Disabling Epson S60600 Auto Cleaning

Epson isn't going to help you because disabling auto cleaning will lead to the machine clogging up.

 

You obviously don't have an employee, do you?

 

In the grand scheme of things it doesn't use that much ink and does an excellent job of keeping your printheads clean. I've been running that machine a couple of years now and when it calls for the manual swabbing the printheads are usually very clean already. The quick clean it does just before a print starts is not a full cleaning.

 

Assuming the S60 runs the same as the S80, the amount of ink wasted during cleaning is so tiny it's not worth worrying about. I can count on one hand how many times I've emptied the waste bottle on ours over the last year. Meanwhile our Rolands I'd probably have to use my toes to count, and still wouldn't be close.

 

There’s probably a good reason you can’t disable it. I.e. you turn it off for the weekend come back and have to spend half an hour cleaning it. That and you’d be more angry if it started printing with nozzles missing and you waste “x” amount of media before you notice.

As others have said, the ink cost of these cleanings is minimal. Better to spend a few pennies letting it clean than to buy a new head quicker.

 

S80 here. I have been wondering lazily about this too. We are in the middle of a large wrap project where we are printing pretty much around the clock, full rolls, 4-5 rolls a day. We've had to empty the waste bottle twice in the last few weeks, I'd guess about (25) 48' trailer wraps printed in that time. The cleaning cycles seem to happen quite often, and annoyingly so at 11pm when I stop in to throw a new roll on the printer, hit print, cleaning cylce... then when the timer gets to 0 and resets, yea that is annoying, I want to go to bed at that point..

But, we haven't had a hiccup yet, so maybe it's worth the annoyance. Waste bottle is about 2 carts, so 4x$122= $488. I'll have to look back and see how many ink carts we've put through this in the same time span.

One nice thing about the cleanings, is they seem to catch an ink cart that is going to run out during the clean, rather than in a middle of a print, which is helpful when you are printing unattended.

However, I am in the camp of, end users should be able to access and maintain their own equipment that THEY OWN if they choose to do so. I think what Roland is doing to their customers with a forced lockout is flat out WRONG! I was annoyed by the fact that epson locks out end users, but we know or should know this going in, so yea I agreed to it because I liked the product. Still hopeful someone will "crack the code" and share.

 

You can see why they don't want users turning off cleaning cycles.
The heads are covered by warranty so they don't want to be giving away heads because of poor maintenance.

 

Ask yourself why Epson, HP, Roland etc sell printers and you will have the answer to why so many uncontrollable cleanings...cha ching

 

Maybe the following will help...

Periodical Cleaning
"Head cleaning is performed automatically at selected intervals of 1 to 240 hours. See
“The Printer Setup Menu” beginning on page 208."

 

Of course. I'm sure the wasted ink doesn't bother them either $$$. But in reality, all anybody needs to do is unplug the printer if they want it to stop cleaning. This is all about controlling end of life for printers to ensure that a shop doesn't hold on to a printer for 5-10+ years. Look at Roland, we have a 9 year old one that's a workhorse that costs us practically nothing to maintain, and hasn't seen a tech in years. Very easy to work on and maintain. Now Roland is forcing customers into service mode lockouts when upgrading inksets on their newer machines. They are jumping on the band wagon. It's too bad that we have a throw away society nowadays. I wouldn't expect high quality machines coming down the line from Roland anymore, leaves too much money on the table. Honestly kindof expect this epson to just poof go up in smoke after 3 years.

 

Seems to be the way everyone is going. Mimaki used to allow you to turn off all cleanings completely. Now they have what is called a refresh cycle. While it does use much less ink than a cleaning, you can't turn it off. I wouldn't be surprised if Mutoh's new models coming out will have something similar. HP swooped in and captured about 50% of the market years ago. Now everyone is playing catch up. It's really too bad that in this case, competition made the products worse.

 

I was thinking about this and was wondering if the OP is confusing the ink recirculation with head cleaning. Recirculation doesn't actually waste any ink, and is done far more frequently than head cleaning. It does, however, seem to want to take place every time you get up off your chair to start using the printer, making you have to wait.

 

That's definitely true. I swear this thing has a hidden sensor that'll tell it to circulate as soon as you walk in front of it.