Dean - can you explain exactly what is happening? I've tested this on 7900 and 9900 with the latest firmware and the colour-pair cleaning works correctly so far as I can see.
This issue is important to me because I had a 7600 that wasted as much ink as I used to print. I quit using it except for exception prints. The issue with it was, it cleaned every head every cleaning cycle. I would get one head clean then another would clog and on and on and on. So with the 7900, I saw where it could clean head pairs at a time. This isn't perfect (I want one head to clean at a time not even a pair) but I could live with this. I turned off all the automatic cleaning stuff because I don't trust the machine to do the cleaning for me. What triggered my questions about what was happening is that on several occassions I had multiple head pairs that were clogged to one degree or another. So I started the cleaning on one pair, and they all came back clean. This didn't look like a head pair cleaning to me. The printer seems to have a rythm in its cleaning cycle and even the head pair cleaning appeared to doing something along the lines of an automatic cleaning cycle.
When a cartridge gets so low, the printer wants it replaced before a cleaning cycle is initiated for the head that cartridge is associated with. If you have multiple clogged heads, it will clean the pair that you first selected (if you have enough ink for that pair), then it will stop at the next, if the next one is short of ink and ask you to replace the cartridge. If you tell the printer to stop, and print a nozzle check pattern you will see that only the head pair you selected is clean while the other pair will still have a clog. When you replace the low cartridge with a new one, then select the head pair to clean associated with that new cartridge, it will then clean. Depending on where that headpair is in the overall cleaning cycle of the printer it will go into an automatic mode and check/clean the remaining pairs or if it is the last pair in the cycle it will stop. I have not yet determined the pair cleaning order in the cycle but I'm getting there.
Epson Tech support confirmed that if you select a head pair to clean, the printer will automatically go into a check/cleaning cycle for the other pairs. This drives me nuts. It is a waste of ink and time. Epson ink is expensive enough without flushing it down the drain. Why offer the option then not fully enable it?
I am having intermittant clogs with my printer (I am keeping every nozzle test page with date and cleaning cycle selected so I can identify any patterns). I have read and been told that there are airbubbles that have to work themselves out of the system and I can believe that. So I am trying to be patient otherwise. The printer prints beautifully, I have no beefs with that.
One other issue that is interesting. If a cartridge says that it only has 1% ink left, it is apparently significantly more than that. I have several cartridges are at 1% and they print, and print and print. So it appears that something is also messed up in the math used to track and report ink usage but apparently the printer knows what the reality really is. One wonders if this is a marketing ploy or a safety stock issue.
