Epson7900...A Comedy of Errors

[davidh202]

 Seems I have joined the ICC ( ink clog club)today.
I don't print as frequently as I'd like to be ,but have been doing relatively well since purchasing the 7900 last September-Used the printer last week with no problems.
 I actually still have some colors left on the original shipped carts.
Got a request to print two 11 x 17s as a rush today,  fired up the printer, and load my Ex Fiber roll ...

1-got a 'needs cleaning' warning- I print test pattern.
2- not enough ink in the LLK,VLM,Y and LC carts to do it so I replace all 4 and do another test pattern.
3- LLK and Y are very bad  so I do a pairs cleaning and another test ...good
4- Put the low carts back in.
5- Go to print and I get some pretty bad horizontal  banding cancel job ...RTFM
5-Manual "suggests" turing off high speed, and lowering the paper feed speed, and printing at max res...I drop speed by 5%, , turn off HS, and set for max... start print-- banding worse, cancel job  
6- Do another test pattern and this time the LK is missing some lines   ... clean again, full clean this time.
7- Decide to leave the 4 new carts in since the F'in Manual says low ink signal can also cause banding.Decide to put the settings back to default for the paper.
8- Start print job again and this time so far so good, untill the printer happens to magically locate one of the black spots in the paper that happens to coincide with a white area in the illustration I'm printing (%$#$@) cancel job, ...start again!!!

Finally get a good print after about 1.5 hours, about 30 (or more!)  ML of wasted ink, and about 6 feet of EX fiber 24" roll
Lost money big time!, on what should have been a simple print order from a PDF Doc.

If it's of any consequence, I now know the F'in Manual  almost by heart though, (photographic memory?)

To the poster who said the last firmware V fixed the clog problem....
 I say wishfull thinking, a pure coincidence, it will rear it's ugly head again, sorry !!!

I did derive one good thing from todays fiasco...
 I remembered to set my platten gap to 'wide' and no more head strikes

Sorry to all for my rant,
David

[langier]

I've had days like that on most of my Epson printers--set for weeks and do a perfect nozzle check and print and the next print is missing two colors and is totally off. Run some cleaning cycles and still weird.

Luckily, for the most part it's a rare day that that happens and the Epsons run like clockwork.

Hope you get out of the rut soon!

[felix5616]

makes me glad i have a Z3200, has never clogged.

[Sven W]

makes me glad i have a Z3200, has never clogged.

It does. But you don't notice when the nozzles are replaced.

/Sven

[deanwork]

........and that is a beautiful thing since the Z series heads are less than $70.00 each and can be replaced in 10 minutes, and can last for many years with no issues.

[photodave]

Sorry to hear about all the issues that you have with your Epson 7900.  I have a friend that has a Epson 9900 who prints roughly 150 8 X 10's per week with the machine.  At the beginning of each week when he goes to print he will automatically do a power clean prior to printing.  This unfortunately wastes a lot of ink and money.  I recently bought a Canon 8300 this past November and have been printing away each week and have had only one ink clog issue which was minor.  As a prior owner of a Epson 7800 I believe that Epson has illustrated poor customer service in manufacturing machines that consistently clog which waste time and money. If I were you I would sell your Epson and move over to Canon, especially when the rebates come back. 

David

     

[bill t.]

OTOH, I do know some x900 owners who seem to be doing just fine with only a reasonable amount of nozzle nudging.

It is a little tempting for us 8300 guys to gloat, but I'm mostly keeping my shut so as not to hurry the day when a $450 print head goes belly-up.  The gods notice those things, trust me.

I'm thinking of putting my first dead print head on top the very heavy maintenance cartridge which is my 9880 souvenir.

[ippolitois]

I have found that you'll have to clean both the capping station pads until it's ABSOLUTELY positively clean. Ever since I've discovered that a perfectly clean capping station unclogs my printer with 2 cleanings. It appears that the more cleanings you do, it actually prevents you from unclogging the printer. My theory is that the two pads get so saturated with ink during the multiple cleanings that it drives the ink back into the head and clogs it. This is of course just theory but it has been proven to me. Since I started cleaning the capping station pads to surgical levels, my clogging issues have been greatly diminished. I have a 4000, and it's sad to here that the latest Epson's still clog up.  My believe has always been that this is intentional to ensure robust ink sales. It made perfectly good sense when Epson was the only game in town, but they aren't any more.

It's nice to hear that the Canon's don't clog and who cares if the heads have to be replaced, as long as I can fire up the beast and print without spending hours unclogging my printer. When seasoned print makers start to move over to Canon's because they are more trouble free, I believe Epson will have discovered a new technology that prevents there printers from clogging. I calculated that a power clean on my machine is around $150 each time.  Over time, that can buy  a lot of Canon heads.

Paul

[photodave]

OTOH, I do know some x900 owners who seem to be doing just fine with only a reasonable amount of nozzle nudging.

It is a little tempting for us 8300 guys to gloat, but I'm mostly keeping my shut so as not to hurry the day when a $450 print head goes belly-up.  The gods notice those things, trust me.

I'm thinking of putting my first dead print head on top the very heavy maintenance cartridge which is my 9880 souvenir.

Bill

I am wondering how much money in wasted ink that a typical Epson user will have to go through in relationship to one print head that will need to be replaced on a Canon 8300?  My bet is still on the Canon!

David

[bill t.]

I suspect that even with a pair of $450 (each) heads the balance of printer induced economic terror probably still looks most kindly on the 8300.

But what really matters to me is that my printing sessions often get backed up to late in the day.  Bleary eyed nozzle fights in the early a.m. were never much fun.  Now I just push the button, make the prints, and go to bed.  This has greatly reduced the sagging flesh just below my eyes.

[TylerB]

...I have a friend that has a Epson 9900 who prints roughly 150 8 X 10's per week with the machine.  At the beginning of each week when he goes to print he will automatically do a power clean prior to printing.  This unfortunately wastes a lot of ink and money....

well that should not be necessary, and if it really is then he should get it serviced. I certainly went through a bad period initially with a new 9900, but repeated service visits finally got things squared away. Currently it's nozzle performance is far better then both x800s I own. During that period I was in contact with as many 9900 owners as I could, and even though we see the complaints and problem printers on lists like this, all but one of those I was in contact with were extremely pleased with the lack of needed cleanings.
They've built in too much complexity in my opinion, and there are too many things that need to function well together to avoid the kinds of things we hear on the lists, but they can work well, and actually generally do. They were committed to making mine work, and stuck it out until it did.
One tip- it does not like "low" carts put back in after cleaning with full carts. If you want to make the most of your low but not empty carts, don't change back to them until end of day, then shut down for the night. Then, it can start up next time and build pressure up properly for the needs of the emptier carts.
Currently I go through very little ink on cleanings, very rarely needed, and when they are it's a pairs cleaning and I'm squared away again, maybe one a week. After initial near suicidal buyer's remorse, all is well, very happy with it.
I also had a Canon 6300 demo unit in here for a month, the x300s are great printers and deserve more market share. If the 9900 issues had not been resolved I would have gone that way... now let's see if HP commits to upping the ante a bit...
Tyler

[deanwork]

Tyler, I'm glad you finally got that straightened out. I was worried you were going to shoot one of those techs for awhile there.

As to HP, one of the things I admire about them is that they don't change their inksets every 15 minutes. They did a lot of research before releasing the Z machines and they decided to go for unmatched permanence (that has been proven by three separate testing labs) over maximum gamut. It is certainly no great prepress machine or an ad photographers dream, but for 90% of the work I do I have no issue with the gamut at all. The two areas that HP really needs to work on are speed and sheet feeding. If you like to work primarily with sheets this is not the printer to have by any stretch.  They are going to have to improve in these two areas it seems to me.

[cybis]

To the poster who said the last firmware V fixed the clog problem....
 I say wishfull thinking, a pure coincidence, it will rear it's ugly head again, sorry !!!

I feel your pain. It was wishfull thinking on my part and it did rear it's ugly head indeed.

[Farmer]

As to HP, one of the things I admire about them is that they don't change their inksets every 15 minutes.

Who does that?  Epson and Canon both have had their current inksets for several years, and both build upon the previous.  None of the big three are making overly frequent changes to their inksets at that level.

[natas]

If you are under warranty and having bad clogs contact Epson. If you go through one power clean and it does not resolve the issue they will send a tech out. They did this with me and found out that I had a bad hear. The replacement took the tech about 1 hour and since then I rarely have a clog.

And the person that has a friend that does a power clean weekly needs to slap that owner I know many people that do 3-4x more prints weekly and never use power clean. Power clean is a sort of last resort clean.


And btw, leaving any inkjet printer idle for long periods of time can cause clogs. I had a b9180 I would leave idle for 1-2 weeks at a time and almost always required a clean. I print 2-3 times a week on my 7900 so I rarely get clogs (maybe once a month at the most).