Results after cleaning 17 heads with alcohol _Head related issues 2 _ARTJET 2026

The 17 heads were used by the consumer as Color heads.

• This consumer only uses Color, so even if only one channel had a problem, they would replace the head.
• Since one or two channels were problematic and the other channels were still functioning,
• the heads were kept for a year, thinking they could be used as White heads.

• With the head height raised as shown below, the carriage is centered on the flatbed, and all power is turned off.
• The head is still attached.
• Connect a syringe filled with alcohol to the damper, insert the damper into the head, and push the alcohol through.
• The alcohol will flow out through the head.
• After a year of storage, the nozzles were initially clogged, so the syringe was tight.
• With a little more force, alcohol flowed out of all the nozzles without any clogs.
• In other words, most of the clogged nozzles were cleared.

The nozzle pattern test was conducted as follows. (Note: This is a model sold three years ago, not the current model.)

• We applied alcohol to a total of 17 XP600 heads and confirmed that alcohol was spraying from the nozzles.
• If the alcohol spray was normal, we mounted the heads, connected the damper, and confirmed that pumping and cleaning were operating normally.
• We then confirmed whether the nozzle pattern was normal.
• The nozzle pattern test results showed that only 3 of the 17 heads fired the nozzle pattern properly.
• The remaining 14 did not fire any nozzle pattern at all.

We conducted a print test with the three heads that produced normal nozzle patterns.

Two heads initially printed, but gradually ran out of ink and stopped firing. The symptoms were as follows:

Test Results With White

Test Results With Color (the image below also shows Color at first, but it gradually disappears)

The last head printed normally twice, but on the third print, the ink did not come out during printing, just as above.

Out of curiosity, we disassembled the XP600 head.

• When we removed the head, we saw six channels through which ink flowed.
• When examined, they seemed fragile.
• When we tried to force alcohol through, the channels appeared to burst.
• The burst channels prevented ink from flowing properly, which likely caused this problem.

Please refer to the video below for the alcohol cleaning process. While this is an older model and differs from current equipment, the principle is the same.

Industrial print heads from companies like Konica, Ricoh, and Dimatix

• can be maintained 70–80% of the time with alcohol cleaning.
• However, other Epson heads have not been tested, so it’s unclear. Since each head uses multiple channels and has ducts,
• we suspect that alcohol cleaning could cause these ducts to burst.