How to deal with a burned Epson printhead and FFC cables: Error-01 031006

If you see the error above, there are three possibilities. You burned your motherboard, or you burned your printhead, or you burned both.  This is a printer that smoke coming out of it. The problem was the leaking ink. I have to take this whole thing apart and check the leaks. The ink leaked into the printhead, and then the person, whoever, turned the printer on. There's a shot inside the printer.

The first thing I want to check is the motherboard. Typically, on the motherboard, there are lots of writings. I am looking for the letter F. Normally; the Epson uses F1 for the fuse. In this case, I think it is F301. There should be only one fuse for the whole motherboard. Did you see the F301? Okay. That fuse is not for the motherboard. That fuse is for the printhead. You can have the motherboard intact, but that fuse blows out. If the fuse is okay, you start checking the transistors and checking the capacitors. I'm going to have a separate video show how to test and troubleshoot. I will say this motherboard is okay. It's a good one.

Let me show you another board. This board is CD16. The F1 fuse is right there. Typically, if you blow the transistor or a MOSFET or a capacitor, the motherboard will not turn on. If you blow out the F1 fuse, the motherboard still turns on, like in this case, but the printhead cannot work. Okay. After we checked the motherboard, now, let's took a look at your printhead. You can see there're burnt marks on the flex cable. Look at the printhead. We can see the pin is already burned. It's burned inside out. Once the printhead is burned, there's almost no chance that you're going to be able to fix that printhead anymore.

If you come here to see how I fix burnt printhead, you're in the wrong place. Once it's burned, it's burned. I can't help you too much. Go to Google and search for the word "printhead Jesus." He may be able to help you out. We're going to keep the motherboard, and we're going to switch to a new printhead. For the cable, you can go to bchtechnologies.com and go to printer parts. You can pick up some Epson's FFC cable there.

Let me show you a way that you can reuse this cable without buying a new one. This cable is burned all the way through. I will peel the blue tape in the back. You don't have to use the blue tape and use a piece of duct tape instead. Now, you can see how badly the cable is burned. I'll take a pair of scissors and cut off the burnt part. Now we glue the blue tape to the back of the cable. However, again, you don't have to use this blue tape. You can use regular duct tape to do the same thing. Now, we wrap some paper around it and put on a clam, and let it dry.

After dried, I find the easiest way is to use a file to get it started. Once you see the metal is exposed, switch to a sharp razor blade, and start picking. To the final finish, you can use very fine sandpaper, like 400 to 800 grit. There are two cables together. There should be a gap in-between the two cables. Don't worry if you see a gap in the middle. Now, I can install a new printhead and see if it works.