Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

I killed my print head. It was clogged so I went about trying to
clean it out. Bad mistake. I guess I should have tried it when I was
not in a hurry and in a better mood. I used Windex which I have used
successfully before to clean heads with no problems. I used a
syringe to directly inject into the cart nipple. I was able to get
printing from some nozzles after my first try so tried cleaning a
little more. Same results. Tried again and it got worse. Used the
cleaning cycle for fun and got a few more nozzles to work. Tried
doing some regular printing and it went from bad to worse very
quuickly. Used the clean again and printed for a little while. I was
looking at the nozzles as I injected the windex and they did not seem
plugged as I was able to see the streams from the nozzles. This
leads me to think that they were not actually clogged but not
shooting the ink instead. Possibly the ink is not being pulled into
the head? After my last try when I went to print I heard a sizzling
from the print head (very bad sound). This was the end of any
printing. Must have fried the board in the print head somehow. I may
try one more time. Epson still has refurbished C88s for $50 with free
shipping. I have a new mod in mind where I will not cut the frame but
make new offset bushings for the roller bars to lower them. This
should give plenty of clearance for a 1/16" carrier and 1/16" board.