Has anyone's 9900 gotten better with age?

[mikev1]

Has anyone's 9900 gotten better with age?  Weird question I know.  I've been having way less problems with the 9900 as time has gone on.  I still have to do a fair number of cleaning cycles but those are minor to deal with.  I can't remember the last time a color channel dropped out during a print whereas that used to happed all the time before.  I used to dread 40 x 60 canvas prints as it was not unusual to have a channel drop out 3/4's of the way through.  I remember doing some prints for a charity event and burning through a whole roll to just to get one 40 x 60 print.  I ended up donating a whole lot more than I bargained for!

I still find the Canon 8300 to be way less trouble (other than the stupid loading system) but the 9900 is starting to grow on me.

[darlingm]

I (thankfully) have not had an issue with clogs or cleaning.  Are you printing more now than when you were having more problems?

[Wayne Fox]

oddly enough getting better with age seems sort of common with these machines ... I had a 7900 that exhibited that, and my 9900 rarely shows missing nozzles any longer, when new I had a few show up once a week or so.  I've had others who have purchased them report similar experiences, although there are certainly many that never mention any issues with missing nozzles.

These printers do like to be used ... the more they run the better they seem to perform.

[Brian Gilkes]

I'm currently on my third head for my 9900. The new heads all performed very poorly when new, with 6-8 bi-channel cleans per day on average.. The situation does  seem to improve with age but very seldom do I have a day without a clean. The first 2 heads ended up with unclearable clogs. The old 9800 was much more reliable, often going for weeks without a clog.

[natas]

My first 7900 had a print head that was replaced by Epson under warranty. Once that print head was replaced I rarely have clogs. I bet I have to run a clean cycle maybe once a month.

One thing I have learned over the past 6 years of using Epson printers is to keep them running. If I don't have any print jobs to do I will run a few small prints once a week. If I don't do that I notice more clogging.