Replacement 4900 - No Clogs this morning

[Shane Webster]

Not wanting to bump my previous post, my replacement 4900 arrived yesterday (kudos to Epson for overnighting it) to replace the 4900 whose C printhead would not unclog.  After charging the ink, I performed a nozzle check and had a clogged LK nozzle.  After a cleaning, it cleared.  I aligned the printhead, printed some testcharts and turned the printer off for the night.  This morning, I turned it on and printed another nozzle check and was pleased to see all nozzles firing (I think that is the first nozzle check to come out clean on the first test).  That is a good thing!  Now I just need to figure out why the gamut of the new printer is smaller than the old--but that's a post in another section.  For this one, I'm just glad I have 100% nozzles in the morning.

[artbot]

i'd be suspicious if possibly epson found that their formulation for the cyan ink was just a bit too high viscosity and it has been thinned a bit.  why would they replace a printer instead of a cartridge?  because a used/refurb printer costs less to sell back the market than a cyan ink recall that can't be easily tracked or managed.

is your gamut smaller in a way that might be caused by less dense cyan?

[Farmer]

Gotta love conspiracy theories :-)

The ink bundled with the new printer would have been done so in the initial production batch (given the age/release of the printer) and so would be the same in the new printer as with the old.  Of course, that's assuming one lends any credence to the thought that the formulation has been changed without an update in the driver, the firmware and the canned profiles (across all HDR and K3 and K3VLM inkset printers).

It's not cheaper to replace the printer, but it is good customer service that recognises what is essentially an out-of-the-box fault.

[Garnick]

Gotta love conspiracy theories :-)

The ink bundled with the new printer would have been done so in the initial production batch (given the age/release of the printer) and so would be the same in the new printer as with the old.  Of course, that's assuming one lends any credence to the thought that the formulation has been changed without an update in the driver, the firmware and the canned profiles (across all HDR and K3 and K3VLM inkset printers).

It's not cheaper to replace the printer, but it is good customer service that recognises what is essentially an out-of-the-box fault.

I had yet another service call for my 9900 yesterday. It's a long story and won't bore you with it again, except to say that the 2nd pump/cap assembly that was supposed to be installed was originally sent to the opposite end of the country and I waited 2 weeks for this call. When the tech took the unit out of the box and then the plastic bag there were several plastic pieces that fell out as well. One corner of the unit was broken, and yet there was no damage to the box in that area. We both agreed that it was probably packaged in that condition. Obviously he did not install the unit. I'll now have to call Epson again to arrange another service call. Unfortunately I'm rather becoming familiar with some of the techs at Epson.

Now to the gist of this post. At one point I mentioned to the tech that even though I have extended the warranty on this printer and intend to use it, at some point I might simply call Epson and tell them to send a new machine. His response was that if they did agree to that arrangement it would be a refurbished unit. I then said that it would probably make sense to keep the one I have and let Epson continue throwing parts at it. He agreed. Just a thought!

Gary

[Farmer]

Most manufacturers use refurbished units when available.  That said, when Epson America refurbs they pretty much remanufacture - and it will have gone through local QA testing, so you are likely to end up with an excellent unit.  Given how new the 4900s are, you may well get a new one if it came to it.  Something to discuss if that comes to be.

It's bad that the part was damaged - a lot of them are stored not in boxes, but in the plastic bags etc as they come in boxes containing multiples of that part.  So most likely it was damaged whilst in the warehouse, but with tens of thousands of line items of spares (if not more), somoene didn't notice it was broken (because they likely didn't know what it should look like).  Still, not good.