Printer Hunter: Epson EcoTank ET-2700 - Always Prints Blank Pages - flea market flipper

Printer Hunter: Epson EcoTank ET-2700 - Always Prints Blank Pages - flea market flipper

We’re going to be doing something a little different today. I've been wanting to do a new series on my youtube channel for a while, where I go online and buy a used printer that someone is selling to fix it up and see what else I can do with it.

The Search

Since the beginning of covid, printer prices have gone way up. Because of this, I decided to browse a couple of different sites to try and find the cheapest printers that would work for this experiment. Then I ordered a few cheap printers to look over them in person and decide which one would be the best for me to fix up.

Craigslist

I tried Craigslist first, since they used to have pretty reasonable prices, but that didn’t seem to be the case this time. After scrolling and looking around for a bit, I was able to find a decent one for about $20, but it didn’t have a cartridge. That wasn’t too bad, though. When combining that price with the price of InkCHIP.net, I would only end up spending around $45.

Facebook Marketplace

The next place I looked was Facebook Marketplace. When I searched for an Epson printer there, I was almost immediately able to find one for free. It did say in the description that it was printing pages in light blue rather than black for whatever reason, but I figured that shouldn’t be too much of a problem to fix. In fact, I have a video about how to do so on my YouTube channel.

Mercari

So obviously, when it came down to it, I would prefer the free one over the $20 one, but I wasn’t done searching yet. I went over to a site called Mercari next. The printers here weren’t very cheap, but you could probably find a decent deal on the specific model you wanted if you looked hard enough. I did get a little distracted when I saw someone on this website selling BCH ink second-hand.

Eventually, I was able to find an Epson printer on Mercari for only $25 that was listed to be in operational condition. Unlike Facebook marketplace, Mercari does charge for shipping. Still, if you’re looking for a specific model, Mercari is the best place to go.

The Fixing Process

The first printer I bought cost me $30, and the previous owner warned me that there was something wrong with the printhead. She said that the printer would only spit out blank pages whenever she tried to print something. She was never actually able to set it up properly, which is honestly a good thing for us in the long run.

If something is wrong, we can call Epson about the warranty. I should also probably mention that Epson will honor their warranty even if you’ve purchased it from a third-party vendor.

The first thing I checked was the supply line, which appeared to be okay. I then checked the printhead itself, which was the logical next step given the previous owner’s complaints. I turned the printer off and started by checking that it had enough ink. I then manually unlocked the piece holding the printhead in place by rotating the wheel forward.

I then unscrewed and removed the cover to remove the ink cartridge. The ink was filled so I put them back in their places and attempted to print something. My main concern after these observations was that the fuse to the printhead may have been blown out. I was still hopeful that the previous owner just didn’t know that she had to hold the stop button down for three seconds before attempting to print to charge the ink to the printhead.

Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. I monitored the ink bottles, and they appeared to be charged already. The piece of paper came out blank when I tried to print something on it. There was not a single hint of ink on the page.

I decided to try to fix it by doing nine cleanings in a row, which is not normally something I would recommend doing. If some of the ink starts coming out after that, we’ll keep cleaning until it works. If not, I would have to open the printer up and take a look at the motherboard.

After about four or five cleanings, the colors did start coming out a bit. Encouraged by the progress, I kept cleaning until the pattern came out perfect. But eventually, the next printer arrived, so hopefully, I’ll see you again for the next project.