Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: uintaangler on May 13, 2015, 03:47:52 pm
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I am certain this has been covered before, so I will apologize in advance.
I purchased a New Epson 4900 about 6 months ago and have tried everything I learned on this Board to prevent the dreaded head clog
I print something approx every third day
I run a humidifier in the room where the 4900 resides
I have the printer setup to do periodic checks and cleanings when I turn it on to print
AND,
this morning I was printing a landscape scene with a good bit of sky and clouds and the sky kept coming out a very weird and unappealing color
I replaced the only Ink cartridge that was semi-low ( VM ) and still the problem persisted
I ran my first ever Nozzle check and based on the results first did a C/VM cleaning, then cleaned all nozzles, then a powerful cleaning on C/VM
And I am still getting white spaces on the C Nozzle on the Print Check pattern
What should I try next?
Thanks,
Bob
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You may have entrained air from the nozzle orifices, and may not have a clog at all at this point. Drop outs may be a property of air, rather than of clogs, in other words. It is commonly suggested that you make prints that exercise your ink channels, and rest the printer, between cleanings rather than perform serial cleanings. Uninterrupted serial cleanings produce, in my experience and opinion, air entrainment. Room humidity probably plays little role in the air entrainment problem.
It the printer were mine, I would perform no further cleanings and would make a print that strongly exercises the Cyan channel. As has recently been discussed here, the values to limit your ink usage to Cyan alone are not readily obvious, but if you build a PS file using hex value 00ffff, as has been presented here: http://www.marruttusa.com/printer-maintenance/inkjet-printer-purge-files.php#col , and print that without color management you'll be pretty close to a pure C usage. If this has no impact, let the printer sit overnight after a formal shutdown, and start over with printing (not with cleaning) tomorrow.
That you've used your 4900 for 6 months, without printing a nozzle check until today, is impressive. You are having better results than I have had, for sure.
Others will be able to chime in and address gaps in my advice I'm sure. Mark Segal and Wayne Knox, among others, are quite knowledgable in this area.
John Caldwell
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Hi John,
I have responded almost exactly the same to him in a PM. The one thing about the MarruttUSA purge files - however - he needs to create a page in Photoshop that holds the TWO colours which the manual head cleaning routine will exercise - in his case I think the pair is C and VM, because the VM gets cleaned along with the C, so is subject to the same risk you mention.
Mark
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Interesting, I had not considered that. Thanks, Mark.
John-
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Thanks Gents.
Back to printing ;D