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Author Topic: Epson 7900 from the inside - out  (Read 1092590 times)

Ken Doo

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #800 on: October 15, 2012, 09:20:21 am »

Thanks, Eric.  It was great to meet you as well.  And now with an introduction into printing K7 piezography, you might get that QTR introduction as well!  And maybe Harvey Head Cleaner too....

 :)  ken

Eric Gulbransen

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #801 on: October 15, 2012, 10:58:07 am »

Thank you Ernst, thank you Ken.  I have sent an email to QTR proposing such a rip.  I even suggested it's name be "Holiday Mode".  What the hell, keep the humor rolling.  I will of course post with any response I get. 

Printers crossed...

Blue moon

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #802 on: October 15, 2012, 11:14:28 am »

 Eric
Your a sport..and a gentleman for letting me contribute...
My real point is couched in jest..i do not use ammonium/isopropyl or simply green ....or white spirit etc etc anywhere near the piezo head...they are rough spirits designed for something other than piezo magic heads..you know that better than myself..spirits dry out the parts..epson cleaning lubricant just walked in the door this minute...Epson use lubricants in their cleaning products...(i have been using the above spirits on my paint varnish brush with no spectacular success either )
My point is that epson inks and all pigment inks carry resin and pigment inside the ink cartridge ...these ingredients are happily separated by a softening lubricating liquid named glycerol...which keeps the resin and the pigment  very happy at that stage in their dark air tight COOL comfortable cartridge...for possibly 5 years or more if you just dump it in your fridge...the marriage (-and the magic) happens  when the resin and the pigment (which has to be nicely mixed please )are sucked into the piezo chamber..heated and spat out to dry on your lovely hahnemuhle photo rag paper...voila..the resin has found what it really needs....heat and ..air....so it can harden quickly and keep our precious pigment stuck to the paper and you have a durable beautiful print to your name...ok ?
Now what about the resin and pigment that never gets into your photograph...is left over as slop ?
What Mr.Epson then does is wipe the wet dripping piezo jets clean with his tiny miserable overworked little rubber brush thing and the cleaned ?piezo head  goes back to bed in its airtight dark rubber  air sealed park station ...for the moment...
what has not been generally realised i think ,is that the rubber wiper brush has been made much smaller than heretofore and is now asked to clean 8 to 10 dripping sections on the piezo head before it gets to the park station...also the 8 to 10 rubber seals have got to cause trouble in TIME ..just too many of them..
EPSON ARE YOU LISTENING....YOU HAVE GOOFED BIG TIME ...SLOW DOWN AND GO BACK TO THE SIMPLER EARLIER DESIGNS.....LESS RUBBER SEALS TO KEEP AIRTIGHT.....BIGGER STRONGER Rubber BRUSHES TO CLEAN  THE PIEZO HEAD WITH....not a big ask is it ?
What does Mr Epson then do with the collected resin on the wiper brush...you guessed it....absolutely nothing...on the 7800 ...the resin is left to drip on to a piece of white felt on the floor of the printer...does it all drip on to the floor ? Of course not....it stays on the wiper brush ...just in case the piezo head might pop around for a visit...can the brush be wiped clean before the piezo head calls around....nope...call a technician please....do not open the printer case or you will be in trouble....would you like a little glass door that you could open after each days printing to simply wipe the blade yourself.....HELLO EPSON..too too simple is that idea..i think that a small glass door to let the customer clean the wiper blade would mean that Epson would not need to go complicated with their new cleaning techniques..(i am leaving the side case off my printer altogether so i can clean the blade ,pad and piezo UNDERHEAD every time i print.. ) for another day...Eric..will we cut out a bit out of the cover with a hacksaw ?
I know for a fact that Epson large format resin printers for shirt and sweater logo prints do have a sliding top case section so that it can be slid off every night to clean out residual resin debris...now why are our machines not that user friendly ?
For heavy printer users (pigment will probably never get a chance to clot ) its about getting at the dirty resin blade every day...and the other bits too.not a big deal....
For light users its also about cleaning the blade after each occasional days printing and shaking the cartridge every day in the meantime to keep the pigment from  going into lumps and blocking the even finer piezo nozzles that the 7900 has...ok? NOZZLE CHECKS ARE NOT ONLY UNNECESSARY BUT ALSO TROUBLEMAKERS.....
There is no logical reason why ink in a printer should behave different to ink in a cartridge if your seals are good, you clean the resin slop and you gently SHAKE your printer frequently.....is there ?you could put the printer in the fridge to get the 5 years free of clogs...only joking
Eric you mentioned TIME as the key....and it is......pigment needs time to clot which it gets if you dont shake the cartridge...resin needs time to harden which it gets if you dont clean the wiper blade !even regular users have no guarantee that their open to the air wiper blade will not harden with slop resin....no matter how much you print...
I am breaking the NOZZLE HEAD CLEANING CYCLE BY CLEANING MY BLADE AFTER EACH PRINT (haven't printed for 6 months )AND SHAKING MY PRINTER  WHEELS EACH DAY THAT I DONT PRINT.....I DO NOT SHAKE THE CARTRIDGE ITSELF JUST THE PRINTER...make a set of castor wheels if you don't  have a printer stand from  Epson....
So far i am just using the " printer shake" technique which has got me down to a   
Once every 6 day successful auto nozzle print...i know my wiper blade ,park seals and piezo underhead are resin dirty...(last print was 6months ago )i will be using small amounts of epson cleaning solution to keep everything soft clean and air tight and thats it...i want my printer to be as air tight as my cartridge...
I am looking for volunteers to try out improving their printers performance
By
# cleaning their printer after printing with Epson cleaning solution or whatever they think is better..
# reduce nozzle print checks as they increase the cleaning of the dirty (resin ) wiper blade...lets see if we improve ( or otherwise ) your printers reliability by using less nozzle checking....!!!and more wiper blade cleaning
# experiment with cartridges (gentle )shaking on their printer stand...please dont remove carts separately every day as you will likely smash up your cart sensor parts with disastrous consequences !

And if people want to do the opposite to the above GREAT.... lets record it and compare to the puritanical way....
Its a five day at a time test...we start doing nothing different for the first five days....just recored what our printers are like right now..ill give you the guidelines if you want to join..
Anyway,wont go any further unless some of us are interested
REMEMBER..
EPSON INK IS BEST WHEN IT MAKES YOUR BEAUTIFUL PRINT...
EPSON INK IS NOT SO SMART WHEN IT WANTS TO CLEAN YOUR PRINTER AS WELL !!!
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Eric Gulbransen

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #803 on: October 16, 2012, 10:33:45 am »

I heard back from Roy of QTR this morning.  He said we can access all nozzles on all channels with his software on our own but that he's not touching our X900 printhead clog problem with an eleven foot pole.  "No way" were his exact words.  So as far as creating, or getting someone else to create for us, a "Holiday Mode" - the search goes on. 

Ken Doo

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #804 on: October 16, 2012, 10:56:04 am »

I heard back from Roy of QTR this morning.  He said we can access all nozzles on all channels with his software on our own but that he's not touching our X900 printhead clog problem with an eleven foot pole.  "No way" were his exact words.  So as far as creating, or getting someone else to create for us, a "Holiday Mode" - the search goes on. 

Well, for those of us using PC, Harvey Head Cleaner is probably the easiest and closest you can get to a "holiday mode" to schedule automated nozzle check patterns.  No mac version yet, but might even be worthwhile to have an inexpensive pc laptop to run Harvey Head Cleaner when leaving your printer unattended for extended periods....

ken

Mark D Segal

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #805 on: October 16, 2012, 11:03:44 am »

Well, for those of us using PC, Harvey Head Cleaner is probably the easiest and closest you can get to a "holiday mode" to schedule automated nozzle check patterns.  No mac version yet, but might even be worthwhile to have an inexpensive pc laptop to run Harvey Head Cleaner when leaving your printer unattended for extended periods....

ken

The inexpensive PC laptop would need to be able to deal with the relevant version of the Epson driver, and then I wonder about the merits of leaving the printer on all the time one would be away and unable to attend to it.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Ken Doo

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #806 on: October 16, 2012, 11:26:46 am »

The inexpensive PC laptop would need to be able to deal with the relevant version of the Epson driver, and then I wonder about the merits of leaving the printer on all the time one would be away and unable to attend to it.

I don't know why, but for just a moment, I had visions of a Carol Burnett or Lucille Ball skit, running maintenance on an Epson with ink and paper spewing everywhere....   ;D

I haven't left my 9900 alone for great periods of time, but have left my K7 B&W 9800 unattended for long periods with a pc laptop running HHC with scheduled nozzle checks using cheap 10" roll lustre paper, and no issues...  The 9800 has since found a new home with Erik.  I wouldn't hesitate to use HHC on my 9900 and 9890 for extended periods or if out of the studio for more than a week.... Carol Burnett and I Love Lucy at the helm notwithstanding.

ken   :)

cybis

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #807 on: October 16, 2012, 12:35:38 pm »

I heard back from Roy of QTR this morning.  He said we can access all nozzles on all channels with his software on our own but that he's not touching our X900 printhead clog problem with an eleven foot pole. 

I can see how to fire all channels expect green and orange using QTR calibration mode. Anyone knows how to access all channels with QTR?
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Eric Gulbransen

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #808 on: October 16, 2012, 12:56:11 pm »

Here's a quote from Roy's email this morning.  Hope it helps you cybis, so far this is all Greek to me:

"QTR happens to have a mode where you can address each ink separately
so that's probably what you want.  The Ink Separation Page and Calibration Mode
at 100% will print 100% of the dots on paper.  You can try this easily in QTR.
There are ramps 0,5,10,15, ... 95,100 -- the 100 will use all the jets if you
make the squares big enough."



Ken, I love Lucy, classic..

cybis

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #809 on: October 16, 2012, 02:40:26 pm »

I don't see how it is possible to fire the green and orange channel with QTR in calibration mode.
When printing an image in calibration mode, QTR uses the 8 bit binary value of the RGB file's red channel to decide which ink channel to fire.

Ink                  RGB   Binary
black12701111111
cyan19110111111
magenta22311011111
yellow23911101111
light cyan24711110111
light magenta25111111011
light black25311111101
light light black25411111110

P.S. An RGB value of 0,0,0 (binary 0000000) totally fires all 8 channels at once and make an awful mess... don't ask me how I found out  :o
« Last Edit: October 16, 2012, 06:18:17 pm by cybis »
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Bob DeBellis

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #810 on: October 16, 2012, 05:35:03 pm »

Hi Eric,
I didn't make it to try to clean the head. I was nursing it along every day when a few days ago the 7900 indicated a fatal error on initialization which the field service guide states means replace the dead head. Why it should go from one clogged nozzle to dead head I can't figure. Could it be a counter trigger I wonder?
Anyway, I ordered a new head and it's one it's way.
The adventure continues. I really just want to make prints, not deal with faulty equipment.
Thanks for you help.
Bob DeBellis
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Bob DeBellis

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #811 on: October 16, 2012, 05:46:14 pm »

Hi Blue Moon,
You sound like an engineer or chemist. There is a lot of good information in your post. Some of your ideas for maintenance should have been provided by Epson support. Epson doesn't support this product not nearly as it should. They've left us high and dried out. I want to make photographic prints, not spend my time navigating the mine field of their poor printer design. Anyway I greatly appreciate your's and Eric's input. We need a manual describing how to survive life with the Epson 900 series printers.
Thanks,
Bob DeBellis
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cybis

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #812 on: October 16, 2012, 06:08:50 pm »

Ok, found a way to purge all nozzles for all ten inks with QTR. I posted the needed files and instructions here.

Couldn't figure out how to do it in calibration mode, this method uses a curve in QTR to fire each channel at 100% for different grey values. The curve maps specific grey values to 100% ink in specific channels in the following manner:

RGB valueInk
0                none
1-24black
25-49cyan
50-74magenta
75-99yellow
100-124light cyan
125-149light magenta
150-174light black
175-199light light black
200-224orange
225-255green
« Last Edit: October 16, 2012, 06:32:12 pm by cybis »
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Eric Gulbransen

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #813 on: October 16, 2012, 07:01:06 pm »

awesome cybis, thanks for sharing your hard work.  I plan to buy into this QTR situation tonight, for two reasons.  Ken is one, you are the other.  Thank you.

Bob, I am still waiting to hear back for answers on your error codes.  Look at the bright side of having such an involved relationship with a high-maintenance chick, once you get past all the struggling you will be very happy again.  Until you're not.  And then you are.

Ernst Dinkla

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #814 on: October 17, 2012, 04:47:07 am »

Ok, found a way to purge all nozzles for all ten inks with QTR. I posted the needed files and instructions here.

Good work. Now find a way to let an OS task scheduler do the rest, firing up QTR etc.  A roll of cheap paper on the printer. PC wake up on schedule is possible too.

Why a HP Z can keep its heads in condition with just the nozzles fired on schedule in the spittoon with a minimum of ink waste and an Epson not + more ink wasted remains a mystery. True it takes energy when kept on but you can not buy a lot of ink or paper for that loss.


--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
400+ inkjet paper white spectral plots, October 2012:
Extended: Ilford-Innova-Hahnemühle-Pictorico,
NEW added: Tetenal-Mitsubishi, NEW halfway: Kodak-Bonjet,
NEW to do: Permajet-FelixSchoeller-Sihl
Would like to get samples: InkPress-JonCone
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #815 on: October 17, 2012, 09:26:04 am »


Why a HP Z can keep its heads in condition with just the nozzles fired on schedule in the spittoon with a minimum of ink waste and an Epson not + more ink wasted remains a mystery.


Good question to put to Epson really. I wonder whether they could achieve this with a firmware update.
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Czornyj

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #816 on: October 17, 2012, 10:23:14 am »

Why a HP Z can keep its heads in condition with just the nozzles fired on schedule in the spittoon with a minimum of ink waste and an Epson not + more ink wasted remains a mystery. True it takes energy when kept on but you can not buy a lot of ink or paper for that loss.

It's a matter of different technology.
Piezoelectric printhead has long channel that provides ink to a nozzle, so there's a lot of place where air bubbles can gather, which leads to clogging - in thermal printhead the same channel is much, much shorter, so condensation of air bubbles is not such an issue.
Another problem is that piezoelectric membrane produces significally lower preasure while ejecting ink than heater in thermal nozzle.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2012, 10:25:32 am by Czornyj »
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Ken Doo

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #817 on: October 17, 2012, 10:25:29 am »

I'd love to see something like Harvey Head Cleaner or Eric's "Holiday Mode" incorporated as a firmware update.... I don't even mind leaving a cheap 10" roll of paper loaded...

Mark D Segal

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #818 on: October 17, 2012, 10:31:50 am »

It's a matter of different technology.
Piezoelectric printhead has long channel that provides ink to a nozzle, so there's a lot of place where air bubbles can gather, which leads to clogging - in thermal printhead the same channel is much, much shorter, so condensation of air bubbles is not such an issue.
Another problem is that piezoelectric membrane produces significally lower preasure while ejecting ink than heater in thermal nozzle.

While these differences of technology may well be correctly stated, I don't see why they would frustrate the development of a piece of firmware that turns the printer on at scheduled intervals, triggers a nozzle check or test page, then shuts itself down again. When you think of it, manufacturers of domestic ovens have enabled absentee householders to roast food on this basis for many decades now. Admittedly, the mechanics of an Epson 7900 are more complex than a kitchen stove, but so are the abilities of our firmware designers.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Czornyj

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Re: Epson 7900 from the inside - out
« Reply #819 on: October 17, 2012, 11:06:58 am »

While these differences of technology may well be correctly stated, I don't see why they would frustrate the development of a piece of firmware that turns the printer on at scheduled intervals, triggers a nozzle check or test page, then shuts itself down again. When you think of it, manufacturers of domestic ovens have enabled absentee householders to roast food on this basis for many decades now. Admittedly, the mechanics of an Epson 7900 are more complex than a kitchen stove, but so are the abilities of our firmware designers.

Like Ernst said, HP (and Canon) wastes a minimum ink amount for maintenance - I suppose that (due to the above mentioned differences) piezoelectric print head would just require much more ink for such procedure, and/or it wouldn't be as effective as in case of thermal print heads.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2012, 11:12:18 am by Czornyj »
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