on, to see what they say.
I wish this printer would do what My HP Z3100 does which is turn on every so often, spit out a little ink to keep its head clean and then go to sleep again. I almost never have head clog issues that machine and was hoping Epson would have taken the cue regarding allowing the printer to have a firmware routine which keeps itself clear without using a lot of ink.
John
I wish this machine did what my 11880 does, and run virtually clog free. The auto nozzle detect on that machine has not been an issue, nor have clogs.
Currently I am at 63% on my second maintenance cartridge, as compared to my 11880 (now about 15 months old) at 40% remaining of it's first one. The other 2 on the 11880 are at 100% still. So a lot of ink has gone into cleaning. My 7900 has consumed @960ml of ink since it was installed (not counting the ink required for the initial priming), and I've only printed 95 pages. As mentioned (in this thread or another one), the LK alone has required over 100ml of ink. I don't know how big a page is, but by rough calculations based on the prints I've done, and examining the job file which shows ink consumption by job, it appears it takes around 1 to 1.2 ml/square foot. which means perhaps as much as 900 ml of that ink is in the maintenance cartridge and not on a piece of paper.
From my perspective though Epson service has been very responsive, including sending me (well, most of it's back ordered) a full set of 150ml cartridges, which means so far I'm not out any ink personally.
Yesterday the tech arrived and replaced the pump/capping assembly. Remaining ink levels were all at the same% after the repair, so that took very little, if any, ink.
Unfortunately when I turned the machine on this morning a nozzle check (on luster paper examined with a loop) appeared pristine ... certainly good enough to print with, yet when I sent the first job to the printer the Auto Nozzle Detect triggered a cleaning cycle. Another call to the tech and to Epson.
I"m not sure what they are going to try this time, but it did sound like the tech on the phone was going to escalate this a little. I mentioned that at least some others are having problems, and that perhaps it is even more widespread than they realize, because many are just disabling the feature so they don't know if it works or not.
If you are having issues it would help everyone to make the call. As I mentioned Epson USA has been terrific so far. If it is a widespread problem (not saying it is, but seems to be quite a few are having it), they will only know that if it gets reported.
Unlike many companies where tech support always tries to blame user error first, I have had nothing like that ... just agreement that something isn't right and needs to be fixed ASAP.