The minimum life expectancy of the Printheads is 530cc for the Black Printhead and 200cc for the Color Printheads. If Print Quality is poor before the minimum life expectancy of the Printhead has been reached, the Troubleshooting procedure should be performed (Refer to » Performing the Troubleshooting Procedure) which will determine whether the Printhead needs replacing or not after performing various levels of recovery actions. After performing a recovery action, the Printhead will be encoded with either 1, 2 or 3 (depending on the strength of the recovery action performed).

Now, if a Printhead is removed (even after Level 3 recovery has been performed) and the minimum life expectancy has not been reached, the Printhead will be marked "Removed - too early".

If a customer complains about having to replace the Printheads frequently before the minimum life expectancy has been reached, using the information obtained with the Printhead History Utility you can determine if the Printer is causing repetitive problems to the Printheads as follows:

Enter the Printhead History Utility and Select the color of the Printhead that is experiencing the replacement problem. In the following example, Printheads 2, 3 and 4 were removed too early:

In order to check if the recovery process (Troubleshooting procedure) was performed on each Printhead, select the Printhead and press the Enter key.

As you can see in the above example, all the Printheads were removed before the minimum life expectancy was reached (Ink used is below 100%) and the maximum recovery action was also performed (P/H cleaning code is 3). Therefore the conclusion is that the Printer is causing the Printheads to fail. In this situation, to resolve the problem, try the following:

Check the amount of ink used by the Printhead ( » Obtaining Printhead Information). If the amount of ink used by the Printhead is less than 1 Ink Cartridge (69 cc), then replace the Ink Cartridge for that color.
Check if the Ink Supply Station is faulty by performing the Ink Supply Station test » Ink Supply Station. If the test fails, replace the Ink Supply Station » Ink Supply Station.
Use the printer Information utility to check the usage of the Service Station » Printer Information . If the usage of the Service Station is close to 100% then replace the Service Station » Service Station and Aerosol Fan.
Check if the Ink Supply Tubes are faulty by installing new Start-up Printheads into the Carriage and see if ink flows to them (you will need to perform the Prime Tubes Utility » Prime Tubes). If the ink DOES NOT flow to the Start-up Printheads, replace the Ink Supply Tubes » Ink Supply Tubes.