Epson 4800 “Puddle Method” for clearing nozzle clogs

I have been experiencing serious nozzle outages with my Epson 4800 inkjet printer for sometime. If simple head cleaning cycles do not work one of the methods for clearing nozzle clogs them is the so called “Puddle Method”, which I have seen attributed to Scott Graham of the Yahoo Epson4000 forum. Here is how I use the method.

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I learnt the basics of this method from several postings on the Yahoo Epson4000 • Epson 4000/4800/4880 Support Group and I shall try to answer some questions that I had along the way – but, while I use this method on my own machine I can not advise you to use it on yours – that choice is up to you.

Tools & materials needed:

• 20 ml syringe with a plastic extension tube (Kwill) fitted
• Distilled water
• Torch

The Method:

• Start with the print head parked to the right.


• Turn the printer off.


• Fill a syringe with 15 – 20 ml of distilled water.


• Release the print head, either by using the command on the printer menu “Cutter replace => Exec” or by my preferred option of pressing in the spring loaded cutter release (the top of the light blue release arrowed in the photo below), and move it to the left as far as necessary to be able to get at the print head cap.
  
  


• Identify the right place to puddle. In the photo below the print head cap is arrowed – this is where you want to create the puddle. The pad next to it is the Flushing box, also arrowed in the photo below (sometimes called the purge pad), which I assume is where the ink goes when you purge the lines for changing over between photo and matt black inks and run head cleaning cycles.
  
  


• Gently squirt some distilled water into the cap and watch it leak away (it ends up in the maintenance tank). I do this several times until the cap looks clean – the distilled water washes out the pad leaving it fairly white. Then fill the cap to the brim. (See below for the photos of the process).
  
  


• Quickly, before the puddle leaks away, move the print head back to the right until it clicks into place.


• Turn the printer on and off again to make sure that the print head is properly parked and capped.


• Leave for an hour or two, or however long it takes. I start at an hour and move up to leaving it overnight.


• Turn the printer back on. Decline any offer to run auto nozzle checks or power cleans and run a normal clean cycle, then a nozzle check.


• If this has not cleared the problem run another cleaning cycle and nozzle check.


• It that does not work, then puddle again…

If the distilled water does not do the trick I then try Fixyourownprinter Epson inkjet head cleaning solution – I follow their instructions and use around 1 ml of solution, although I don’t follow their advice to run three cleaning cycles.

I follow the general advice from various on-line sources not to do more than two clean & nozzle check cycles without printing a full spectrum image (I use a RGB colour patch that I use for generating ICC profiles to make sure that all the colours are exercised) as many uninterrupted cycles can make the problem worse.

I am aware that there is quite a lot of controversy about what fluids to use (Windex is often mentioned but it is not available in the UK and I have certainly not tried anything other than distilled water and FYOP solution); whether it is better to leave the printer on or off etc, etc. This method works for me, but no doubt it will be refined further over time.

So far I have not yet failed to get my printer back to perfect nozzle checks, but it seems to be a basic design flaw with these printers that we should have to even consider this process, let alone do it routinely. I would truly love to find a solution to these recurrent problems and make this method redundant.

Still when working it does produce beautiful prints…
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