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Failed inkjets - do they have something in common?
Just the other day our Lexmark X5150 stopped printing colours - ALL colours. They all failed simultaneously even though there's plenty of ink in each section of the combined cartridge. We went through the process for cleaning jets twice to no avail and then followed the instructions for wiping clean the outlets several times, but all proved unsuccessful.
Since each colour has a separate outlet/jet on the bottom of the cartridge, it seemed extraordinary that all three should fail simultaneously.
Well then exactly the same thing happened to our venerable old Epson Stylus Color 600! Repeated cleaning didn't work so I put in a new colour cartridge, even though the old one was not showing as short of ink. This had no effect and all three colours remained completely missing....
What most surprises me is that in both printers the failure of all three colours was simultaneous and with any warning and that the black ink soldiers on unaffected.
Do I junk them both or is there anything else reasonably straightforward that I should try first. The 600 is connected to a PC which uses Windows 98 so a replacement printer is harder to find. Makro has an Epson E92 in stock which they say will work with 98 but only in English but I'm not convinced that they really know that... and they won't open the box.
Simultaneous failure would certainly suggest the problem lies elsewhere than the cartridges. IIRC don't Epsons have a proprietory technology in their printers?? which would suggest their isn't commonality to the problem. I'm only using dim & distant memory to suggest that, so I'm happy to be corrected.
As for the Lexmark, does it have a print head? This is a part that can fail & be replaced - happened to me a few times down the years.
Thanks for that Parapunter! I have been a little ambiguous in my phrasing of the title for my thread. I didn't so much expect commonality to the extent of an identical component being responsible for the failure in each case but rather that perhaps there was a similar control failure or other electrical failure since six simultaneously blocked nozzles seemed unlikely. I believe that the individual jets are in the cartridge, in the case of the Lexmark (certainly there are several electrical connections to the cartridge) but I don't know if the same is true in the old Epson.
Sounds a real pesky problem you have there re non-colour output. The fact that it affects 2 types of printer suggests input rather than output as the fault. Is it the same document that you are trying to print that emerges as b+w only ? if so, could the settings have been changed to b+w only perhaps ? If not, and it is a wild shot I know, I don't know what to suggest as the problem is across 2 printer types. If the 'test' page that prints after cleaning jets/nozzles is also ex-colour then I'm at a loss.
I do know that the E92's drivers are Windows 95 and 98 compatible.
Location: Resident of Cumbria but usually in the air or on the road.
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I purchased a load of after-market cartridges for my Epson 3650 and always had problems with them. Last week, I had to scrap it and buy another; I'm not tempted to by Epson cartridges but might spend a bit more on the after-market types.
Thanks for your replies Eagle402 and Bus429. Sort of a composite response coming up here!
Both printers fail to print colours on their test pages and the Lexmark, which is an all-in-one type, fails to print colours when under local (as opposed to by the PC) control when scanning a document straight to print in a photocopy operation. That means that I don't think it's a lead, port or driver problem in the case of the Lexmark anyway. The printers are connected to separate computers in different parts of the office.
The Epson has been using independently made cartridges in both black and colour for nearly ten years with no problems until now whereas the Lexmark has only ever used Lexmark cartridges.
I've repeatedly cleaned (very carefully) the contact surfaces for the electrical connections to the Lexmark's cartridge but with no success. Is it worth trying to get it properly opened up to follow wires around to see if there are any bad or open connections? There don't seem to be any electrical connections to the Epson's cartridge but fitting a new one hasn't helped so maybe I'd have to dig around the connections to the print head itself. What do you think?
It's not worth paying anyone to fix them but the loss of the 600 would be a problem for my dinosaur with 98! Glad to hear about the E92 working with 95 and 98, thank you Eagle402 - I hope that you're right because I might just have to take the risk and buy one in Makro before the last two are sold.
You can confidence check me on the Windows 98/Epson compatibility via the well known search outboard ! I am 100% confident though. As printers are effectively free (you're paying for the super-expensive ink cart's of course) these days I wouldn't bother fannying around with circuitry - I would just buy the new printer. However, the fact that the fault affects both printers is concerning. Did you try deleting all printer drivers and then re-installing the Epson driver ?
Also - if you want colourfast documents then don't bother with the dirt-cheap aftermarket cartridges/filling kits. The faux-Canon ones often don't mention that you have to prise the 'sim' off the originals and attach it to the new ones for example !
Hi again,Eagle402. I haven't uninstalled the printer drivers on the old machine because (it's a tough life out here!) I've been running in and out in 33șC trying to clean a pile of eucalyptus pollen/fallen flowers out of my pool and sweating like a rapist throughout the process. I'm sort of convinced that it's a local, perhaps printhead, problem in both cases - it certainly must be something like that in the Lexmark because of its continued failure under local control. The Lexmark has only ever had own-brand ink so it would seem unlikely that blockage could occur simultaneously in all three jets so I think it's likely to be electrical. I'm increasingly fancying the idea of opening it up on the basis that, if I can't fix it or if I break it then I can remove the scanner bulb because my father-in-law wants one for another highly favoured printer in UK! Once it's a pile of bits then I won't mind quite so much to throw it out!
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