Ink draining out in R2400

I have a very low mileage R2400. I got excited about the prospect of saving money, so I purchased a complete system, chip resetter, cleaning kit, waste bottle, etc. The printer was working perfectly with Epson carts.

I started out with one cart, lt cyan. Again, it worked perfectly. A week or two later the oem carts were running down so I replaced all four on the right side of the printhead. It started up fine, but a day or two later a nozzle check showed problems. All four carts on the right had drained out. Strangely, the lt cyan on the left was fine. I came to the forum and read that I should clean. Perhaps the right capping station was causing all the ink to drain out. I followed all the cleaning steps: capping stations, wiper, points, underneath the printhead, etc. and refilled the carts again. One day later, all four carts on the right had drained or mostly drained, as well as one on the left. Good ol’ lt cyan was still hanging strong.

This is disappointing. Burning through the new ink, without even making prints. What’s wrong?

We haven’t seen one of these ‘what’s wrong with my R2400?’ posts for a while, but if you search the forum you will see that there are quite a few people who have had problems getting this particular printer to work with refillables. Opinion varies as to why. Even a lightly used printer is now about 10 years old, although my opinion FWIW is that the cartridge design is an older one and the cartridge makers never really sorted out reliable cartridges for this printer.

Quick fix, tape over the vent-hole on the cartridge and take a very fine needle and poke a hole in the tape.

This equalizes the gravity pressure properly. We have re-designed these carts from scratch recently with proper flow control and they should be in stock soon (we are waiting on shipment to our warehouse). Up to this point (industry-wide) we have been forced to use an out-dated design for small-format cartridges due to patent issues (we can’t replicate the Epson flow control exactly). These older-style carts work on most printers, but on some they drain easily due to small differences in the head and cleaning pad. We will send an email out when the new flow-controlled carts are in stock, but for now simply do the procedure above.

all the best,
Walker

Thanks Walker. I appreciate the information.

How much faith do you have in the workaround? I’m hesitant to waste all the remaining ink. Also, does the warranty extend until the new carts are delivered?

Regards,
Jon

I have a LOT of faith. It’s worked many times in the past. Ink flow happens differently from printer to printer (it’s also based on printer age). Sometimes it happens because a customer tried to prime their carts (these carts will drain ink if a priming tip was jammed in there) or if a printer is slightly out of spec. The design tolerance on the small format manifolds are much looser than the pro-series printers (3880s on up).

best,
Walker