Inkjet cleaning solvent question... anyone cleaned their inkjet?

[drmike]

Been printing a lot lately and my Epson Workforce unit is becoming more and more a PITA.


This week magenta stopped working.


Looked around and I see repair processes people have performed to unclog nozzles on these and other inkjets.


Anyone here done this before?  Looking for a recommendation on cleaning solvent - ideally something over the counter and common.  


Share it if you've done this successfully prior.

 

[drmike]

Well, I am still struggling with inkjet salvage job.


About 8k pages through the unit.  Won't say I feel that I've gotten my total investment / value out of it, yet.


Broke down and bought a cleaning kit online.   These are a damn joke.  It's ammonia - plain cheap yellow tinged version without any freshner / scent.  The other pieces are a few inch section of flexible tubing (see pet store for fish tanks) and a plastic syringe (minus the end mental / needle part).


I had no cyan for a month - well barely - like 80% of the nozzle holes for the color were non functional they streaks of cyan.  I managed to flush fluid into the main nozzle that attaches into the print carts and plunger it - cleaner in, then suck it back out.   Took like 5 attempts and probably 50 printed pages combined to accomplish that.


I've had no magenta for like 2 weeks.  Same process and that is fixed.   


Now I have yellow which isn't working and this one is clogged damn good.  Fingers crossed on that... 


I'll do a write up if I conquer this, for benefit of others... There are videos out there, but meh, most of it is disjointed and won't work.  Followed their steps initially, twice and no luck.