NO COLOR or Blank Page: Epson Printer missing lines, segments, or color

Have you ever tried printing in color, and the page came out blank or missing lines? If so, stay tuned. In today’s blog, we will discuss what to do in the event of a color error.

Plugs and Cleanings

First, you should follow the instructions provided with the printer to rule out a simple fix. You may need to remove the clear plugs from the cartridge. Don’t mess with the colored plugs, as these are the refill plugs and are necessary to hold the ink in. However, you should remove the clear plugs for the printer to function correctly.

Upon removing the clear plugs, fill your printer with paper and try printing again. Scroll to the maintenance tab from the home screen and perform a printhead cleaning. When it finishes, it will ask if you want to do a check. Hit “ok” and let it print a page.

This process is called a nozzle check, and it is important, because your printer needs a clean nozzle to print. However, you should note that if you do too many cleanings with your Epson printer, it will think that you have a problem with the printhead. This will prevent you from doing multiple cleanings later on, so click “ok” even if you didn’t get a perfect result, and just run through the cleaning process again from the main screen.

Keep cleaning until you get a perfect result. You can do up to six cleanings per day, which should do the trick. If the problem has not been resolved after six cleanings, wait 12 hours and let the printer sit. Do six more cleanings the next day. You should see a perfect result if your printer is new, so cleaning should solve 99% of your issues.

Injecting Air Into The Cartridge

So the worst-case scenario has come to pass—it’s been two days, and you’ve done 12 cleanings, and you still haven’t gotten the perfect result. What’s next? There is one more thing you can try.

Shut down your printer and power it back on again. Once the cartridge starts to move, unplug it. You can freely move the cartridge inside the printer with it powered off. Grab a paper towel and position it underneath the printhead.

Now we’re going to blow three mils of air into the cartridge. There are a couple of reasons why you shouldn’t put too much air in the cartridge. First, you might not have much ink in the cartridge, so you don’t want to disturb the balance by injecting more air than ink into the cartridge. Second, the printer's internal chambers can break if you push too much air and pressure into it. That's why it’s important to inject a small amount of ink, and do it slowly.

Holding the front of the cartridge, inject the air over 15 seconds to prevent breaking the chamber. You can also do all four cartridges at the same time. In that way, you can apply consistent pressure, reducing the risk of breaking.

Wait another 12 hours, which should resolve your issue. The reason for this error is that Epson shipped the printer with something called “wetter solution” in the printhead. The wetter solution will prevent the printhead from drying. The wetter solution usually will be flushed out by new ink easily. However, sometimes this water solution is hard to clean out of there.

Hopefully, you enjoyed this blog! Visit us atbchtechnologies.com, or locally at Greensboro, North Carolina. Cheers!