Need Help Epson S80600 service manual

[ChrisN]

Anyone have a service manual available for the Epson S80600? We're having problems with the carriage scraping the vinyl while printing (even with the head gap set to as high as it can go), so I need some guidance on how to physically adjust the height and level the carriage.

 

[unclebun]

Before you go messing about with the mechanics of the printer, you need to determine what is causing your head strikes. Most of the time it's not something wrong with the print head assembly, but with the vinyl and the temperatures and alignment. Open the lid and put something in the sensors so you can run it with the lid open. I use the sticks from the cleaning swabs. Then let it run and watch the heads as they go across the vinyl to see what is happening. Most likely you will see that the vinyl is buckling and forming ridges which hit the printhead. This can be caused by many things, but the most common is incorrect heater settings. This time of year it can also come from too-dry air, necessitating that you run a humidifier in the room where the vinyl is stored and the printing takes place. Another cause can be that the bars where the vinyl is loaded need to be aligned.

If the carriage truly is drooping down and needs to be fixed, you should probably bite the bullet and call Epson to have Decision One come out to fix it. Is it still under warranty?

 

[jfiscus]

You can adjust the head height easily (3 settings IIRC) within your material settings on the front of the printer. If it is still hitting then you either have a materials/heat/humidity issue (buckling) or a major mechanical issue.

 

[ChrisN]

Before you go messing about with the mechanics of the printer, you need to determine what is causing your head strikes. Most of the time it's not something wrong with the print head assembly, but with the vinyl and the temperatures and alignment.

You can adjust the head height easily (3 settings IIRC) within your material settings on the front of the printer. If it is still hitting then you either have a materials/heat/humidity issue (buckling) or a major mechanical issue.

We were having this problem for over a year, and on multiple different media. The head also was scraping the media guides, so that's not caused by the media. It printed fine for a year (i.e. while under warranty) on the lowest head height setting and then it started scraping the media. We changed to running on the middle setting, and it took care of most of the problem until about a year later when it started scraping the media again.

If the carriage truly is drooping down and needs to be fixed, you should probably bite the bullet and call Epson to have Decision One come out to fix it. Is it still under warranty?

Unfortunately, it's not under warranty. We've had the Epson tech out multiple times for a different problem and asked him about that. His initial response was to run it on the highest setting. However, on his last visit, he tried adjusting the carriage. But in his attempts to make the adjustments, something fried the motherboard. <sarcasm> So now it's fixed because if it can't print at all it doesn't scrape the vinyl, right?</sarcasm>

Anyway, since we still have 2 working S80600's, if they start having problems it would be helpful to have a service manual.

 

[jfiscus]

I have one for a 30670, but those are slightly different. Could the bushings be work out on the rails?
Can you see what part is dragging? The media sensor can come loose and hang down.