All,
Thanks for your help and suggestions. This was the exactly the kind of information I needed! So, I am done trying to get it to work (unless I find the K7 print head) and per my wife's strong suggestion I will be sending it off to the trash heap... hmmm... perhaps a metal recycler would take it.
Also... I did build a humidity tent (2x2 construction with heavy translucent drop cloth plastic covering) for my new Canon ipf8300. I live in Boulder Colorado so clogs can come fast and furious. Whenever I read a post from someone talking about owning an Epson and never having a clog, I picture them living in the middle of a rainforest.
Thanks!
Doug
That may be overkill for your Canon. While it will get clogs, they won't manifest themselves in any significant way. Eventually the head will fail because of clogs, but even in dry climates that may take some time ... years. Of course it could also happen 2 weeks after the warranty expires and humidity is definitely good for them. The heads in a Canon are a consumable and user replaceable. If you leave the Canon running most of the time (unless you are away or not printing for several days) it maintain's it's nozzles. Too much humidity can be as bad for the printer as not enough ... I've never seen mold around a printer but I have heard of a few people that enclosed them getting mold inside the printer.
I live in Salt Lake, pretty dry, and I bought a self filling humidifier. The printer is in a room about 20x20, but that room has no door but an open hallway to the rest of the house so humidity can't stay trapped. Despite that, to keep the room at 45% humidity only requires a few minutes every hour at the lowest fan setting. One advantage is this is also good for your paper.
I bought it from
here. (the XX large one). I talked to the owner first and he said the built in humidifier control was adequate, I didn't need the "habitat monitoring system" added to it. Basically they buy humidifiers, remove the water bottles and add the self filling float mechanism. This is probably something you could do yourself pretty easily by adding a swamp cooler float assembly ... the humidifier itself can be bought from
Amazon for only $123 ... about $200 less than buying it from the place I did. I replace the pads every 4 months or so, and i connected the supply tube to a RO unit I had installed. Using RO water and treating the water about once a week with
anti- microbial as well as putting a new one of
these in every couple of months.
My 9900 rarely exhibits missing nozzles anymore, maybe if I haven't used it for a couple of weeks I might have to clean 1 or 2 color pairs. My 4900 was giving me trouble, but Epson replaced the cap station and it's been great since then as well.