Homebrew PCBs

I've got a chance at an old Epson Stylus Color 3000 (not the R3000). This is a big A2 printer.

I've been told the print heads are blocked. The printer has been in storage for some time. It's cheap but I'm also wondering if I'll end up chucking the printer in the bin.

I've been hearing hear and there these are a good printer for photo positives, but I don't know if that is with $500 RIP software. I'll just be running it with the standard Windows driver.

Keith.

On 24/11/13 08:33, beefyzee@... wrote:
>
> I've got a chance at an old Epson Stylus Color 3000 (not the R3000). This is a
> big A2 printer.
>
> I've been told the print heads are blocked. The printer has been in storage for
> some time. It's cheap but I'm also wondering if I'll end up chucking the printer
> in the bin.
>
> I've been hearing hear and there these are a good printer for photo positives,
> but I don't know if that is with $500 RIP software. I'll just be running it with
> the standard Windows driver.

The ink is not solvent ink, so there's a chance of unblocking by pulling out the 
head (not too hard with some practice, but a teaser at first, maybe see 
something on utube), and wiping the head surface with paper towel soaked with a 
suitable cleaner (i use nifty, but a window cleaner chemical would be good too).

<http://www.hillsgroup.net.au/CatalogueRetrieve.aspx?CatalogueID=99748&ProductID=5533742>

Putting in an old cartridge filled with the cleaner and doing lots of head-clean 
cycles can work too.

If all else fails, you can soak the head in a cheap ultrasonic cleaner. I've 
done that on my 10+ year old epson stylus 400. Make sure it's properly dried 
before testing in the printer.

If you're in the melbourne area, i'll consider taking it if you want to bin it.

Hi
It depends what your paying for it, I personally wouldn't give anything for it, just tell them your willing to take it off there hands to save them dumping it.
In general Non working printers are not worth a toss,In fact even working ones unless there top end of the market and only a few months old don't get much if anything.
 However to you If it is a no go then grab the motors gearing etc out of it and bin the rest.
I got two here you can have free, if you want one or both and can collect your welcome
One is the old reliable Epson C62  which I had plans to convert for direct printing to PCB but never found the time to do, It only ever needed ink which for that model is cheap as chips and the other is a newer model HP, cant remember the model its in the spare bedroom.
Hope my sound advise is heeded lol 

Regards
Dave
BS-TECH- UK   





On Sunday, 24 November 2013, 7:35, Russell Shaw <rjshaw@...> wrote:
 
  
On 24/11/13 08:33, beefyzee@... wrote:
>
> I've got a chance at an old Epson Stylus Color 3000 (not the R3000). This is a
> big A2 printer.
>
> I've been told the print heads are blocked. The printer has been in storage for
> some time. It's cheap but I'm also wondering if I'll end up chucking the printer
> in the bin.
>
> I've been hearing hear and there these are a good printer for photo positives,
> but I don't know if that is with $500 RIP software. I'll just be running it with
> the standard Windows driver.

The ink is not solvent ink, so there's a chance of unblocking by pulling out the 
head (not too hard with some practice, but a teaser at first, maybe see 
something on utube), and wiping the head surface with paper towel soaked with a 
suitable cleaner (i use nifty, but a window cleaner chemical would be good too).

<http://www.hillsgroup.net.au/CatalogueRetrieve.aspx?CatalogueID=99748&ProductID=5533742>

Putting in an old cartridge filled with the cleaner and doing lots of head-clean 
cycles can work too.

If all else fails, you can soak the head in a cheap ultrasonic cleaner. I've 
done that on my 10+ year old epson stylus 400. Make sure it's properly dried 
before testing in the printer.

If you're in the melbourne area, i'll consider taking it if you want to bin it.

Thanks Russell,

I am in the Melbourne area actually, but if I couldn't get the printers to work I'd pull all the motors, etc out of them to put towards a little PCB cnc drill.

I've been doing a lot of research on Google & Youtube about head cleaning, cartridge flushing, cartridge filling & avoiding air locks. I've got a CISS system now, but before that I used to refill the cartridges and often had airlock problems. I solved it by tying the cartridges to a thick peice of wire and centrifuging them on an electric drill running at high speed LOL. Crude but effective.

Thanks for that link to the cleaner spray.

Keith.

Thanks Dave,

I agree about non-functional inkjets being just about a throw out item. Thing with this particular model of printer is it seems to get good reports for it's ability to print high density, which is what I want for single sheet photo positives. Just read on a forum yesterday that these old "workhorse" printers print more densly than their newer successors. So I'm mainly wondering if anyone here has had the actual experience too.

The guy has two of them and said he'll sell them for $40 each. I might see if he'll do the two for $60.

Refurbished models of these seem to be about the $700+ mark, and just general working ones about $250-$300. They still seem to be in demand by people doing silkscreening and photo positive stuff.

Keith.

Realigning Epson heads requires a bit of factory-only software (possibly available online, let's not talk about that here) and is a real pain.

I have rescued a -lot- of Epson printers. The only time I removed the heads for cleaning, it was a nightmare.

I don't buy any fancy cleaning things, I don't use a syringe to force liquid through the heads (bad news!). I wrote this up:

http://www.polyphoto.com/tutorials/PrintHeadCleaning/EpsonCleaning.html

The Epson 3000 is still going for a lot of money because of the dense ink, the built-in bulk ink system, and because it can print on 17x22 paper or 17 inch wide rolls.

I just cleaned one up that had badly clogged heads, had sat for years. I filled halfway empty cartridges with the cleaning solution as described on the link above, then follow those instructions. The most important part is patience.

Steve Greenfield AE7HD

--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, <beefyzee@...> wrote:

>
>  Thanks Dave,
>   
>  I agree about non-functional inkjets being just about a throw out item. Thing with this particular model of printer is it seems to get good reports for it's ability to print high density, which is what I want for single sheet photo positives. Just read on a forum yesterday that these old "workhorse" printers print more densly than their newer successors. So I'm mainly wondering if anyone here has had the actual experience too.
>   
>  The guy has two of them and said he'll sell them for $40 each. I might see if he'll do the two for $60.
>   
>  Refurbished models of these seem to be about the $700+ mark, and just general working ones about $250-$300. They still seem to be in demand by people doing silkscreening and photo positive stuff.
>   
>  Keith.
>

Bugger,

If I wasn't a whole day of driving to get to Melbourne

I would grab the other one.

> beefyzee / Keith wrote:
> <SNIP>

> The guy has two of them and said he'll sell them

> for $40 each. I might see if he'll do the two for $60.

Thanks for that Steve,

I never realised about a built in bulk ink system, I'd better look at the manual to learn more.

Well there may be a little catch after all. I just got an offer of $60 for the two printers accepted BUT there might not be any cartridges in them. The guy is going to check when he gets home. Now to see if empty cartridges are available for these printers and at what cost. I'm hoping I can get one working printer out of the two, but of course two working printers would be great LOL.

I pretty much just want to fill every cartridge with black photo postive super opaque ink so I've got the ultimate printing machine for positives. Bit of an overkill as far as the physical size goes but getting that super opaque photo positive is the holy grail of the UV method.

Keith.

Keith,

One thing I did notice about the Epson 3000 is that

it only has a resolution of 720 DPI.

https://www.epson.com.au/products/inkjet/stylusC3000_specs.asp

This is probably fine for screen printers phototools

It might be a bit marginal for a 0.4mm QFN

Keith,

I can't actually read your message apart from the first two lines.

This new Yahoo interface is awesome.

Anyways QFN/DFN packages are the new _EASY_ standard

package. There are a lot of fun things that only available in

QFN/DFN or smaller.

Things with WS and CS in the package name are the new

hard/small.