Wondering about buying an Epson 9900

[jerryw]

BUT... I probably would print with it in fits and spurts  -- printing most weekends and even week nights during a spurt and then letting it sit idle for a month or more.  According to the internet, that leads to clogs.  I'm wondering if there is a way to properly mothball the 9900 if I know I'm not going to print for a month or perhaps even several months.  Or... I could rig up a cron job to print a 4x5 card every N days during the idle period.  Or ... ?

Here is some empirical feedback:

I have had a 7900 for about 4 years now.  Like you, I print in "fits and spurts" - sometimes going for several weeks without printing.

In those "down" periods, I run a quick nozzle-check on a plain 8.5x11 sheet once a week (to push at least some ink through it - knowing that Epson has a reputation for clogging).  Though there are times I don't even do that.

Most of the time the printer does not clog.  But, on the occasions when it does, I've found that cleaning does work.  There have been a couple of times that I have had to use the "power clean" routine.  Before each printing session, I do run a nozzle-check.

Do I worry about clogging?  Yeah.  Is it a hassle to deal with the occasional clog?  A little.  Would I prefer Canon's apparent superiority re: not-clogging? Sure, why not.

Personally, although I am technically inclined, I'm not that interested in head-and-printer-internals design, and debates about the merits of each vendor's design approach (although I certainly don't mind you guys doing it among yourselves - have at it).  I just want the dang thing to print when I'm ready to print.    So I am more concerned about empirical performance.

All-in-all: the prints look great, I've gotten my money back by not having to go outside for prints (got the printer for a good price), I enjoy having print control in my little lab and (so far/ fingers-crossed) the printer hasn't died with a terminal-clog.  What's not to like?

[disneytoy]

I wonder the real ratio of 7890/7900/9890/9900 owners that have no $$service calls.

After 1 year, 2 years, 3 years 4 years, 5 years.

I'd think Epson would go out of business or have a class action suit if everyone who buys one of these printers failed, prematurely.

[deanwork]

Depends on what you mean by prematurely? They used to last 5, 6. 7 years or more, and to tell you the truth most of us could solve any minor issues we had ourselves without resorting to a service call. Epson service calls were pretty rare. That was my experience.  In contrast I began having major head issues with the 9890 after 3 years, and wasted ink due to blocked nozzles way before that.

 A class action lawsuit would go nowhere and even if it was successful the lawyers would be the only ones to profit from it. They would always come up with some far fetched complaint that you did something wrong. At the very least they should sell heads at a reasonable cost for people to put in themselves. But I wouldn't even want to work on one of these. I've heard so many horror stories about even the trained technicians pulling their hair out trying to figure out what part to replace, to stop banding issues and ink pressure issues.

Thing is they have gotten progressively worse over the years in the large format market. The popular 9600 ( I had three of them) that was really their first photo pigment inkjet printer under $10,000.00 would clog regularly, in minor ways, but in that case the heads were very durable and you might have to screw around with windex and all every year or two but you rarely saw these "terminal" clogs that you see with the 9900 series today. And when you did you had gotten a lot of mileage out of the unit.

 There are a LOT more people with premature printer failure with the new series. I mean where the only remedy is a new head a two thousand dollar bill, which may or may not help it last another year. The Epson 10K was the best by far, they never clogged or wasted ink. The 9800 and 9880 printers were more reliable than the 9600s and a lot more reliable than the 9900, and I think a good value for performance,  but like the 9600s you still had a lot of headache and waste every time you wanted to switch from photo to matte media. Epson would tell us to buy two printers one for each type of paper (seriously), ( that is when I moved to Hp and Canon). The 10K had a single universal black for both matte and gloss media and I actually preferred that solution to the ink switching. They have just over- engineered this new series and the pressure cart system is all F ed up. That Breathing Color guy was saying the heads actually delaminate and fall apart. That's the first I've heard of that, but it makes sense. The 9600 heads were really durable. I heard they were used in all kinds of military applications. They clogged some but they could last easily 8- 10 years, and many did even under heavy use. A lot of people just gave them away after many years because they were too slow, but still printing fine.

I have to say the Epson 3800-3880s are really designed well and function well. Epson clearly has made an excellent printer there. 20 years ago I would dream of something like that that you could put on your desktop.

john

I wonder the real ratio of 7890/7900/9890/9900 owners that have no $$service calls.

After 1 year, 2 years, 3 years 4 years, 5 years.

I'd think Epson would go out of business or have a class action suit if everyone who buys one of these printers failed, prematurely.