Epson ET-8550 Ecotank washed out colours?

[Jinjur]

Hi all

Hope someone can help.

Just bought a second hand ET-8550 that looks to have printed around 80 prints in total in its life according to its statistics, its very fresh and came from an honest owner who seemed to use it more for Cricut and t shirts etc.

The tanks were all around 1/3 to 1/2 full with what I can only assume was the original and genuine Epson ink. I did a full reset of the printer settings and a quick clean of the printer head (as well as a deep clean to try and address this nuking half of that ink, doh!)

Got myself some Epson Glossy Photo paper this evening as had head these types of printers preferred their own brand media and was keen to try it out

I must say I was disappointed and the images that I am seeing coming out of this thing are in a completely different dimension to that of prints in YouTube video guides etc.

Now, just for full clarity. I have tried ALL different ways of printing the below picture ( please ignore how dumb the pic is, it was just the first pic I grabbed ). I have tried from various applications (LR, PS etc), Windows direct, my phone to the printer using the Epson app and even printing directly from the printer itself using a thumb drive. I was trying to rule out color profiles and all that complicated stuff that I have never had to dig into before as I am no photographer.

Ultimately, I did expect to be able to print a good quality photo onto quality media from this machine out of the box without any effort. I had a Canon IP4300 inkjet around 10 or 15 years ago and the prints it produced would have decimated the below so I know its not right.

Left is one of the prints coming out of this machine. They are all basically the same.

Right is what it looks like on my phone, pc, ipads etc.

What is uploaded is a fair representation of the quality difference in my opinion.

View: original size

Would really appreciate some help guys as I am gutted

J

 

[Jinjur]

Have also run through a number of test type prints online (and I know I am deep into color profiles here) but I am seeing massive differences even if printed from the usb slot on-printer.

Left is a scan of the print out on glossy paper
Right is what is should look like (CMYK)

 

[Jinjur]

You know, I have just wiped the top of the ink tanks with tissue and I swear, the cyan does not look cyan.........it looks blue. Could this be crappy non Epson ink causing this?

If, when using genuine Epson gloss paper as well, would that cause the ink to look like it was sitting on the surface like a screen print rather than fusing into the paper?

 

[Jinjur]

I think I know what it is guys.

I think this was used for sublimation printing, just printed onto one of the sublimation pages that came with it (red flag eh? doh!) and ironed it on to an old tshirt and it was perfect. I assume that regular ink would not do this?

At least I know

Now i just have the chore of flushing this thing out and spending a pretty penny on some genuine ink before I attempt any photos again.

What would be the best way to do this? I will opt for the print all the sublimation prints I may EVER want now until the tanks are super low and then upside down the lot to drain and suck out the pipes with a syringe.

Would i need to flush with alcohol or would running it through until cmyk starts to look normal suffice?