I remain interested in large-format printers for outputting photos, generative art, and because they are cool machines. The HP DesignJet T610 I bought still isn’t working well after buying all new print heads and ink, and it is just too big for my lab space, so I’m still looking at alternatives. On craigslist I found an offer I couldn’t refuse – a free HP DesignJet 130nr 24″ wide printer. The catch is, it had sat for five years without printing, and the current owner had never tried using it and didn’t know anything more about its status. I had nothing to lose and at least some experience to gain, and the free roll of glossy image paper made the trip worth while.
The HP DesignJet 130nr was considered an “ultra low end” printer for HP and is pretty bare bones – only three buttons and no text display so you have to count the number of bars in the ink status to decode error states. The “nr” option means it has a paper roll feeder and 10baseT network card. It has six ink channels: C M Y K + LightC + LightM. It takes HP type 84 and 85 ink which is pretty cheap on eBay – maybe $5-15 per cartridge. However the print heads are not made anymore and are expensive – $30-35 for remanufactured or $45-65 for NOS (new old stock). I expected that new print heads would be needed ($180 for a set of six) but the question is whether that’s all that’s wrong at this point – I wouldn’t want to spend that much on new heads and have the printer still not work.
When I got the printer home and set it up, I was able to do some diagnostic prints using the black ink but everything else was clogged up. According to the printouts the printer was made in 2005 and had been used for less than 700 pages, so less than one cartridge of ink had been used. The ink carts were full however so they must have been replaced before the printer was disposed of.
Looking at the diagnostic printout the heads were installed 3041 days ago and failed 1350 days ago (must have been when they tested it after sitting for a while). They already tried a “Level 3” print head cleaning which you can only do once according to HP. I tried lower level print head cleaning but made no progress. So the print heads are toast and I have to decide if I want to spend $180 on new ones only to find some other problem with the printer.
I decided I had nothing to lose by messing around with the existing heads so I took them out and cleaned them by resting them head down on a wet paper towel. After a soak and gentle wiping I was able to see two rows of dots come out on a dry paper towel, so that suggested something should print. I also used a syringe from LPS Computer that I bought for the T610 to try and suck some ink through the port that feeds the heads. The needle was a bit too big in diameter and probably not long enough but I was able to suck ink out of all the channels except Yellow. I was able to suck ink directly out of the Yellow cartridge port so this has me worried that there is a clog in the Yellow ink tube. I’m sure the tubes can be replaced but it is probably too much effort and cost for such an old printer. Here is a source for the tubes (part number C7791-60291) for ~$200.
After replacing the cleaned heads I was disappointed to see that not much progress was made by the cleaning – only a little more Magenta ink came out on the head test plot. There could still be a problem with the ink feed that is preventing ink from getting pumped to the heads – maybe a clog inside the heads or a non-working pumping mechanism?
Because it is a bare-bones model you can’t do alignments or calibrations from the front panel, you need to run software on a PC. However the last OS supported is Windows 8 (although there are drivers for Windows 10.) So even if I paid for new heads I probably would need to set up a Windows 8 machine to be able to use the printer – inconvenience on top of expense.
This is why these old printers get given away even though new printers with equivalent specs are > $1000 – it is too much of a gamble to replace everything only to find some other problem. If you are a business that depends on the printers it makes much more sense to buy a new one that is guaranteed to work for a while. It’s also why the prices on used printers vary so much – it seems like a printer that originally cost $5000 and mostly works except for some banded printouts should still be worth a lot, but unless it works perfectly it’s basically salvage.
It suggests that there should be a market for buying up used large-format printers, getting them working, and then reselling them with a (short) warranty. There is one company not too far away that does this: EVM Co in Annapolis MD. They sell their printers for a minimum of $700 and guarantee them for 30 days. Given that I’ve spent $500 so far on my DesignJet T610 and it doesn’t work yet, that is sounding like a better deal than when I first started looking.