Thinking of replacing the printheads on your HP9000 yourself? Here
is what happened to us - and don't worry it's all good
Although we
have found this printer to produce a good quality print and to have
been reliable, there is a question mark over the longevity of the
printheads and also the high cost of replacing them. You will find, in
this article, my experiences dealing with these issues and I hope you
will find some inspiration for dealing with your own problems.
If
you own or operate one of these printers you will be aware of the cost
of replacement of the printheads and may also be aware of the relatively
short life-span reported by a number of owners. Hopefully, if you read
on, you will find the confidence to attempt the replacement yourself and
save up to £400 per head in doing so.
Having operated our 9000
for just over a year we began to notice a "scratchy" appearance to the
light Magenta print when carrying out the IQ test and were informed by
our maintenance engineer that this was a characteristic of a worn head
and that we should consider replacing it in the near future.
Before
committing ourselves to replacing it we decided to give the head a
clean by hand using lint-free cloth dampened with head cleaning fluid
and gently dabbing the head in order to soften and them draw through any
congealed ink. Repeating this a number of times resulted in the print
quality returning to its original quality.
However, over a period
of a few days it returned to its scratchy appearance - this did not
generally affect the prints that we were producing but did cause
problems in areas of flat colour especially light greys.
Having
persevered with this cleaning routine for a few months, the head was
causing so many reprints that it was decided to bite the bullet and pay
for the head to be replaced. We were quoted a cost of £1600 + call-out
charge for this. The engineer was booked on a Friday to come in on the
following Tuesday.
We decided to park the head in the docking
station and switch the machine off - this seats the printheads in a bath
of ink and is recommended in order to soften any congealed ink and aid
cleaning.
On the Monday the machine was switched on and the heads
put through the standard cleaning routine and left for the engineer.
When
the engineer arrived he ran the IQ test to ascertain the state of the
print quality and found that all 6 heads were printing scratchily. After
an hour of intensive cleaning some of the heads appeared to be
improving but not to the extent that we were able to print a reasonable
quality exhibition graphic.
After a significant amount of further
cleaning it was decided that we would replace the Magenta and Light
Magenta Head under a scheme run by HP for out of warranty machines where
they agree to sort out any problem (including changing up to 2 heads)
for a 1 off charge of £1000 (I'm not aware if they are still running
this scheme)
When a second engineer came to change the heads he
noticed that there was an air leak into the ink reservoir. When this
problem had been rectified, all the heads apart from the light magenta
and magenta improved to an extent where we were confident that we would
be able to produce a good quality print.
We were concerned,
however, that once the engineer had gone, if the heads deteriorated we
would have missed our opportunity to have them replaced as part of the
HP scheme. We persuaded the engineer to leave the 2 heads with us so
that they could be installed as part of a follow up call and we would
only have to pay for the call out and not for the parts.
Almost
inevitably, the day following the engineers visit, the light magenta and
magenta heads deteriorated significantly. The earliest that the
engineer could return was in three days so we decided to investigate
replacing the heads ourselves.
We parked the head assembly,
switched off the printer and removed the plastic covers. Then we removed
the metal covers, back and front to the printhead assembly. Next using a
scalpel we scratched marks into the head fixing plate to mark the
current position of the head. Using the caps supplied with the new
printhead, seal off the ink flow and remove the connector for the
electrical feed. Take a small socket driver and undo the screws which
secure the head to the fixing plate.
We then removed the printhead
from the storage packet and carefully placed onto the head fixing
plate, lining it up with the marks previously made. Next re-connect the
ink feed and electrical connections. Replace covers and run the ink
system purge routine in the maintenance menu to fill the printhead with
ink and run the head alignment routines to fine tune the alignment.
This
was repeated with the second printhead both of which continue to print
well. The heads that we did not replace have continued to improve over
the last 3 months and are printing well within the tolerance for
printing a good quality exhibition stand graphic.
We have since
been made aware that the use of an ultrasonic cleaner can return the
heads to a good condition when they have been clogged with ink.