In this article, we will try to answer 2 questions that are of interest to many users of Epson printers and MFPs.
1) How to unlock the carriage on Epson Expression Home XP-33, XP-103, XP-203, XP-207, XP-303, XP-306, XP-403, XP-406
Especially for those who do not know what a printer carriage is and where it is located, we have prepared several photos.

Here it is the printer carriage, this is the most important element in any printer, because it contains: the print head, the board for determining the cartridges, the cartridges themselves, as well as the encoder responsible for positioning the carriage.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to pull the cartridges out of the printer before they run out, but this is not always easy to do, since some devices do not have special buttons for this, allowing you to bring the carriage to the replacement position. Here, as a rule, in such cases, as well as if it is necessary to make any repairs to the printer, for example, remove the print head, it is necessary to unlock the carriage so that it can be freely moved by hand when the printer is turned off.
It is very easy to do this, there are several ways to unlock the printer carriage, we will show you how to do this using the Epson Expression Home XP-103 device as an example.
- The first way: turn on the printer, and when the carriage starts moving and is out of the parking space, turn off the power to the printer, for example, by pulling the plug out of the socket.
- The second method: I personally like it much more, because the printer does not even need power to unlock the carriage. There is a small white gear next to the carriage, just turn it down a little with a screwdriver, and after that the carriage will be unlocked, and you can safely slide it out of the parking space. If, after you have turned the roller, the carriage is still not unlocked, move it to the right until it stops, then turn the same gear again with a screwdriver, after which the carriage will definitely be unlocked.

2) How to Remove the Print Head from Epson Expression Home XP-33, XP-103, XP-203, XP-207, XP-303, XP-306, XP-403, XP-406
Now that the carriage is unlocked and can be moved freely by hand, first make sure the printer is powered off again and press the power button to clear any residual electricity stored in the capacitors. Well, that's all, the printer is ready, and you can start removing the print head.
1) We extend the carriage to the position of replacing the cartridges, after the carriage is extended, first of all, it is necessary to remove the protective part on the left side of the carriage that covers the loops connected to the PG and the cartridge detection board.

Press the latch marked in the photo with a screwdriver and at the same time slide the plastic part that protects the cables up in the direction of the arrow.

2) After the part covering the cables has been removed, it is necessary to disconnect the cable from the cartridge detection board.

To do this, hold it with your fingers, as shown in the photo, pry it with a screwdriver and carefully remove it from the connector.

3) Now you need to remove the cartridge detection board itself along with the plastic holder. Here, for those who have never done this and do not know how to carefully look and think, it can be difficult. It is necessary to press 2 latches on both sides of the cartridge detection board.

More precisely, you need to press one of the latches with a screwdriver and at the same time slightly move the definition board up, holding the contacts inside the carriage, in the same way on the other side.

Here they are, the same latches that hold the definition board in the carriage.

4) We have already got close to the print head itself. It remains to remove the last protective part, which is this time inside the carriage itself.

We hook it with a screwdriver, depressing the latch, and remove this part, as shown in the photo.

5) Now, when nothing else interferes, you can remove the printhead itself, for this you need to unscrew the three screws holding it in the carriage, marked in the photo.

6) We remove the print head up, put it in such a position as shown in the photo and carefully disconnect the cable by simply pulling it out of the connector

Well, actually, that's all, pg is removed! If you found this article with the aim of flushing the pg, my advice to you is better not to, especially if you have not done this before. To get started, try ordering a special set for gentle cleaning of the print head, it's much easier, and most importantly safer, because you don't need to remove the PG to flush it with a special flushing set, and you wash it without risking breaking the printer.

Installation of CISS on Epson XP-207

The principle of installing CISS for Epson XP-207 is no different from other models of the XP series.
First you need to fill in the ink, pump it, and then install it in the printer. Let's take a closer look in this article

The first thing you need to do is pour ink into the donors, for this we fill it in as shown in Figure 1.

If there are funnels in the kit, then you can use them.

Please note that if you do everything correctly, the ink should be in the following state in the donor - in the large compartment, the bulk of the ink, in the small ink should be a few millimeters above the level of the beginning of the partition from below:

There is no need to pour ink to the brim. Leave about two centimeters from the edge.

We take rubber plugs and plug the filling holes, Figure 5.

To make the donors operational, open the air inlet of the small compartment and insert the air filter into it.
The filter has two nozzles - one thin, the second thicker. Insert the filter tightly, until it stops with a thick pipe into the air supply hole.

The next step is to ink the loop and the CISS cartridges, for this we take out the plugs and pump them with a syringe, it is better to lift the holes for the plugs with a syringe in order to pump out the maximum amount of air, it is desirable that there would be no air at all.

It is also desirable to do this: for this, we stick a syringe without a needle into the nozzle and pump out air until ink appears, Figure 8. This should be done carefully so as not to damage the rubber seal.

As a result, you should get as in Figure 9, it is desirable to pump out as much air as possible. Ideally, there would be no air at all in the CISS.

In the new Epson XP series in CISC printers and MFPs, the contacts are longer than on previous models, so we recommend trimming the tabs that attach the CISS chip to the cartridges, Figure 10.

Now let's move on to installing the CISS on the printer, we installed it on a new printer, so we need to carry out the initial initialization, turn on the printer and the carriage went to the ink replacement position.
If you already have a cartridge inserted and the initial initialization has been completed, then you need to bring the carriage to the ink replacement position using the computer driver.

We will install the CISS in the turned off printer. To install the CISS cartridges in the printer, it is necessary to push the stopper inside the printer.

We extend the carriage with the print head to the position for replacing ink cartridges and insert the CISS cartridges until they click, Figure 12.

In order to fix the cable, we shift the carriage to the left, install a T-shaped mount, and insert the cable into it, Figure 13.

We park the carriage and see that the cable does not interfere with the movement of the carriage.
Fasten the loop retainer, Figure 14.

We turn on the printer, if necessary, press the button on the chip to reset one or more colors.

We start the print job, Figure 15.

If you see that the train interferes with the carriage, you can loosen it a little.

The installation of the CISS is completed, we recommend that you do two cleanings of the print head.
The air holes in the donors must be open when pumping the CISS and operating the printer in the future. We recommend installing air filters in them.
If the printer has been idle for a long time, then the print head may have dried up, you can purchase.
If you have problems with the correct configuration of the CISS, you can see articles and.

A very interesting topic, isn't it? Many copies are broken, many different assumptions and reasoning. However, I have a printer ( Epson L800) worked out a huge resource (about 18 liters of ink for almost 5 years). What is depressurization, I did not know. Although I am, in general, an ordinary user. I didn’t shake over the printer, it prints, and that’s okay. But, of course, sometimes I lubricated it with some kind of oil from a can, may the service workers forgive me for such words :)

I started cleaning with or without. I didn’t do deep ones, well, I made sure that the ink tap was constantly open. During periods without printing, I wrapped it in a 120 liter trash bag (from dust). And in this form, he stood in the offseason. Some movements were made halfway through the run, I will write about this in detail in the next review.

Where did it all come from? One of the readers of my site wrote to me that in the west there are no models for 6 colors with CISS. All officially announced models are four-color. Malaysian and Indian models sold on Amazon are not taken into account. Of course, I am not an expert on the European and American markets, but a superficial search did not really reveal 6-color models.

Further, a seditious assumption was made: 4-color models are more reliable, because there are different inks. The thought is definitely not for the faint of heart. I have always considered original 6-flower ink to be a very good product. Excellent color, good lightfastness. What can I say, I always advise original inks to everyone who does not print a lot.

But the pen pal was very eloquent in his arguments (but he got through - he is a Siberian, they are stubborn!). And actually, after a while, the thought stuck in my head: who said that Epson makes super ink, especially for emerging markets?

All information described below is a fantasy work of fiction about parallel universes, and has nothing to do with Seiko Epson Corporation.

Epigraph:

Enough simplicity for every sage. Now I understand that any crazy idea can lead to interesting results. And what you will do with these results is completely unclear. If initially the experiment was intended for lighting, then, of course, it would scan and photograph everything that is possible. And so, it was a cabal, for fun. Everything that was interesting I photographed myself, what I didn’t do, alas, I have to take a word for it.

Again, I do not pursue the goal of exposing the evil bourgeois who staged a world conspiracy. Just for people with a brain, I think the published information will be useful, whether they agree with it or not.

If you throw back the heads clogged with all sorts of incomprehensible ink, and another huge layer of PGs killed while trying to reanimate 1-2 nozzles, then there are only two external signs of death of modern PGs.

Death of PG #1- this is very popular on the L800 and is called "head depressurization".
Death of PG #2- very popular on expensive large-format pigment machines from Epson Corporation. The story is usually very banal, in the evening everything was printed perfectly, in the morning there is no whole color channel.

So, for starters, the popular question: why does the print head depressurize. The answer is simple, the “nozzle” plate is peeled off from the elements of the ink channels. More precisely, it does not completely peel off, but the sealant is torn. Then the ink seeps into each other. The most classic case for the L800 is mixing cyan and cuff.

The first symptoms of depressurization

Progressive depressurization

There are many assumptions: a very powerful pump, bad dampers, etc. But there are very, very few votes, what can the original ink just not fit? After all, the print head was not developed specifically for the L800.

We attached the cans from the side and voila. Sales are growing, the percentage of defects under warranty is sane. And how many carcasses of printers lie in the closets, sorry, it's not our Japanese business :)

If this happened to one of the suppliers of alternative ink, it would instantly fly out of the market. And here the company, you can’t argue, couldn’t be better? Again, with models for 4 colors, even in Russia there is no such general percentage of marriage. And by the way, they have a bigger guarantee, and the declared resource, although the print head is clearly simpler.

I will try to simulate the process of peeling off the nozzle plate using a simple household example.
It is easy to draw an analogy with some brands of glue for thermal guns, it sticks in such a way that you can tear off the figs, but a drop of alcohol is enough, and the entire glue line just bounces off the part with a crack. Doesn't something like this process take place in the bowels of the printheads?

Correspondence with the Siberian sluggishly lasted more than six months, I have my own work. Well, there is no time to do tests. But as always, the case helped, they presented me with a dead l800, I don’t know what was poured into it (most likely intek), but there were no half of the nozzles. He died in the office, due to standing on the window in the sun without work for a year. Forgotten about him corny. After flushing, only the extreme channels came to life in full, but that was enough. It was after this that the idea arose to conduct a test.

And why do you need it?

The answer is simple, I want to get a larger Epson. The prices for them have become not humane, but in terms of reliability there is a lot of negativity on the network. Before spending my hard-earned money with many zeros, I decided to understand the issue more thoroughly.

Cyan from the L800 was bought for inexpensively - it was poured into the live extreme channel. In the next one, as it was spent, everything I had: DCTEC (it was generally like shoe polish - they changed the batch, which let the flakes in the cold) and revkol. All other colors (tanks) were filled with yellow disitek, there was a lot of it :)

The test was that when I was not too lazy, I ran a script that printed test pages from these two channels. Type 20 A4 sheets and cleaning in queue. And so in a circle, printing in RPM matte paper. The paper was understandably inserted in the usual most deshmanskaya ala snow maiden.

Well, the result was not long in coming. After about 4 months and 5 bottles of the original, the head lost its tightness between the channels.

I understand perfectly well that the test is not complete, not clean, etc. But from the moment of depressurization of the steam generator, everything was filmed for me. Dismantling the PG - it was interesting to me, I filmed everything. I think you will not find such detailed photos. On the Internet, a lot of nonsense has been written about Epson printheads, many do not even understand how they work in detail. I wanted to close this issue for myself once and for all.

PG from Epson L800

Remove filters

Removing the seal on the ink channels

In this form, steam generators are cleaned in case of especially severe blockages

Hardly remove the connector board

As you can see, nozzles work in pairs on colors, i.e. 6 colors and 3 boards with piezo elements.

Removing the nozzle plate

It is useless to look for traces of sealant or anything else on this plate, after a drop of washing and rubbing, it is cleaned to a shine without any trace of ink exposure. By the way, traces of old ink are very well eaten and are not washed off when washing the steam generator. After I rubbed the plate with my finger, it became a mirror. So even dropsy of the SG “silts up” during annual downtime. Those. the colors used to print the tests were washed out with warm water, and what was before clogging was not removed without mechanical action.

Removing the nozzle plate

The nozzle plate is made of a non-magnetic alloy, on the one hand there is clearly some kind of yellow coating. On the other hand, under normal lighting, it looks like stainless steel. But I obviously fell into a yellow tint, I didn’t want to change the light to the usual one, it was filmed as it is. If you look closely at the foreground, you can see traces of ink exposure. But the color of the plate from the pg side is metallic.

PG inspection

Wow, the membrane of the piezoelectric elements is eaten up like acid, of course, I touched it a little when I removed the plate, my hands are still crooked: (But look at the next frame.

PG inspection

I took a toothpick and began to poke hard on the membrane in the adjacent channels. Everything is fine, dense and very soft material (similar to silicone), it is difficult to break through. And in the extreme, he just touched it, as the ashes all crumbled. Well I do not know. If I drove away the acid, and here is the original ink, and not for a very long period of time. By the way, in this frame we managed to choose the wavelength well, and the sealant began to “phosphorize” in white. There are no obvious violations anywhere.

coarse channel plates

I show large channels of ink approach to nozzles, for those who have not yet understood, these thin ribs of adjacent channels are glued with sealant (it was well illuminated), the thickness of the rib is probably about 0.1 mm. And any violation of the tightness will cause a disruption in normal operation, at least a kosojet with the mutual influence of nozzles of different colors on each other. And in the worst case, a mixture of different colors. The sealant is tricky, more like glass or UV cured glue, very hard, and very thin layer, I think only a few microns thick. I did not see any traces of detachment from the base of the steam generator between the channels. Most likely, the adhesive layer “snaps off” as in the version with hot melt adhesive. Although I tried soaking a couple more heads in solvent, acetone, etc. I was unable to dissolve this sealant. The nozzle plate sat like a glove.

Another view of the channel plate.

Shot at an angle, and in a different light to highlight the height of the ribs. It is very funny to read about the masters who write that they smeared it with glue and stuck the nozzle plate back to the channel. It is not realistic to glue a “nozzle” plate in place, and it becomes a nozzle plate only when, after gluing, the nozzles are burned with a laser. Those. first, the apparatus reads the location of all nozzles on the rulers, then, in one technological operation, a plate is glued and nozzles are formed. Those who like to talk about picalitra, I advise you to pay attention to the size of the supply channels. In fact, Epson heads pump anything through themselves. The physical dimensions of the channels and nozzles allow you to work with fairly large fractions.

We cut the PG.

So we got to the piezo elements.

We cut the PG.

We remove the forming channels of the print heads and see the plates of the piezo elements. A kind of pushers that push ink through the channel plates.

We remove the piezo elements.

Next, please pay attention, these are fragments of the membrane, they cover the piezocrystals. This is an important point, poorly covered on the Internet. It is the membrane that receives tens of kilohertz pokes from piezoelectric elements, and so on for days in a row, without breaks and holidays. I advise you to remember this moment!

We remove the piezo elements.

Here is a frame showing that the film over the piezo elements is a monolithic whole over the entire area of ​​the PG. From above, it is simply pressed down by a channel plate.

We remove the piezo elements.

But the heart of the printheads is an aluminum plate with piezo crystals. Crystals for two color channels are installed on one plate at once. The decoder/driver chip is located on the same plate.

We remove the piezo elements.

Here is a larger one, you can see that the plate is under one of the poles of the supply voltage. The crystals are very fragile and are not intended for crooked hands with one screwdriver in the arsenal :)

Channel plate.

We return to the channel plate, more precisely to its reverse side. It's like the other side of the moon, not illuminated at all. There are no descriptions or photographs on the Runet. By the way, it also cost me a lot of effort to get sane photos. We look at the holy of holies from Epson. We see the channels formed for the piezo element, they all go in a row. But the ink supply channels come from different sides, alternately for one or another color. Of all the tricks, this is a kind of water seal at the color inlet (a small oval horseradish). It forms a “flow” of ink, i.e. first, the ink goes over it, and then it enters the channel for the piezo element, it is necessary so that, with a sharp blow of the piezo, the ink would fly into the nozzle, where the hydraulic resistance is much lower.

Ink entry into hydraulic locks.

Here is another unique photo, we managed to catch the angle of the entrance channels to the water seals. This is a slot at the base and there is an ink inlet, then the ink goes around the protrusion shown in the previous photo and goes along the menbran along the piezo element.

View of the entry channels to the hydraulic seals on the channel plate. Here we managed to catch the thin walls of the input channels, which can be seen in the previous frame.

Channel plate hydraulic gates.

This is an attempt to shoot at the end, unfortunately this is the limit for me, I shoot portraits, I have almost nothing for macro. Capturing detail on a 0.4mm edge is extremely difficult.

Structural diagram of PG Epson.

I am citing a block diagram of the PG from Epson, by the way, it is like two drops of water similar to Canon, with the only difference being that less resistant materials are used for thermal printing. Instead of a stainless steel nozzle plate, a layer of varnish, instead of a piezo element, a heating element under a layer of varnish.

1) nozzle plate

2) sealant to the nozzle plate

3) membrane for waterproofing piezoelectric elements

4) inlet liquid reducer (hydro lock)

5) piezoelectric element

6) housing forming channels for ink

I hope these photos will be useful to many for understanding the principles of PG operation. As well as my assessment of many common misconceptions regarding the resource of work, flushing, etc. etc. But this article is not about that :)

Why did I bring so many photos here. On the fact of inspection, I draw two important conclusions.

1) I did not find peeling of the sealant between the channels, most likely it is the “snapping” of part of the segments from the nozzle plate. Those. it is simply not possible to exfoliate such a micron and durable layer of sealant.

2) In the channel on the original ink, the tactile membrane has become more fragile. Understandably, a toothpick is not an accurate measuring instrument. But if in neighboring channels, it also easily broke, I would not focus on this.

And let's suppose that in one sunny country in a large corporation there are two divisions that make ink and printheads. And like any big company, they don't like each other. Considering that they are the axis around which everything revolves in this company. What came first the chicken or the egg? Well, at least this is a more pleasant theory than the assumption that the ink is made more aggressive on purpose.

Why do printheads die on Epson printers:

Death of PG #1

I believe that it is the aggressiveness of the original ink for the L800 that contributes to the occurrence of this defect. With minimal physical impact, the delamination zone will expand until the channels are completely mixed. Because the physical structure of the print head is absolutely the same, we conclude that cyan is the most aggressive ink, it is from this channel that in most cases the color is mixed.

The aggressiveness of ink for L800 relative to L100 can be easily explained by their improved lightfastness, at least twice. Most likely, some more aggressive (and cheap) thinners have been added. But who tested them for the GHG resource. Well, or experienced, the guarantee goes, and okay. Not surprisingly, the nozzle plate also “clicks off”.

The release of printheads using this technology (probably not very expensive) justifies itself on the ink of the Claria series, or the 664 series. But for the 673 series, such an increase in production volumes is deplorable. But since 673 ink is not supplied to civilized countries, the risk for the corporation is justified.

And actually, from where the roots of this problem grow, because I described only the results. As always, everything depends on increasing profits and production volumes. Let's take a look at the top of the "channel" plate.

Doesn't anyone have a question? why such an extensive network of edges? Wouldn't it be easier to make a smooth plate and smear it well with glue? A nozzle plate glued to this channel would definitely hold more securely. Certainly it is. But, I assume that in production the “nozzle” plate is already formed on the assembled PG by burning nozzle holes of the required diameter with a laser. And since you want to do it quickly, well, let's say 100 heads per minute. It was necessary to create an extensive network of thermal barriers in order not to overheat the lower membrane. The reverse side of this solution is a very small contact area (well, as it were, this is why it is a thermal barrier). That is precisely because of this, when exposed to certain chemical compounds, “snapping off” from such thin ribs occurs. Among other things, the operation of gluing (welding) on ​​such areas in itself may contain a manufacturing defect - which, after factory testing, appears in various Chinese stores.

By the way, on PG for expensive plotters, the “nozzle” plate is ceramic. It is glued centered in place. But this requires a more precise location of the nozzle channels on the SG itself. Those. on cheap heads, automation looks at how the channels are located and burns holes in the nozzle plate in place. Those. the initial assembly accuracy is quite low. You can do everything quickly and cheaply. But in expensive PGs, when the holes are already cut, it is necessary that the assembly be very accurate. According to fragmentary information from Epson, the beating accuracy of its machines is about 2 microns.

By the way, the answer to the popular question about the pigment. For high yields (square kilometers of print), only a ceramic "nozzle" plate will endure the abrasive effect of the pigment. Those. you can pour pigment into the L800 without question. But you will get a kosostream faster than on dropsy.

Yes, of course, I also heard the theory that second-rate GHGs are supplied to emerging markets. I think this idea is not devoid of rational grain. You just need to understand that the second grade is usually associated with marriage in the first period of operation (primary failure curve). Those. Plugged it in, broke after a week. I think in such cases the PG will replace everything for you under warranty.

This marriage is the culling of technological batches, when the percentage of marriage is higher than those. tolerances (usually 1-2%), but in all developing countries it is possible to deliver with a defect rate of 10-15%. The main thing is that service centers can cope.

And now the final thought, for deep reflection, well, the L800 is for the “rogue” with ink in jars, what to take from them. And here we go to point number 2.

Death of PG #2

But is the low survivability of the GHGs of modern large-format printers from a well-known corporation related to the same factor? New improved pigment ink. Moreover, and the company itself does not even deny it, it makes different inks for different regions. Explaining this with different color preferences of different nationalities.

After all, just think about how convenient it is, the heads are stamped by one factory. Nothing specifically changes. But you can easily adjust the turnover of printers in each region. Because the cartridges have a regional binding.

How does the death of PG occur in the second type. We remember the membrane remember in the photographs?

But first, let's fast forward 15 years. The engineering service of a large corporation has created a prototype of the PG. In which she laid this very membrane. It was thick, you could pour anything on it, including solvents. She didn't care for that. But there was one drawback, a lot of strength was required to push through such a thick skin. Time passed, and a certain third force came running (let's say managers), and the managers said, we need crazy speed, so that everything would flash before our eyes.

What could be done for speed? That's right, increase the number of nozzles, and the speed of their work. They did so, but the pushers (piezo elements) turned out to be weak, I had to change the properties of this very membrane, it became softer and thinner.

Now, in the current realities, the cause of death No. 2 is the coarsening (loss of properties) of the membrane, it simply bursts at the points of impact of the piezoelectric elements. Further, ink enters the electronics, the driver burns out (well, or turns off). Everything happens in a hundred milliseconds.

The usual scenario of death, printed all day, turned off the printer. During the night, through a crack in the membrane, ink seeps onto the piezo elements, in the morning we press the print, clap - there is no channel. And everything seemed fine yesterday?

Only now I do not believe that in 10 years it was impossible to find a stable polymer with the necessary softness and resistance to various chemical compounds. Most likely, this feature has been turned into a boon for the corporation. For American markets, we supply inks that provide a sane period of operation for devices (otherwise they will be dragged through the courts).

For developing markets (where all the printers pour incomprehensibly), you can supply slightly corrected ink, which will perfectly roll back the warranty period, or even a couple of warranty periods. But who will spend so much time on the originals? Will flood the "compatible" will give full performance, and in a few months will take down your printer to a landfill. Confirming the well-known theory that any left ink kills the printer.

I think that having lost the battle with the “leftist” trying to put up a barrier in the form of tricky chips on cartridges. Epson decided to use its technology expertise to fight. And then a hundred Chinese with soldering irons in their teeth broke off. The firm began to control the lifetime of printing devices as it pleases, without being noticed and by a silent Japanese glanders.

Conclusions: Having meticulously studied the design of the Epson print head, I can say with great confidence that this is a very impressive product in terms of design simplicity and reliability. Every precaution has been taken to avoid clogging. In fact, the head is an L-shaped forward flow only about 0.5 mm thick, it should be easy to clean with standard tools. And in especially severe cases, it is easy to give in to washing with special means.

By the way, Epson also did a great job in terms of the length and constructive arrangement of channels and piezoelectric elements. Its printheads have become "short strokes", just like Canon's thermal inkjet PGs.
The dimensions of all channels up to the approach to the nozzle plate are huge (tenths of a millimeter). Automotive varnish can be driven through such sections if it is diluted thinner with a solvent :) And only the nozzle plate limits the size of the outlet nozzle by 10 times. But since the plate is very thin, the blockages on it are cleared with an elementary regular pump.

With the existing kinematic scheme, the SG failure can only be planned, or when it is developed beyond the reasonable service life of this class of devices (like mine, almost 18 liters of ink on a L800 household printer).

In terms of artistic reflections, it can be assumed that the corporation conducted research on the chemical composition of the most popular manufacturers of alternative inks. And a certain common denominator was found (usually a cheaper substitute for some kind of plasticizer or wetting agent). If it is present, the ink begins to adversely affect the elements of the PG (More precisely, glue or a membrane, there are simply no other bottlenecks !!). Unfortunately for us, the same component is found in the CYAN 673 series, thereby shortening the life of our beloved printers.

Assumptions:

1) I am not a fan of “conspiracy” conspiracies, but given that different inks are supplied for different markets, it is quite possible that old printer devices are being phased out of circulation.

2) When the printer is started, the countdown process starts on the original consumables.

3) You can extend the life of the PG by using inks that have the least effect on the elements of the print heads (sealant and membrane). No one has such statistics. And I think soon there will be a lot of speculation on this topic.

4) From the latest “gossip” - ammonia affects the L800 sealant. But these are only unconfirmed rumors from a couple of people (more precisely, different emails) who allegedly managed to peel off the nozzle plate by soaking it in ammonia for a long time. I soaked in strong organic solvents, takes nothing.

5) It is necessary to somehow develop a mechanism for launching and checking the warranty L800 without using original inks, at least Cyan 673 series.

What to do?

1) For those who are sitting on the original ink, replace the most aggressive cyan 673 series with the 664 series. There will be a loss in light fastness, but presumably this will significantly extend the life of the PG. Again, we change the original ink to the original.

2) When calculating depreciation costs for modern printers from Epson Corporation, when using original materials, only the warranty mileage should be taken into account.

3) For lovers of alternative ink, keep “your” statistics on what L800 works longer. I suspect that after the publication of this material, everyone is “resold” and rushes foaming at the mouth to prove that their ink is the most delicate and fluffy.

P.S. And after conducting this series of tests, I thought very hard. Recently, DCTec has a new series of EverNew inks, I have already printed - everything is fine. Same lightfastness as the original L800. I just wrote with boiling water :) But the question is, what will happen to the aggressiveness of this ink? Naturally, representatives of the company cannot clearly answer such questions. Those. again, like 5 years ago, you have to take risks. Last time I was very lucky with DCTec, I got on the right path, and without knowing grief I stomped along it for almost 5 years. In March, the high season begins, and it is necessary that the press is already working non-stop.

P.P.S. This article is a titanic work, which was inspired by especially persistent and corrosive readers. More than six months of time and a significant amount of money were spent on experiments and preparation for them. To obtain photographs, a special shooting technique was developed, when, by selecting the radiation length, it was possible to increase the contrast of the objects being photographed. All parts of the PG are in reality dark gray. The conclusions described in this article may not be accepted or even cause irritation. But I suggest respecting the unique “content” on the web. And at least give a link to the source. For copywriters, I immediately say what "Yandex - unique texts" is, I know :) Well, because. I am not the mouthpiece of official companies, there are a lot of typos in the text, I will correct it as time and effort.

Additions:

How come, you forgot the L1800 variant, also 6 colors. And it works great. No, I didn’t forget, I remember very well that PG was created there before historical materialism (compatible models 1410 1430 R380 R390 R360 R265 R260 R270 R380 R390). So if nothing has changed in production, then these GHGs are quite oaky. And by the way, the L1800 prints noticeably slower than the L800. Not many times, of course, but slower. Therefore, I do not see any "neskladuha" here. It is for this reason that the L1800 is guaranteed for 30,000 prints, and not 3,000 as for the L800. It is possible that such GHGs are no longer produced. Warehouses are being cleared.

31.01.2017

Several people have already promised to send dead PGs from different printers (including wide-format), no more !!!.
I still don’t have a research laboratory :) But as far as I can, I’ll shoot everything and put it on display.

28.01.2017

A popular question, well, the theory with aggressive cyan, but what about black? After all, the depressurization of black to yellow is in second place after cyan to the cuff. Yes, there are actually no difficulties with the answer here, I apologize for not immediately focusing attention. And so, the simplest experiment, a drop of original black ink, a glass of water, crex-pex-fex ...

Well, here it is for you and concentrated cyan mixed with black. You know, black dye is expensive. And cyan is cheap. So the “epsonies” are wandering around that got into black: (And then the black channel dies, because the same cyan is in it.

By the way, the black one from L100 (664 series) is made on the basis of a cuff, you can make sure by dropping it into a glass of water. It also looks like it would be nice to pour black into the L800 from the 664 series.

Read my reviews about printers and other equipment on mine stay tuned.

Before removing the Epson, T50, T59, TX650, TX659, P50, PX660, R290, R295, R270 printhead itself, you must first turn off the printer and unlock the carriage.

From the tools we need: a thin Phillips screwdriver, and a small home-made device for pressing the latches, from which you can make it yourself, in the end you should get something like that :)

There are two ways to unlock the carriage. With the printer turned on, you need to press the button with a drop once, while the printer carriage will go to the cartridge replacement position, after that we just have to turn off the printer. Now the carriage can be freely moved by hand.

But I personally prefer a more interesting way, this way allows you to unlock the Epson printer carriage without connecting power. You just need to turn the wheel on the left side of the printer a little, it is not difficult to reach it and turn it with your finger literally half a turn

After the carriage is unlocked, you can proceed directly to the removal of the PG itself. Next, I will try to describe in detail all the actions point by point:

1) Pull out the carriage, approximately in the middle of the printer
2) Now you need to remove the plastic element on the right side of the carriage, covering the cables connected to the PG and the cartridge detection board. In order to remove it, it is necessary to press the latch and slide the protective cover down, as shown in the photo.
3) After the protective cover covering the loops is removed, it is necessary to disconnect the loop from the cartridge detection board. To do this, pry off the cable with a screwdriver and, holding it with your finger, as shown in the photo, pull it out of the contact connector

4) After we have disconnected the cable from the cartridge detection board, we can proceed to remove the board itself. To do this, you need to press the two latches that are located on the back of the carriage. This is where a cunningly curved screwdriver comes in handy. Use a screwdriver to push the latch, and slightly slide one side of the cartridge detection board up. The latches are located at the back on both sides at a distance of about 1 cm from the edge
5) After the latches are released, the board can be freely removed upwards

How to remove the Epson print head?
This step is the most important in this process, all the previous steps that we did were done in order to remove the contact pad for the cartridges. The contact pad itself is held on by latches.

In these photos it is quite clear which side and in what place the latches of the contact pad are located. Now you have an idea where and how to press them. For convenient removal of the contact pad, you can use a homemade tool shown in the photo below:

This tool must be made of hard wire so that it does not bend during use.

I hope everything worked out for you, if not, ask questions.

In this short article, we'll show you how you can change print head(PG) on the MFP Epson TX410. So, on this MFP, the PG failed (Fig. 1).

We need to remove the old PG. First of all, turn off the MFP and be sure to pull out the power cable. Now we need to unlock the cartridge carriage. To do this, just turn this gear.

Move the carriage to the left. Take out the cartridges. Now we need to remove the protective plastic of the cables. Slightly bend the latch up and slide the plastic down.

Now we need to remove the second protective plate inside the carriage.

It's time to remove the contact group. To do this, pry off the latches (it is best to do this with something sharp and curved) on both sides of the carriage and pull the contact group up.

On the opposite side, the latch is in the same place.

So we have to remove these 3 elements.

Now we have access to all 3 screws that fasten the PG. We unscrew them.

Carefully take out the PG up and disconnect the cables.

Here are our 2 PGs: old and new.

We install a new PG by following this instruction in reverse order.