Computer experts - help!

[Peter.N.]

Well it not actually the computer but the printer. Its an Epson R285 and it keeps leaving splodges of black ink on the print, mostly at the edge of the page. I have one of these bulk ink gadgets on it which has worked fine for some time, is that the cause of the problem or something else.

Thanks in advance

Peter

[Ciaran]

Hi Peter,

It could be a semi clogged nozzle, is the print output Ok?

Quite simply, ink has been dumped somewhere in the printer, and is probably on the rollers etc. Running numerous pages through it should clean it out, or perhaps lest wastefully, open it and clean whatever areas you can access.

Ciarán

[Peter.N.]

Hi Ciaran

Thanks for the reply. It was printing OK, then today I noticed that the black print was a bit blury, had small speckles round it, when I did a print test the black had dissapeared altogether, a couple of cleans brought it back but the print was still a bit fuzzy, followed by more splodges, I left it for a couple of hours and it seems to be OK now. The black ink deposits have been happening intermittently for some time.

Peter

[XM-hooked]

Hi Peter,
Its Chris again!
These Epsons have a waste ink pad which may have become filled and the waste ink now has nowhere to go. I am no expert but there is plenty of 'info regarding this problem on the web. Have you ever had the message of death, "Parts inside have come to the end of their service life" or the red LEDs flashing? There is a mod. which feeds the waste ink to a tank at the rear of the printer, see Ebay. To reset the waste ink counter once the problem has been dealt with, download the prog. "SSC service utility".
Regards,
Chris

[Peter.N.]

Hi Chris

Thanks for that. No, I've had no death message, in fact I havn't had the printer all that long, my previous one, a C65 lasted very well, I must have had 50 or 60 sets of cartridges through it, then the transport became unreliable, I gave it to my son and shortly afterwards he got the death message.

This one works very well apart from fairly regular loss of one colour, resulting in the need for cleaning, which should explain the excessive ink, but its always the black ink that leaks, whatever colour it is that fails, in fact the black splodges can appear spontainiously even when its working OK.

Peter