megan_stone Posted September 19, 2015 Share Posted September 19, 2015 <p>my epson 3800 is suddenly not printing. the ink is full and the paper goes through and the printer goes through the motion of a full print .. but the paper comes out blank. has anyone experienced this before? thank you </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
megan_stone Posted September 19, 2015 Author Share Posted September 19, 2015 <p>i ran a power clean and tried a print just now. I got a very very very faded b& w image with vertical lines… the image is in color. Not sure why it's printed in b&w .. i checked everything. Is something clogged? </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven_clark Posted September 19, 2015 Share Posted September 19, 2015 <p>The question may be: is anything NOT clogged.</p> <p>Given you lost whole banks of colors, I'd go through the motions of replacing the ink cartridges and just put the current ones back in. That should cycle the system and make sure there's ink in the tubes. Hopefully that's almost all you need, and you can just finish up with a cycle of nozzle checks and cleanings until you have your print head back.<br> If this happened after a long idle period you might have a print head that's clogged so hard you need to loosen it chemically, I'm sure there are people here who can give pointers on that, but I'd try reinserting cartridges first.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
megan_stone Posted September 19, 2015 Author Share Posted September 19, 2015 <p>the printer hasnt been in use for some time ... perhaps that's the reason?! when i don't intend on using it for a few months .. is it best to remove all ink cartridges and store them away ?</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilkka_nissila Posted September 20, 2015 Share Posted September 20, 2015 No, the printer should be stored so that all cartridges still have some ink. If you take out the cartridges and store it that way, the remaining ink in the print head will dry, clogging it. Ideally you should use the printer occasionally and not leave it unused for a long time. Personally I print at least once in two weeks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce_watson1 Posted September 20, 2015 Share Posted September 20, 2015 <p>Look up "pigment settling". What happened is you left the printer unused for so long that the pigment in the lines settled out. What "printed" when you tried to print, was just ink base, which is clear.</p> <p>Pull the ink carts, turn them upside down and shake them gently to mix everything again, and reinstall them. Then you may have to run a number of cleaning cycles to clear the ink lines. If you still get "weak" images, you'll have to replace all the carts with new ones.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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