Epson P9800 Repair

[HandleyPhoto]

Hello,

Acquired a free Epson 9800 and free ink for it as the previous owner didn't want to go through the trouble of trying to fix it. He hadn't used it in quite a while and suspected that it would need to be thoroughly cleaned.

I began by pulling the lines to remove air bubbles as well as clearing the head using Piezoflush and distilled water. After making sure the head was completely cleared I ran several power cleanings and test prints and got some ink coming through on a test print, however eventually the ink stopped coming through all together. Additionally the maintenance cart didn't seem as full as it should have been after a couple power cleanings. I'm pretty perplexed as to what the problem could be as it doesn't seem to be a print head issue. It could be that I'm not pulling the lines carefully enough but I doubt it as I couldn't find any air pockets.

Attached is a picture of my manual nozzle check, instead of improving after the power cleaning it instead got even worse which I've never seen happen. Also I should note that I am using the ink provided with the printer.

I can't continue troubleshooting till tomorrow as I need to reset my maintenance cartridge because it thinks it is empty(greedy Epson ), so I figured I would post to see if anyone had any suggestions on what might be causing this.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated - Jacob

 

[koraks]

I think the 9800 is from the same generation as my 3880 (more or less) and that would mean you can probably get a resetter for the maintenance cartridge chip. Get one of those, then get another maintenance cartridge and this will allow you to alternate between both of these indefinitely, while swapping out the internals for cotton wool or sanitary pads or something. This should make the reconditioning process a little less painful.

As to the seemingly odd behavior of problems getting worse after a power cleaning: I've had that happen on my 3880 as well. In my case, it turned out that the capping station and pump assembly were the problem. The power cleaning cycle relies on positive pressure on the ink channels, but also negative pressure being applied to the plenum of the print head. This happens at the capping station, where the head rests on a rubber-lined pad with some suction tubes attached at the bottom. This capping station assembly is a replaceable part that you can buy from a variety of outlets, including in China (it's quite cheap).

Replacing this capping station did not help in my case, however (in fact, the original capping station can be cleaned quite well by soaking it in water with some alcohol, windex etc.) I found that I needed to disassemble the pump assembly below the capping station and clean it out. During cleaning cycles, ink is pulled out from the head through the capping station and discharged into the maintenance cartridge. However, there's a sort of chute/orifice below the capping station that tends to get clogged with caked ink residue. Once this gets bad enough, the suction pump above the maintenance cart can no longer apply suction to the ink head and the power cleaning won't work. What happens at that point is that ink being pushed out of the head just collects on top of the capping station, drying out there. This will make matters worse rather than better and this can explain the behavior that you're seeing.

So the good news is that there's a chance you can get this fixed by yourself. The bad news is that this takes considerable disassembly of the printer. My 3880 is evidently a lot more manageable than a big 9800, but I suspect the construction is similar. You need to remove all covers and the user interface module so you can access the internals, and then work your way into the head cleaning/maintenance cart area. I found one or two usable YouTube videos that helped me navigate through my 3880; I suspect similar videos are available for the 9800 that show the order of disassembly. It takes a little courage and perseverance to do this, but if you have some experience repairing equipment, it should be feasible. Take lots of photos while you're taking it apart so you know what goes where when you put it back together.

Good luck and I hope you'll get it fixed!

 

[HandleyPhoto]

Thank you for the response and the lead on the capping station. I did end up finding a channel with several videos overviewing repair on a 7800 which will translate well to my 9800. Ran out of piezoflush so I won't attempt the repair until I get more in the mail, but I'll come back for an update when the printer works !

 

[HandleyPhoto]

Managed to get the front cover off and both the capping station and flushing box off. When pushing piezoflush through the tubes behind the capping station it seemed to come out into the maintenance cart, however the tubes still looked visually blocked so I might have to do a few more passes. Is there any danger to running the printer while the front cover is off?

 

[koraks]

Is there any danger to running the printer while the front cover is off?

No, it's not a problem as long as you are careful not to damage the drive mechanics on the side and any of the quite sensitive encoder wheels.

When pushing piezoflush through the tubes behind the capping station it seemed to come out into the maintenance cart, however the tubes still looked visually blocked so I might have to do a few more passes.

Yes, or maybe do some additional disassembly to be able to more thoroughly clean around these parts. That was what I found to be necessary and indeed quite effective.

 

[HandleyPhoto]

When you mean the pump assembly do you mean the part that the tubes go through before going to the maintenance tank? Kind of looks like a small motor?

 

[koraks]

Yes, exactly; that part. That's what clogged on my machine. My recollection of how I cleaned it is quite vague; I only recall it was really easy and didn't cost much time or effort once I had worked my way to that part.

 

[HandleyPhoto]

I took apart the part you described and cleaned it but unfortunately no ink is flowing while cleaning. The disassembly was much harder then anticipated and I'm not sure if I even put the pump back together right.

The interior of the pump was basically the tube that goes to the maintenance tank in a loop and then a weight that spins in order to try and suck the liquid in? The tube for sure has no blockages however I'm still stuck in the same place as before. Any suggestions? From what I can tell it sounds like an air pump problem which sounds like I'll need to order some parts anyway. :/

 

[koraks]

Yes, your description sounds recognizable. In my case the upper part/orifice of that snail tube/pimp thing was pretty badly clogged.

Does pressure build on the ink channels when you turn on the machine? It's the pump that makes the repeated whirly kind of sound (a bit like a small mammal being choked or something; it's always a kind of pathetic sound) that builds the positive pressure on the ink channels.

 

[HandleyPhoto]

Been quite a while, finally had the money to buy a whole new cleaning station — which includes the capping station, motor, etc. (everything to the right of the flushing box). However, I'm still not able to get anything to come through the print head while its running. The printer has been sitting off for a while so I made sure to pull fresh ink through the lines as well as push distilled water through the print head to make sure that it wasn't clogged. Still, when I go to run a nozzle check nothing comes out. Could this be caused by a misalignment of the dampers and the print head? Grasping at straws as to what the problem is :/

 

[koraks]

Sorry to hear that; couldn't say off the bat what the problem is. Do you see any improvement over the initial attempts, or no change at all?

 

[HandleyPhoto]

I saw no change until this morning, unfortunately a change for the worse though maybe its for the better. I got the error code 00010037 this morning when turning on the printer. Though before this I was still getting no ink during nozzle checks or any coming into the maintenance tank during cleaning.

At least I have an error code to work with now where before I had nothing to go on. Seems like this points to the problem being electrical in nature, going to check the print head ribbon cable after breakfast.

 

[HandleyPhoto]

Took the ribbon cable out and there was ink and a short, ordering a new ribbon cable and I guess I'll update when I have it. I'm hoping this will fix the issue but I was still having problems before this error so who knows