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Author Topic: Clogged 3880 nozzle and profile making?  (Read 1342 times)

Some Guy

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Clogged 3880 nozzle and profile making?
« on: January 31, 2015, 11:49:44 am »

This AM one of the 3880's shows one small bar section in one of the 14 diagonal dark cyan pigment ink lines as a blank space (One nozzle?).

Did a purge pattern with Qimage on cyan, and another nozzle check from the printer's menu, and the same spot is still missing.  I'll wait a few hours before trying again as it sometimes self-heals with a long time passage.

However, would you wait for all nozzles to be perfect (if it can be done) before making a custom ICC profile on a new paper, or would it matter that much?  I need to do a Moab sample pack of maybe a dozen papers along with some Akagami papers and don't know if I should wait for the nozzles to be all printing, or if one or two won't matter for ICC profiling.  If they do begin firing all mid-way through a bunch of different paper samples if it would matter in the end?

Tia.

SG
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brinked

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Re: Clogged 3880 nozzle and profile making?
« Reply #1 on: January 31, 2015, 01:23:53 pm »

I would try to clear that up before doing a profile.  Have you tried using a damp windex towel and parking the head on it for a few hours, then running several cleanings?
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hugowolf

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Re: Clogged 3880 nozzle and profile making?
« Reply #2 on: January 31, 2015, 01:26:06 pm »

Have you tried any cleanings?

Brian A
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Some Guy

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Re: Clogged 3880 nozzle and profile making?
« Reply #3 on: January 31, 2015, 01:47:17 pm »

I would try to clear that up before doing a profile.  Have you tried using a damp windex towel and parking the head on it for a few hours, then running several cleanings?
That's what I'm thinking.  If that one nozzle has any influence in the test pattern it could be a mess should it normalize and print.

It printed fine 4 days ago and no missing line.  Just today it got finicky.  I'll give it a few hours and try again.

No power cleanings yet, just the purge pattern out of Qimage and a couple of nozzle checks showing the same stuck nozzle spot.  I might try the towel with some head cleaner I have too if the third doesn't work out.  That or saturate the ink capping station's two white pads as that seems to do the trick too at times and letting it sit overnight on it.

SG
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howardm

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Re: Clogged 3880 nozzle and profile making?
« Reply #4 on: January 31, 2015, 02:20:20 pm »

when you say 'nozzle check' do you mean the herringbone quick test (manual) or the 'auto' checkerboard test?  You're really better off running the checkerboard automatic test that is built into the printer.

hugowolf

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Re: Clogged 3880 nozzle and profile making?
« Reply #5 on: January 31, 2015, 03:43:56 pm »

No power cleanings yet, just the purge pattern out of Qimage and a couple of nozzle checks showing the same stuck nozzle spot. 

Not a power cleaning, just a normal cleaning cycle. Why not run a normal cleaning cycle or the automatic nozzle check (which will run a cleaning cycle if it detects blocked nozzles)?

I have never had to use a power cleaning on the 3880, a normal cleaning should work fine.

Brian A
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Some Guy

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Re: Clogged 3880 nozzle and profile making?
« Reply #6 on: January 31, 2015, 08:13:08 pm »

Ran a few more Qimage purges with the cyan and blue checked.  Still the same stuck cyan nozzle shows.

Ran an automatic check and took about 30 minutes.  Eventually it paper got kicked out and the one blue checkboard showed a few white blocks and at the last clena and heck it finally gave a decent blue checkerboard, plus the cyan stuck one is now printing.

However, a few of black checkerboards are now showing white where some shade of black should be in the autocheck/cleaning.  A manual nozzle check shows the second gray now clogged.  Running another auto cleaning cycle and it seems it is going to run another 30 minutes...

Hard to believe one little herringbone mark in the staggered line got picked up, and it resorted to these long cleaning and testing cycles.  And now another color is not printing.

Second auto clean ejected and now some of the darkest black checkerboards are missing along with the 2nd black (mid gray).  This looks like more are blank than the first.  Blue looks good though.

Third autoclean attempt...

Few missing blacks initially, but it finally printed the last one cleanly and no missing blacks.  Manual nozzle check looks good too and no blanks.  Used up about 30% of the Maintenance Tank too and who knows how much ink.

Odd it sometimes fails in the autocheck with failure to print other colors randomly.

Damn Epson clogging, but it is working again ... for now.  Think I'll wait and do another nozzle check before committing to profile making since the printer evidently picked up one missing herringbone mark.

SG
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