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Photoblack cat ridge does not print

My Photo place cat ridge is clogged and will not print black

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I will assume that you have tried all of the usual nozzle cleaning routines described widely on the 'net. If so, and nothing works, read on...

The Epson Stylus Photo R3000 , R3800 and R3880 all share a common fault. After two or three years the solenoid valve that switches the matte and gloss black starts to fail. This results in either sudden loss of all black (often in the middle of a print) and/or liquid black ink marks on the print. Once this process has begun it may come and go, but it will never disappear for long. No amount of cleaning will solve the problem.

Epson will not acknowledge this fault but many service engineers know about it. For consumers with an R3000 it is considered an 'uneconomic repair'. For professionals with an R3800 or R3880 it is routinely fixed.

The fix is the same for all three printers and it requires the replacement of the entire Ink Supply Unit. This is available from official Epson Suppliers; Unicomp in the UK and Compass Micro in the USA. The valve itself cannot be replaced. The cost of the Ink Supply Unit is £120 inc VAT in the UK.

I have watched the job being done myself and it is not particularly technical. There is a lot of disassembly and careful reassembly but no special skills or tools. Afterwards the system must be re-filled with ink using the Epson Service Adjustment Program available from 2Manuals.

If I still had a dead R3000 I would record the entire process but you should be able to get a service engineer to do it. However - they will often only do a clean and purge which will NOT fix the problem. When tackled properly, I have seen two R3000's and an R3800 totally resurrected by replacing the Ink Supply Unit.

Good luck!

Steve

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