Epson 4900 auto nozzle check

[dsmphoto]

Just took delivery of an Epson 4900 to replace a 4880. In the course of setup and start up, it did some auto nozzle checks with no indication of problems afterward. First print of a ref. chart was awful- nozzle check print showed one nozzle section missing entirely (10/11 I believe). A power clean of that block did not fully bring it in, so I followed the manuals suggestion of turning it off overnight. It was OK the next day- probably air bubbles.

The point is: what good are the auto nozzle checks if they don't detect and flag a problem of that magnitude? Anyone else have an experience like this?

As an aside, early prints do seem to have more apparent depth and smoother gradations as compared to the 4880.

Scott McRae

[Mark D Segal]

As a general rule with this, as much other stuff, I don't activate auto anything. I have mine turned-off. The printer will not do nozzle checks or cleanings unless I tell it to, and then only the channel-pair where there is blockage. The manual explains how to manage all that very well.

[Wayne Fox]

Epson's has a couple of settings related to ANC and auto cleaning. One of those is "auto cleaning times" found in the maintenance menu (hold down pause when powering the printer on).

The current default is 1.  When these changes were first made what this basically means is if the printer detects a clog when performing an ANC, it would go ahead and print without cleaning, but display "some nozzles were clogged" in the panel.  (Yes, I know.  Why would anyone want to go ahead and print if there are clogs).

If you change this number to 2, then if the printer detects missing nozzles, it will go ahead and perform a single cleaning cycle "appropriate for the level of blockage detected". It will then check the nozzles again, if any are missing it will go ahead and print with the warning.

Setting it to 3 means the printer will repeat the clean up to 3 times if necessary.  This is the only setting where the printer will not print unless all nozzles are firing.  If after 3 tries there are still missing nozzles, you will get a cleaning error, and should intervene with manual checks and cleans.

I'm not sure who decided these are the "appropriate" actions for a printer to take.  I don't think anyone wants the printer to go ahead and print if nozzles are missing.  I would prefer all 3 choices to have a cleaning error if the nozzles aren't clear ... not print.  This would make  setting number 2 very useful.

For what it's worth, I have my 7900 set to 3, and I've never seen it trigger a 2nd cleaning cycle so it's been pretty reliable.  Using 2 might not be too bad, but like you my new 4900 had some problems early on and required some manual intervention to get things working well.  Since then it's been quite good.

Here's a link to read more about the auto cleaning times setting.

[Sven W]

Nice to know...
Thanks Wayne


/Sven

[dsmphoto]

I'm not sure who decided these are the "appropriate" actions for a printer to take.  I don't think anyone wants the printer to go ahead and print if nozzles are missing.  I would prefer all 3 choices to have a cleaning error if the nozzles aren't clear ... not print.  This would make  setting number 2 very useful.

For what it's worth, I have my 7900 set to 3, and I've never seen it trigger a 2nd cleaning cycle so it's been pretty reliable.  Using 2 might not be too bad, but like you my new 4900 had some problems early on and required some manual intervention to get things working well.  Since then it's been quite good.

I agree - any "appropriate" actions by the printer should include a notification of clogged nozzles, if found, and no print. In my case the auto nozzle check was set to "occasionally" and the auto clean was set to 1. In either case you should get a nozzle clog warning regardless of the next step. I did not not. The auto check would be useful to me since I am a sometimes sporadic printer. (In response to Mark, I did not flag the on/off possibility because I thought it was obvious.)

I will send Epson an inquiry about this. If the auto nozzle check (as opposed to auto cleaning) doesn't have a built in warning or stop function, then its useless.

After checking your link, I was reminded again that the rest of the world's Epson sites seem to be much better than the USA site. Also is the case with Canon - I had an ipf5000 for a while. You had to go to the ipf wiki group or overseas sites for any real info.

Thanks,

Scott 

[Farmer]

There are lots of users who don't want to stop a print due to a single blocked nozzle - that's why the option exists.  You'll read plenty of reports of people who see a warning about a block nozzle and then doe a nozzle check and find nothing wrong (and certainly nothing wrong on the prints they're doing).

The three levels give a broad range of response. Do nothing, do something, do a lot.  Seems pretty reasonable.

[Wayne Fox]

There are lots of users who don't want to stop a print due to a single blocked nozzle - that's why the option exists.  You'll read plenty of reports of people who see a warning about a block nozzle and then doe a nozzle check and find nothing wrong (and certainly nothing wrong on the prints they're doing).

Only problem is you have no clue if it is a single nozzle, or an entire channel so you run the risk of wasting paper and time if it just goes ahead.  I suppose if your production is on pretty cheap paper so you don't mind tossing the print it's useful. You're right in that the printer can warn of clogs when none exist so for some #3 isn't too useful (since some printers this is more problematic) repeating many unnecessary clogs (the problem that plagued the original 79/9900's before firmware tweaks got things working much better).

Just seems to me there are a couple of alternatives that could be included which gives each user a little more flexibility.  I would prefer the printer to just stop if it detects a clog, and let me control the process.  Or even do a single clean, and then stop.  Leave the other options, maybe just include a couple more like this.

Regardless, it's workable enough and not a problem once you understand exactly what each setting does and adapt a workflow.

[Farmer]

I think more options are always weclome - until you have so many that no one is sure which one to use :-)

[Mark D Segal]

I think more options are always weclome - until you have so many that no one is sure which one to use :-)

As far as I'm concerned, and as mentioned above, I think the most straightforward approach works reliably and involves very little dilemma about what to do. Turn-off autoi everything. Do a nozzle check before printing. If there is a clog, do a first-level manual cleaning of the affected channel pair. Re-run the nozzle check. Unless the printer has been left unused for more than several days this works fine. If the printer is left unused for more than several days, more aggressive or repeated cleaning interspersed with a small throwaway print eventually does the job. This makes it a totally controlled, ink-friendly procedure.

[TylerB]

I'm still uncertain of the most effective practice. I certainly see the value in going all manual as you suggest, but after this firmware update I'm giving the auto options a try.
Manually, my problem tends to be, a check showing a few problems in one color- then the pairs cleaning creates far more problems than it solves, even in other colors... and now I'm in a cycle of various kinds of cleanings for a while...
This despite Epson camping out here for days and days, replacing many relevant parts many times...
It's certainly far better than it was, bit it does occur.
Tyler

added later- my apologies, my brain was stuck in the firmware update thread with similar issues... my experience described above is with a 9900, though still may be relevant.

[davidh202]

Epson's has a couple of settings related to ANC and auto cleaning. One of those is "auto cleaning times" found in the maintenance menu (hold down pause when powering the printer on).

 

Wayne,
I have never gone into the maintenance menu by first pressing the pause button at the same time as power up but have my printer set up directly from the options in the ANC setting in the main menu (for periodic checks, option 1).From the quick guide
The printer normally does a check when first powered up and a job is queued and started and only sometimes finds the need for a cleaning. It has never cleaned more than once in this mode, and I have not had to do any manual nozzle checks any more, and have  had no problems with colors or bad prints (double knocks on wood)

[Wayne Fox]

Wayne,
I have never gone into the maintenance menu by first pressing the pause button at the same time as power up but have my printer set up directly from the options in the ANC setting in the main menu (for periodic checks, option 1).From the quick guide
The printer normally does a check when first powered up and a job is queued and started and only sometimes finds the need for a cleaning. It has never cleaned more than once in this mode, and I have not had to do any manual nozzle checks any more, and have  had no problems with colors or bad prints (double knocks on wood)

The options in the maintenance menu affect what the printer will do based on the settings you have set in the menu you describe.  Obviously if you have the printer set to never check, then the second setting doesn't apply.

So if you set your printer up for periodic checks, it will default to mode 1 in the maintenance menu.  This means if it detects a clog, it will try to clean, check again to see if it's clear, but then go ahead and print.  Most of the time this is not a bad option, because the clean will clear the nozzles.  you do run the risk of having the printer print despite the nozzles not being clear.

Regarding the comments about just setting everything to manual, sure.  But the circuitry is there to detect clogs, and an option to use that rather than a manual nozzle check with intervention by the user if it fails seems quite useful and save some time.  I have my printer set to check every time it prints a page, and currently my 7900 is set to try to clean 3 times. This printer is used in a pretty busy environment so I don't want my operator having to babysit it.  The good news is it works quite well, doesn't clean very often, and always gets it with a single clean.  My new 4900 wasn't that reliable for the first week or so,  but how I haven't seen any clogs for a few weeks so I may enable this option as well.