epson 9900 -- a simple fix

[snickgrr]

However, daily in almost a mocking fashion, I will be making a print to the Epson 9900, and my HP Z3100 which sits right next to the Epson, will wake up and spit a few drops of ink into its tiny spittoon (which by the way does not need to be replaced like the "ink buckets" on the Epson), reminding me that it is really simple code to track time and every twelve hours or so, fire the heads for a drop or two, in order to keep them clean.    Truth be told, I use the HP Z3100 much less since I got the Epson, except to make custom profiles of targets I print on the Epson.   But, the machine will not sit idle and let me forget its simple solution to keeping its heads clean.    The problem with the logic in the Epson is that it waits to check the heads until the time you want to use the printer.   Two issues,  first, if some time has past since you last used the printer, it is likely that a cleaning might be in order and second, it does it cleaning right when you need a print, only casting frustration on the process.   I can always go to my HPZ3100 and ask it to print and it is ready and prints the job, having done its preening in off hours.

Epson, please put this change into your firmware and this printer will rank at the top of the charts in every respect.

John

Right off the bat I'm admitting I don't know much.  

As the the 7900 is my first printer, I have not had any experience getting to know the ins and outs of other makes and models.  But it seems to me the "clogging" I've been getting is more pervasive than having the machine wake up every 12 hours to spit a few drops of ink.  I don't think ink flowing through the nozzles has any effect as to whether it clogs or it doesn't.

I can print a clean nozzle check print, make a real print, print a nozzle check immediately afterward and see breaks in the pattern.
I can print a clean print and the next one right after have one whole channel missing.
 
It's got to be something else, something bigger systemically.

[MHMG]

I did have a quick look at the Wilhelm results for both printers and he does apparently have the Z3200 rated higher than the 7900 regarding longevity, but then that also makes me wonder, who cares?  Will somebody not buy a print because it's rated at 200 years instead of 275 years?  I must admit I wonder how they even know how long the print will last, but if you are 30 years old and buy a print today that is rated at 150 years isn't that good enough?  I know some people say it's fine art and you want it to last, but what you find aesthetically pleasing today your heirs wont tomorrow.

Well, many people do care about print longevity, and often it takes a generational rest period from an image before people begin to once again appreciate it.  Frederick Hill Meserve rescued the Brady Studio glass plate negatives from certain destruction as they languished all but forgotten in terrible warehouse conditions for some forty years after the American Civil War. For many years after the Civil War, people didn't want to be reminded of it, so the images were deemed to have no artistic or commercial value, and the historic nature of the work was overlooked.  His "find" now constitutes major works in the National Portrait Gallery and the National Archives. Yes, I believe we should care about the retention of quality in our photographs and fine art prints as they age.  How long they will last is really not the right question to ask because even the lowliest, acid-choked newsprint can last centuries if the criterion is merely that it be readable typeface. Printmakers should be asking how well the processes they use last, not simply how long. Will a print age gracefully, or will it just become ugly as it ages like most color prints do?

As for the 100, 200, and whopping 400 year WIR ratings, one needs to bear in mind that the WIR test standard was intended to predict "easily noticeable fade" deemed acceptable in consumer photo finishing applications. It really isn't an appropriate fine art standard for collectors or museum curators, and it is regrettable that the industry has elected to apply it to the kinds of fine art papers and inks that are being routinely discussed on the LL forum. The current test method was designed over 30 years ago for CMY chromogenic color systems that fade globally not selectively, and it has had little updating since that time.  Because it looks at only eight colors (plus a liberal tolerance for paper staining/discoloration), primary colors like red, green, and blue aren't included nor are important skin tone colors, and OBA burnout gets a free pass. Collectively, this oversight means that this test can misrank systems that show selective failures and/or nonlinear fading. It is a legacy light fastness test method that needs to be put to bed.

A printer like the 7900 is going to add the orange ink into the blend for skintones, orange and reds, and green ink into the production of greens and blue-greens, all of which is bound to have some influence on overall fading patterns in many images. It is pretty obvious when looking at the identical WIR ratings of the Epson paper line for the K3, K3VM, and HDR ink sets that the current test limitations didn't permit any differences to be reported. The K3 test results have simply been repurposed for the newer printers using K3VM and HDR inks.

regards,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com