Designjet T730 Service manual

**Kiran Otter** · 12-10-2021

From what you described about moving the carriage, it sounds like the rear bushing is either broken/missing/in the wrong place, causing the carriage to tilt forward too much. Just a guess.

Also it's recommended to use grease, not oil, on the carriage and carriage rail. The grease is available as part of a kit from HP. CQ890-60244 It comes in a syringe so you can inject it into the carriage (see the manual.) It appears to be just lithium grease. I think they went that route instead of oil to make it more maintenance free. I'm sure oil would work too but it doesn't last as long. And I'm really not sure what happens when you mix oil with the existing grease.

**D Hook** · 01-07-2022

Replaced the service station because it was pretty contaminated with black ink all over it, caked on mostly. Plus the part was inexpensive. (Thanks for the source tip Kiram!) Probably will buy the sponge kit from Ebay and try to refurb the old one to have as a spare. They seem pretty simple compared to others. Next will be new printhead because this one seems to be dumping black ink all over the new service station when going through the printhead cleaning process. Dumps so much ink it loads up that little brush that's used to keep the line sensor clean and then leaves blobs of ink over the lense, so much that the printer can't read the paper edges and give an error. Checked the OOPS and it's working fine. Take off the line sensor and wipe the lense and everything loads as it should. Other colors are banding bad and cleaning the printhead manually didn't help (soaked in warm water, windex for a couple hours). Used a syringe tool to pull ink through the tubes to be sure there's no blockage and there doesn't appear to be So need to source a new printhead next. Unless anyone has other ideas for manually cleaning these all-in-one printheads.

I'm guessing the previous owner began having trouble with the printhead (original to the machine so 3-4 years old) and kept using the "clean printhead" command and over saturated the service station and led to caking and ruining the rest of the printhead. When I got it, it was dragging blobs of black ink all over the paper. Very little output from the other colors.

You're right Kiram, these don't seem to be built as robust as the older legacy printers I usually work on. Everything about it seems....fragile. The touch screen is nice though. Getting through the support menus and test menus isn't too bad. Updated the firmware. Haven't gotten through all the tests yet though. We'll see how it goes. As usual, always glad to hear insight from others on this particular model.

Thanks!

**D Hook** · 01-08-2022

BTW, does anyone know if expired ink supplies (printhead, cartridges) work in this model printer? I found a printhead that less expensive but expired but not sure the printer will accept expired supplies.

Thanks!

**Kiran Otter** · 01-08-2022

Expired supplies are fine. Just means the warranty has expired.

Kiran

**D Hook** · 01-08-2022

Just confirmed the ink will work. Put in an expired (2019) yellow cartridge and it took it just fine.

Need to order a new printhead now. Found one on ebay that is about 1/2 price of retail but is just past expiration date. Coming from Japan. Don't know if there are regional restrictions like some ink supplies on older machines. The others he's sold haven't had any complaints about so we'll see. I sent the seller that question just to be sure but haven't heard back yet.

Thanks Kiram!

**D Hook** · 01-09-2022

Seller in Japan doesn't know if the printhead will work on US machine. I'll keep googling for an answer. I know there are regional restrictions on ink cartridges but they're usually identified by a suffix of "A" or something. I haven't seen any printheads yet that have a suffix behind the 729 number.