Scott at American Inkjet Systems, the maker of Symphonic Cleaning Fluid, spent an hour on the phone with me today. I called to report my frustration that 5 days into the regimen with his cleaning fluid, I completely lost LK/PK from my Epson 4900 machine. I stressed that when I began the Symphonic Fluid applications, the nozzle checks were intact; that my purpose was simply to maintain what I had working at the moment on that printer.
In fairness I'll say that he seemed genuinely disturbed by my experience; that he did not blame me, my method, or even insist that something else on the machine must have failed unrelated to the use of his product. He did insist that there are times that the head absorbs enough of his cleaning fluid that as many as two or three cleaning cycles may be needed to purge his fluid from the head - not that the head is clogged - but that the cleaner has displaced the ink. To me this implies retrograde flow of the ink into those conduits proximal to the head, and I have no idea if this is physically possible. He insists that under no circumstances will Power Cleanings be needed to purge any absorbed Symphonic fluid from the head so he concedes that my experience is aberrant and one he has never before heard of. Scott insists many thousands of end-users are out there, and are relying on Symphonic Fluid to maintain their Epson machines.
Clearly I do not know, nor will I ever know, if the Symphonic Fluid use had bearing on loss of the LK/PK shared pair on this 4900. Since the machine is going back to Epson, I doubt any final diagnosis will ever be shared with me. I continue to note that I am one of the few on the LuLa forum to bring up Symphonic Fluid and that, alone, probably points to a basis for acting conservatively in using the product.
John Caldwell