K7 piezo inks and nozzle check?

[Some Guy]

About to get a dedicated 3880 and some K7 ink.

Wondering if one can see a nozzle check pattern with the fainter black inks, and if it is best to do one occasionally with it if one doesn't use the B&W printer as much. Wondering as sometimes faint yellow is almost impossible to see the pattern well.

Any clogging issues with K7 inks?

Tia.

SG

[TylerB]

I've had less clogging issues with K7 inks than the OEM inks, in a variety of printers. Nozzle checks show up fine, and need to be done often. Some of us do them before every final print. You'll see drop outs easier in a partitioned multi K print than a more dithered color ink print, ABW or otherwise.
Tyler

[LynnNoah]

I've been using a 3880 with K7 inks for about two years with no clogs.  Doing nozzle checks on plain paper, I find I can't see the shade 6 and 7 positions, as well as of course the GO position.  (Same with my K7 1900).  To be sure they are working well, I periodically print, on glossy fine art paper, a test image which has a 14-step-wedge, a continuous tone bar, and two photos which have the full range of shades.  I also do a periodic cleaning just to keep things moving, since the printers are not in steady use.

Lynn

[Some Guy]

I've been using a 3880 with K7 inks for about two years with no clogs.  Doing nozzle checks on plain paper, I find I can't see the shade 6 and 7 positions, as well as of course the GO position.  (Same with my K7 1900).  To be sure they are working well, I periodically print, on glossy fine art paper, a test image which has a 14-step-wedge, a continuous tone bar, and two photos which have the full range of shades.  I also do a periodic cleaning just to keep things moving, since the printers are not in steady use.

Lynn

Thanks Lynn.

Was reading Cone's info on initial (new) 3880 setup and he recommends using Epson color carts for initial setup and inspection.  Not seeing shades 6 or 7 of K7 might be an issue since the head alignment was slightly off from Auto calibration too but fixed in Manual from the printer's menu.  Least it appears to be working okay so far on color.

Now to do the big flush of color whenever the K7 ink shows.  Surprised the initial charge used 40% of the maintenance cart too and dropped the levels to 80%.  Lots of ink used in charging up for the first time.  Wish I had some home-brew cleaner to use in the K7 carts to flush the lines prior to filling them, but alas nothing here and I get ammonia is bad for the Epson head, to say nothing about getting it out of the cleaning carts too.  So K7 for the flush (2 power cleans) I guess.

SG

[LynnNoah]

I made quite a number of test prints with the color carts when I got the 3880.  After installing the K7 carts, I can't remember how many prints I made to clear the color casts (yellow persisted the longest) but they cleared fairly quickly and by the second day the prints were pure monochrome.  I've read too many scary printer stories on these forums to try any alternative flush cleaner except piezoflush, but the K7 inks did the job well.  The maintenance cart which came with the printer got used up fast during that changeover period, but with normal K7 printing the second one has lasted a long time.

Lynn

[Some Guy]

I made quite a number of test prints with the color carts when I got the 3880.  After installing the K7 carts, I can't remember how many prints I made to clear the color casts (yellow persisted the longest) but they cleared fairly quickly and by the second day the prints were pure monochrome.  I've read too many scary printer stories on these forums to try any alternative flush cleaner except piezoflush, but the K7 inks did the job well.  The maintenance cart which came with the printer got used up fast during that changeover period, but with normal K7 printing the second one has lasted a long time.

Lynn

My findings too.  That yellow is difficult to get rid of.  Took four power cleanings, almost filled the maintenance tank up, and still has a little yellow in the whites.  No telling how much of the $450 K7 selenium ink is gone.  Afraid to look.

Did notice immediately the first white step off the 21 step wedge was a little dark.  The first black step from dMax (blackest step) seemed a little too light.  I ran a linearization check on a spreadsheet and it told me the linearization was way off from the QTR Hahnemühle Photo Rag I was using with the K7 Selenium for the 3880.

I did manage to alter the OEM *.quad file for that paper to address the lienarization better than what I first saw, short of requesting one being made.  Took the one supplied and applied some multipliers (0.9 or 1.1) to the ink set numbers for that respective ink used in the file opened in Notepad++ to later the curve.  Took 14 tries too.

My linearization is shown in the attached chart with the pink (perfect) line and the black peeking out and showing mine (I tossed out the OEM already as it was pretty bad.).  The curves for the various inks (K7 is a black shade of some shade for each color, fwiw) shown in QTR for the Hahnemühle Photo Rag and mine are also shown.  Quite a bit of difference to make it straight.  I had to apply less yellow ink to keep the density down in the whites, and a lot more cyan to get the blacks up in the near-to-black densities.  Slight change in the light magenta too.

I may revisit the linearization part in a month while I burn off some more of the yellow ink that might be still in the system.

Got some printing to do now... 

SG