Obviously this thread goes back a ways and I chimed in almost a year ago here with some issues I was experiencing. As with one other post I am now trying to solve the MK black banding problem. I cannot print any image with a solid black with MK on the 9900. I've tried all sorts of combinations of settings, both in the driver and on the control panel with no success. Last week I had my 6th or 7th(I'd have to refer to my log) service call within the first two years and getting very frustrated with the wasted time, ink, paper and money involved. During the last service call the tech installed the 4th cap/cleaning station and the left ink bay(leaking yellow). He then did numerous tests and alignments to try to get rid of the banding, which he said he had not seen before. I spent most of the next day testing with a purely black image file and could NOT print without banding. I spent the rest of the week printing quite successfully with PK. Today was rather slow but did do some printing this morning. Interruptions and then back to printing this afternoon, at which time the Lt Cyan was almost totally gone. Ran several pairs cleanings and one power pairs cleaning, but to no avail. Then I decided to look under the hood. I opened the front cover and got a strong light in there to examine the ink lines. To my horror I noticed an air bubble in the Lt Cyan line not far from the left ink bay. Called the tech and he asked me to run another Power pairs clean to see if the bubble would move. It did move about 14 " and I could then see the extent of the air. The bubble was five and a half inches long. Ran another clean and finally had the Lt Cyan back so I ran a couple of prints. Tomorrow morning I'll try to get another print finished before the air bubble reaches the head. Then more cleaning cycles to clear that. My history with this printer is now dictating another call to Epson probably tomorrow and this will be the big one. I am at least going to lobby for a second warranty extension and I want Epson to waive the cost. I'll see how well that goes over. Other wise I'm going to approach the possibility of a replacement printer. Should be an interesting conversation I imagine. I'll keep you posted.
Gary