Down The YouTubes

And round the S-bend. Welcome to the wonderful world of minefields. You are a click away from one... I did not come to this conclusion with my own material. The stuff I write for CE is totally safe. It may be inaccurate, biased, and suspect, but you won't actually lose your hard drive images by reading this column. I am not so sure about some of the other presentations on the net. I had cause recently to curse at my Epson R3000 printer when it started losing black - I applied the usual remedies of test printing and head cleaning, but to little avail. Normally when I run two or three cleaning cycles blocked jets clean out and we are good to go again. This time it just seemed to get worse. Note: I do know about cycling the printer at least twice a week and I do so when I am virtuous. At other times I am too busy ( retirement is a maelstrom of work ) and the thing sits and cruds up over several weeks. I pay the price in frustration and ink. I think printers are like large dogs...they need regular exercise and take a plastic bag with you. Well, this time I did not take the thing in to the authorised repair shop. I've been there a number of times but I can make more problems than they can repair - this time I determined to do something about it myself - I reached for the YouTube. If this is a new thing for you, brace yourself. You can find nearly anything you can imagine being videoed and displayed on the free YouTube channel. The value of the videos is sometimes commensurate with the price paid...other times it can be quite good. My enquiry about unclogging Epson print heads yielded literally dozens of YouTube sessions. I selected the most likely, got a couple Gaviscon, and started watching. Some people are naturals. They have expertise and flair and style. Unfortunately their flair may be for plumbing, rather than electronics repair, and their style may be closer to Forrest Gump that they know. That's where the Gaviscon comes in...if you are determined to stay the course and see what information can be had, you may need it. I saw enough different people from enough different places to get a reasonable idea about what plugs the heads and how to dissolve it. The most sensible repair persons hailed from the US, UK, and somewhere in the Balkans. They were all saying much the same thing ( a sign that there may be some value in their advice ) and they were all prepared to have a logical go at the problem. The man from the Balkans was the most adventurous, but he won through to the end - I think he could probably fix anything from a tissue dispenser to an army tank. Note that in no case did the repair people put themselves in danger from electricity or violent chemistry. I'll not pass on their advice - you'll have to get yourself into hot water by watching the videos and make up your own mind at what temperature you baulk - I gave the printer a really good basic clean and then left it overnight. The next day I tried another cleaning cycle and it came back printing well. As one adviser said, we often introduce air into print lines and cause what looks like stoppages - but we need to let the thing sit long enough for the fault to ease itself out. I am still going to do a deliberate clean of the print head in situ using the least invasive of the techniques recommended - it can only improve matters.