Horizontal Grey Lines on Epson P600 Printer I have done everything!

Question

I have done everything multiple times that Google and forums say to do. I have done print head alignment, I have done head cleaning so many times, I have put in new cartridges, I have even taken it apart, cleaned the heads manually and still this is what I get. The print head test print looks great except for adding these grey lines. I am going out of my mind here. I even made these files to do test prints, so I could see the colors more clearly. What could be causing this? I have even tried printing from different programs and these lines persist.

I have done at least 12 print head alignments and none seem to make it any better.

Answer 1

This is not an answer, just some comments.

• The head is not clogged with ink. This would produce white lines or lines without one color, so there is not a "cleaning" problem.

• The colors are not misaligned. So no need to do that either.

The problem is that the printer is shooting black ink (or a combination of colors) and, that is probably because of a faulty head.

If your printer has the heads on the cartridge themselves try replacing them. Use a magnifying glass to see the composition of the lines. If it is black alone or has dots of different colors.

I would recommend that you use your guarantee and take it to a service or repair shop.

Answer 2

As others have said, the heads are not clogged. Everything that is supposed to print is being printed. Unfortunately, you also have horizontal lines that are not supposed to be printed showing up on the paper.

I'd check to be sure ink isn't leaking around the lines from one of the black cartridges or one of the grey cartridges and getting on the carriage that holds the print heads as they move across the paper. Clean anything that looks suspect.

Some Epson printers have (felt?) blotters underneath the print heads that are supposed to soak up any wet droplets that aren't absorbed by the paper. They can become so saturated that they can't hold any more and anything that touches them is going to get "inked". Take a few paper towels and blot as much ink out of them as you can and see if that helps. Run a few test sheets with very minimal printing/text on the page, maybe two or three characters spread out across each line of a text document, and see if the lines get progressively lighter and lighter until they disappear.

Otherwise it's probably time to seek service for your high end Epson printer. At this point it's time to let the pros diagnose what the source of your problem is rather than continuing to throw money at it and seeing if anything sticks. Even if you try to replace the head yourself, which is probably not going to fix the problem if ink is leaking somewhere before it gets to the print head, just the part is going to cost around $500 or more.