an e-male came in from Epson.

"If you would like to take your printer out of the trash, and ring this number, we will see what we can do." (Really!!)

Huh????? I had let them know of all the people that had dumped their printers when they were only one minute old, so they were obviously very, very worried.

"We will pick it up. We will give you a new one if this don't go."

Huh????? I'm dreaming, right? "You know that it's over a year old?"

"That's okay."

I looked frantically in the cupboard for some Windex remover, wiped my finger prints off everything and packaged the unit. I wait by the door, but expect to wake up any second. Can this be real?

To occupy my time I chatted to a really nice guy on one of your links. He has been selling the goop and clone (chipped ) cartridges for several years. The same stuff does for all colours and will do several sessions. And for example. A $34 B&Wt comes out at under 8 bucks.
http://www.maxpatchink.com/epson.shtml#I 1 888 231 3426 I hope I won't need him for a while.

Conan the Librarian
11th Oct 2005, 10:31
You see Rivets? There is a God - Allegedly...

Well done!


Conan

P.Pilcher
11th Oct 2005, 10:59
You know Rivets - I bet that would not have happened in the U.K. They would have just told you to bog off (and I don't mean buy one get one free!) Anyway, if Evo will permit me, may I suggest that you try here (http://www.tonezoneuk.com) for similar ink prices in the U.K. if you need them. We are running three Epsons at the moment, they have only had one batch of Epson ink in them (the one supplied when they were new) and I have been using ink from this source for Epson printers now for over 10 years without any problem at all.

P.P.

Loose rivets
11th Oct 2005, 16:17
Thanks for the link.

It's interesting to know that you have used the clone stuff for so long. I would say that 10 years is a pretty good trial period.

I'm still wondering if I dreamt the whole thing. Time will tell.

Spinflight
11th Oct 2005, 21:24
Well its ink that the printer companies sell, not printers. Quite frankly they would happily give their ink jets away for free (and some pretty much do if you count the cost of the cartridge included) in order for you to buy their ink.

Currently ink runs at a far greater cost that extremelely expensive French Champagne, and probably tastes better. Some colour cartridges come equiped to run out of one colour as quickly as possible.

I'm not particularly surprised that they ofered you a new printer though cheaper refills are a must.

Then again you can happily get a laser printer for far less per page than an inkjet....