Refurbishing An HP Z3100 Large Format Printer

[Dave Colangelo]

A new project came across my desk that I thought I would share here. I recently acquired an HP Z3100 44 inch large format printer. It came out of a photo lab supposedly not working, changed hands a few times then ended up with me. In short it came to me "not working" the previous owner got it as a project thinking they could deal with it but was over their head and passed it along. Everything was there when it came to me but it was clear the ink was run out. I got a few half filled carts with it but ultimately nothing is dated newer than early 2016 so the ink status is wonky to say the least. I think Im going to go with the override kit from InkjetCarts which replaces two PCB's and offers me the ability to use home refillable carts. For the price its way more logical than the HP carts which are something like $80 a pop (and it takes 12...). On any note this is the unit as it came to me:

The first issue was that the carriage was stuck in the lock position on the right hand side. The unit effectively seats the carriage on some pads to keep the heads moist when not in use. There are also some cleaning mechanisms in the unit that can squeegee the heads off that cycle through during some processes. Job one was removing the right side and freeing the carriage. This was time consuming but fairly simple all things considered. Once moving i was able to run some calibration prints which lead to issue two, the large issue as of now. I removed the print heads to soak them prior to use and encountered an interesting issue. The print heads have small pins that seat in rubber joints allowing them to be removed and replaced forming a nice seal and allowing ink flow when needed. The rubber (and ink) had dried out and was causing some serious leaks of the yellow ink. I ordered two replacement joints on eBay to be safe and waited 20 days form them to arrive from overseas. They came in last week and I got around to it over the weekend. This was the heads pre replacement:

It turned out I needed to replace both the yellow and blue joints (and likely will need to replace them all at some point. I started with yellow and accidentally broke the old one trying to remove it, I had to snip a bit of the hose off but there was some to spare in the trace so I was not worried about that much. Here is the new yellow head in place you can see the rubber is in much better shape.

with this one in i moved onto the blue. To avoid the same issue on the blue channel I used a light application of heat (from a lighter) which softened the tube a bit and made removal no issue. The repair went quickly on the second one. These replacements were not factory official and their dollar price tag reflected that. The fit was acceptable the and the print heads went back on no issue.

Ill update this as I make more progress.

Regards
Dave