PCTech Forums

After a recent purchase of an Epson C82 on Ebay, the print has become very spotty. The printer has newer cartridges. I ran a nozzle head cleaner under the maintanence preference with no luck. I also made a contact with Epson and they told me the only thing I can do is send it to there support for a hardware repair. Can anyone tell me if there are any other troubleshooting techniques I can try before this option?

I use a lot of cheap generic cartridges in mine and when the printing gets bad or the colors clogg, I break down and buy some new real Epson cartridges. The problem usually goes away with two or three cleanings

If you don't use the printer at least once a week, you'll find that epson printers are more prone to clogging (the print head is separate from the ink cartridge).

I run the generic cartridges through my epson printer too and much like icecube is saying,epson printers can be quite stubborn.When my print quality starts dropping,i run the head cleaner 3-4 times then print the color test.Usually 3-4 is enough but if its sat for a while without printing it could take more.Clean it until it prints the color test without any lines in it then you will see a better result in the rest of your prints.The one thing i can guarantee is once is never enough.