We’ve looked at the basics of how Epson desktop printers work. Those comments probably also apply to many other brands of printer - these comments may be useful for your printer too.

By considering the three main systems in the printer: Ink delivery, horizontal and vertical positioning, we can consider the things that can go wrong. This section of the document takes a different approach from the other support pages we’ve seen - we’re not saying they’re wrong - just not to expect the same approach! Another thing to consider is that this page should provide useful information for Epson OEM Ink users as well as others who may be using third-party inks. Epson inks do clog too!

You may also like to look at our suggestions for a [[CATN,A Strategy for resolving printer problems]]/strategy to resolve printer problems/.

Ink Delivery

By understanding how the system feeds ink, we can consider the things that might go wrong. But you’ve read that bit, right, so we won’t cover them again here.

So what might stop ink coming out of the nozzles? Well, it could be a fault in the head (the piezo connection stopping working?) but that’s fairly drastic and pretty difficult to prove... we don’t know if this has ever happened... but we imagine that it is something like modern microcomputer chips - once they are proven in quality control, they are very reliable. What is far more likely in our view is that there is a block in the nozzle, or just below the nozzle.

Blocks just below the nozzle may be caused by ink (dried or even still wet), or particles from paper or house-dust or materials you have used to try and clean the printer! Even a bit of lint from a cotton-bud (Q-tip) could cause ink to deflect from the chosen path onto the paper, and result in a misplaced dots on the page. Equally a blot of dried ink under the print head could deflect or stop ink droplets altogether, as could paper-dust. Already, we hope you can see that understanding how the printer works and what can go wrong, you can imagine what the visible effect to you might be - in this case, missing or deflected (in the wrong vertical position) bars on a nozzle-check print.

Blocks in the nozzles themselves will probably be caused by dry ink... or no ink at all (an ‘airlock’).

Dry ink on the head is probably caused by a bad seal with the sponge at carriage-home position, or maybe a sponge that is too dry.

We have started to believe that blocks caused by dry ink are in the extreme minority of blocks, and that in fact it is the airlock that is more prevalent. Others would disagree with us! We would like you take both suggestions onboard and build your own view. There is a caveat to this, which is that dry inks could be caused by a bad seal with the head-sealing-sponge at the carriage home position. But we’re planning to cover solutions in the next section, so we’ll hold back on that for the moment. Possible reasons for airlocks include: the process of changing the cartridges and that the ink in the cartridge is actually a ‘foam’ (like on top of a Cappuccino) of air and ink, or indeed, not having any ink in the cartridge. Once again, the visible effect of a blocked nozzle is going to be no ink in a position on a nozzle check, or possible deflected or ‘thin’ line appearing. We feel an airlock will probably be an all-or-nothing affair - you’ll get no ink at all, or your problem will not be being caused by an airlock!

We also have the possibility that air can not get into the cartridge properly, with the result that nothing can get out either!

Horizontal Positioning

We are going to assume for a moment that you haven’t had a catastrophic failure of the servo motor that moves the head, or any other part of the drive chain. We hope that the hardware would alert you to this with collections of little flashing lights on the printer’s control panel... and we don’t believe that we can help other than to say "Please check that the drive-chain and printhead is not obstructed in any way".

That pretty-much leaves us with issues related to the actual positioning of the print head across the carriage. We think that (again, subject to no mechanical failure of switches or the like) the only thing left to go wrong is that sensing of where the printhead is on the page. This means that dirt on the plastic positioning bar could limit the printers ability to accurately detect where the head is.

Not strictly related to horizontal positioning of ink on the page, it is theoretically possible that if something went wrong with the head-seal mechanism that this would ‘obstruct’ the print head from moving to its home position... but again this type of mechanical failure seems unlikely... but feasible nevertheless.

Finally, the paper itself or some other obstruction gets in the way of the print head... we have experienced something similar to this - one particular revision of a 1270 we saw appeared to have a little rubber wiper near to the sealing-sponge, presumably intended to wipe excess ink from the bottom of the print head. We feel that the wiper was actually fitted too high, and provided enough resistance on the print head that it actually stopped the print head from being able to return to the home position.

Vertical Positioning

So this section is all about how the paper is fed through the printer on the platen roller. Many of Epson’s desktop printers are only designed to feed paper that is not particularly thick. We think probably it’s about 200gsm, but a quick check of an Epson 1160 manual didn’t appear to give a direct answer on paper weight. Whichever way, the thicker papers, and in particular the ‘art’ papers can have problems being fed into the printer. It can potentially buckle the leading edge a little.

Once inside the printer, the paper is fed from friction between the platen roller and other rollers. Using the printhead gap adjustment changes the height of the head relative to the paper - if the print head is too low you may possibly get ‘scuff’ marks on the paper. If you ever do get ink on the rollers, it can mark the paper. You may also see ‘banding’ - little white horizontal lines if the paper is being fed too far, or dark lines as the paper is not fed far enough.

We’ve also mentioned the pizza-wheels: these may mark the paper but it really does seem to vary by the individual printer. We’ve also experienced ink on the pizza rollers, which definitely has the capability of marking the paper as it is ejected from the printer.

Please note that MWORDS has closed. We aim to retain these support pages in the hope that they may benefit our past customers, but regret that we can no longer offer further comment or support in relation to the information above.