Epson Error 031006 - FFC Fix for E-01

Today we will be looking at how to fix an Epson printer’s error code 031006. Three possible things could be causing this message. Either you burned out your printhead, the motherboard, or somehow managed to burn out both.

If you watch the YouTube video I made about this, you’ll see that the printer I demonstrated with was in pretty bad shape. The problem in this instance was that the printer was leaking ink. I had to take the whole thing apart to check the leaks. The ink had leaked into the printhead, so when the printer turned on, it caused an electrical short inside the printer.

The first thing you should check is the motherboard. Normally, Epson uses “F1” to indicate the fuse. For the printer I had, it was labeled “F301”. Either way, there’s only one fuse for the printhead to the motherboard, so locate that.

The rest of the motherboard can look fine with that fuse blown out, so look closely. You may have to use some special equipment to test it. If you check that and it seems to be working fine, check the transistors next, followed by the capacitors.

After checking the motherboard, look at the printhead (regardless of whether the motherboard was the issue or not because, as previously mentioned, it could be both). In the video linked at the bottom, you can clearly see that my printer had a lot of burn marks on the flex cable, and the pin was badly burned. Once the printhead is completely burned out, it’s beyond repair, and there’s nothing I can do to help you. You’ll just have to order a new one.

With the new printhead, you’ll still need a working flex cable. To order a new one, you can go to my website, BCHTechnologies.com, and click on the printer parts tab. From there, you can click on flex cable and order it easily.

So for the example printer I used, I needed to keep the motherboard and replace the printhead. After you’ve ordered all the parts you need, you can install the printhead and run the printer to see if it works.

If you don’t want to order a new FFC cable and it doesn’t look too badly broken, you could try to fix it yourself. To reuse your cable without buying a new one, start by carefully peeling away the blue tape on the back. You can see in the video that mine was badly burned throughout. If you don’t want to use the blue tape, you could also make it work with a piece of duct tape.

After removing the blue tape and admiring how badly burned my FFC cable was, I took a pair of scissors and carefully cut off the burnt part. Then I used some glue to reattach the blue tape to the FFC cable. Again, you don’t have to do this — you could just use a piece of ordinary duct tape, and it’ll work fine.

Next, I wrapped some paper around it and put it in a clamp while it dried to make sure everything stayed in place. After it dries, I find the easiest thing to do is start using a file until you see the metal is exposed. Then you can use a razor blade or sharp knife to start picking at it. To finish it off, I use fine sandpaper.

If you look at the cable closely, you can see that it’s really two separate cables fused together. There should be a gap between these two cables, so don’t worry if you see a spot in the middle that looks like one of the pins is missing.

Now all you have to do is attach that to the printhead and, just like you would if you had bought a new cable, run the printing process to make sure that everything is working correctly.

I hope this blog helped! For more DIY printer tips and tricks, follow me on YouTube at Kevin at BCH. Happy printing!