So I have an Epson printer that I’d like to either get a repairman to take a look at or take it to a repair place.
I have no experience on this, never had any serious problems with printers before I bought this expensive ass (and relatively new) Epson hunk of shit.
I’ve tried talking to Epson, as it was something I bought outside of Taiwan (China, Taiwans store is so tin pot they didn’t have the model in question) they just told me to sod off.
Anyone ever had to do something like this before? Just thought I’d make a post asking the resident experts before I hit up google maps.
its only a few years old, very little wear and tear, otherwise I would just bin it.
Without knowing the model number, I don’t think you’ll get much help here. But you could try some of the small repair shops.
Mind you, one guy (an IT geek) taught me how to clean my operational Brother printer. Let me say because of how well I did at cleaning it, it is non-functional now. Well, about 10 years+ old. So I think I’m SOL on that one.
Printers are sold at a loss because companies make their money back with ink sales. Printers are thus disposable products. The parts inside are proprietary and in general, not user serviceable.
It is more worth it to buy a new one. A repair tech may be able to fix something mechanical for a couple thousand but you will spend more than the retail price of the product if they have to do any board level repair.
Is it an inkjet printer and the printer nozzle is completely clogged up? Only remedy is to change the print head, and as Epson’s print head is a part of the printer unlike say HP or Canon where the print head is a part of the cartridge and is replaced whenever you replace the cartridge, as far as I know Epson print heads aren’t really available. Yes ink jets suck ass and you really have to keep printing at least a page per day or else it clogs up to the point it’s unrecoverable (yes this applies to those more expensive Epson inkjets that comes with a continuous ink system built in).
If it’s a color laser and the print quality is crap, it could be the image drum. Have a HP printer that prints maybe every other line and changing the image drum fixed it. The drum need not be genuine part (the printer will warn you but won’t really do anything else, and you can turn that warning off). You don’t clean the image drum, you will render it non functional.
If it’s anything else, like bad motherboard, etc. get a new printer. These things aren’t made to be durable. You want durable printer, you want the kind that print shops use, but in general laser printers are more durable. They tend to have parts that are more easily replaceable because they are used in office environments where thousands of pages of stuff is printed per day.
There are 2 problems. There is a clog somewhere which is stopping me from using high quality mode.
But the bigger problem is it just shuts off a couple minutes after being switched on, so its completely unusable in its current state and theres nothing else i can do myself.
Yes it was one of those fancy new ones with replaceable ink.
I was selling a ton of art prints a couple of years ago and you need legit non fading inks for that. Meaning, official cartridges. They don’t last long and they cost a bomb.
So I bought one of these to counter that cost. Well it turns out I indeed did save money on inks because this expensive piece of shit broke before I even used up a single container of it.
Yea these ones require even more upkeep, prone to clogging it seems.
I won’t buy Epson again. My previous canon was a cheap piece of crap but gave me zero problems. I’ll be going back to canon, if they had one available at the time I bought this I would have gone for that.
Contacted another repair shop, they said the same thing. “its from China, computer says no”
Its not so much that its from China, its that Taiwan is such a small tin pot market that they didn’t, and still don’t (epson anyway) sell a model here that uses professional level non fading inks so I had to order it from elsewhere. Won’t be doing that again.
What kind of artwork are you printing, and is this something a color laser can print? Color laser is non fading. They also give adequate result on normal papers… Inkjet looks like poop smear on normal papers.
I believe they make non fading inkjet inks for Epson printers, but those unfortunately clog easier unless you are printing basically nonstop. I think it looks like this:
Yea you gotta use art paper. Finding that in Taiwan is another ballache however…
Inkjets are good, they do a good job. Most people wouldn’t even know about the long lasting ink. Or ever need to use it. So buying cheap knock off inks is totally fine.
I didn’t notice either, until I hung something on the wall and noticed after a few months the sun had warped the colour of it. So if you are selling stuff you need the long lasting canon ‘chroma life’ or epson ‘claria’ ink.
Used to be there’s a bunch of vendors selling Epson inks, be it the normal cheap dye based ones, or the pigment based inks. The pigment based ink is not without drawback like I said, they last long, and is water resistant, but thing clogs up the nozzle and your printer is basically junk. The dye based ink is bad enough already.
Seriously, color laser prints, while not looking as good as inkjet prints, are water and light resistant even on normal paper.
If it’s artwork you use for yourself, might be better to just get a print shop to print it. They will use commercial printers that have none of the headache of home printers.
You can usually buy Canon printers pretty cheap, ~$40 USD. It is logically horrendous but when I did use a printer, when the ink wore out I just replaced the whole printer as the cartridges are the same price and that only makes sense if you don’t accidentally order the wrong ones, which you will. So in the long run, new printer every time.
That’s really unsustainable. This kind of business model should be banned. I imagine million of tons of e waste are printers.
But also Canon (and I think HP) print head are part of the cartridge, meaning they get refreshed every time you change. Epson however are built into the printer, and you can’t get new print heads. It means if the print head dies, the whole printer is garbage.
I had the same problem with my canon when I first move here, a lot of the household printers are location locked. I work in the print industry (mostly wide format unto 5m) but I do have 3 printers at home 2 Epson and 1 Brother. Like you with Epson I was burned with Canon so I wont touch them with a bargepole, I also found the Canon difficult to profile as it kept shifting.
Anyway back on point
Firstly do you have the model number, it helps to know what we are working with (if its above sorry I missed it).
This sounds like an over heating problem, either mechanical or electrical, or it could just well be the waist ink container is full and it’s turning its self off to prevent more damage.
A few things to look out for, any error message flash on the screen before it shuts off (or light flashes if no screen), any strange noises when you turn it on from the print head as it resets, can you here the print head purge and reload with ink when turned on?
Just a few questions to start with, I will get back with some thoughts about the printing and paper issues later as I’m working at the moment (acutely prepping some files ready to print).
I don’t know about you but waste ink container shouldn’t be filling if the printer is not that old, but then they have waste ink counters that “runs out” kinda quickly too. Printers are basically manufactured e waste at this point.
What I mean is, like chips in printer cartridge where the cartridge seems to “run out” well before the thing is even empty, the waste ink container also “fills up” according to the computer before it’s actually full.
Maybe that’s one thing to try, is reset those chips and see if the printer turns on again. But a lot of printers (Epsons especially) make it damn near impossible to do this, or even empty that container as they are buried deep inside the machine.
Stops you getting Air in the lines, this can lead to ink setting, blocking the lines and jets.
Better to have a little space than to have an overflow or a spill when removing, this is thick sticky waist ink that can get in the mechanisms or block the printheads.
They try to make it difficult because people have half an idea and no understanding will try to save a few quid and bugger up the printer.
Enough of this rabbit hole I have work to prep and send to the printers.
I’m not sure if you work in the printer industry or something.
The real reason is all money. They give away the printers and overcharge you on the cartridge. They want you to keep spending money on consumables. What should happen is they make the printer and sell it for what it costs and plus some profit, and then make the cartridge cheap. Then they will have few reasons to lock down self repairs. Color laser for example, are really easy to get apart and change parts out, for example Brother color lasers. Everything comes off without tools/screws, down to the image drum and belt (and by extension waste toner container). While HP isn’t the best they still come apart relatively easily. I was given a HP color laser and the print was all screwed up, but once I replaced it with a third party image drum, everything works right immediately.
Lasers are also much less likely to lock anything down, and even third party parts are allowed, though you do get a nag screen (but the option to turn them off exists in the driver). The printer costs in excess of 10,000nt but I think they are a better investment if you are looking to print artwork. Inkjets should be sold under similar models.
