SP-300 Powerful Head Cleaning?

[mfjanowski]

First time posting here and am impressed with the information I've found thus far before actually needing to post a couple questions. Great job to all!

If I take the waste bottle off the bottom of the SP-300 during a powerful head cleaning, how much ink should be coming out of the waste tube?

Also, I seem to have cross-contamination with my black and cyan. Black prints perfect but the cyan basically prints as black with the exception of a few intermittent cyan lines.

I've tried several powerful head cleanings but can't be sure they're really doing anything as not much (if any) ink comes out of the waste tube while I'm performing the clean.

I replaced the waste tubes so there is no clogging. (At least from the pump to the bottle and the pump to the two line separator.)

I guess I'm trying to figure out what my next logical step is to remedy this problem. I've read dozens of posts here and it seems it could be a variety of issues. I'd like to try the least expensive routes first but will do whatever is necessary to get the SP-300 back on it's feet.

Some quickfire questions:

• What exactly do flushing cartridges do?Do they 'clean' all the ink lines in the printer? Do they help the caps? Is this one of the first steps to take before replacing anything?
• How can you tell if your pump is the problem?
• Just how many 'things' can I replace before a tech is necessary?

I've been inside the printer a few times and feel relatively comfortable with diasassembling and replacing the obvious parts. Just don't want to spend unnecessary cash to do this before I exhaust other options.


I have a call into my local dealer but can't seem to evoke a response from them so I'm stuck. Two big wrap jobs in the hopper and i'm dead in the water. Any and all help to this lengthy post is GREATLY appreciated!

Also, do I need four flushing cartridges to perform a flush on the SP-300? It seems like some responses say you only need two and others four. I know when I've investigated flushing in the past it asks me to insert two 'dummy cartridges'. Are dummy cartridges empty ink cartridges?

 

[Turbophein]

i've had my sp300v for a year and a half now and have done pretty much everything its needed except the new head install performed by a tech.

i've had this problem in the past, and i also learned its worth spending $100-$200 on spare consumable parts, well worth it to have them on hand as i found out with this same problem.

my issue was with the cap tops, they were not creating a good seal. you can try and clean them up which is what i did for the time being until the new parts came in. i now have 2 new spare cap tops and the old used ones that did work ok, after a cleaning. along with spare head cables, sponges, wipers, tube, etc... that generally get used a lot.

replace your caps and pull some ink through them and run solid cyan color until it comes back. after 1ft-2ft of solid color printing my color came right back better than ever!

good luck, i am having a new to me issue right now that i am about to post about!

 

[mfjanowski]

Thanks

Thanks for the quick and extremely informative reply. A couple of more quick questions:

• did you take the caps off and clean them?

Thanks again, great help.

P.S. Where do you buy your supplies?

 

[Turbophein]

Thanks for the quick and extremely informative reply. A couple of more quick questions:

• did you take the caps off and clean them?

Thanks again, great help.

P.S. Where do you buy your supplies?

you do not need to remove the caps to clean them. you are basically just trying to freshen up the rubber seal, remove any ink, fibers, etc to freshen them up.

also make sure all of your rubber tubing is good and not cracked/ripped....

there are lots of good suppliers, try a supporting vendor of the forum!