I was having a slight clogging in VM but, too slight not to be noticeable.
After exhausting the "usual", I had no other choice than to turn, once again, to my faithful "Epson Adjustment" program.
On a nozzle check, only the darn VM was showing a problem, would you believe?
So, once I got into the Epson program, running on an XP PC, instead of selecting "Ink Eject" for ALL the lines, I selected only the "Home" lines (the left side of the printer) which includes C/VM, Pk, Lk.... Wow! I was pleased I was saving all the ink from the "right" side of the printer.
This lasted about 10 minutes in all.
Epson documentation states that an "Ink Eject" draws 79ml from each cartridge -- broke my heart but I could not get that darn clogging on VM otherwise, wasted way too many normal and power cleanings, so I had to bite the bullet. Lucky for me, the printer still accepted my "refillable cartridges" which I filled with a piezo cleaning solution from a local ink store (
www.lencrier.ca).
Then, having replaced the refillable cartridge for the normal Epson cartridges, I was prepared to issue the "Ink Charge" command, "115 ml" worth of ink down the drain -- thank you Mr Epson...
OK. At this point, having done this procedure a few times in the past (my printer is 5 years old), running a nozzle check always returned perfection, but not this time
Would you believe, I was having ink clogs in the Pk, Llk, Lc and "one" offending clog in VM (although not as severe as before starting the whole thing)?
What was I to do? Call the Ghostbusters?
I tried my luck with a few power cleanings and I was done!, except for that pesky Vm clog, just a tiny little line which I deemed I was able to get away with.
With the printer in this almost pristine state, I was able to finish printing the job I was working on without any noticeable banding.
Having said that, I will need to draw many lessons from this adventure....
One, the stupid Windex trick does not work and only serves to mess the printer -- my experience, your mileage may vary. (Had to try my luck...)
Two, I regret not having done an "Ink Charge" with my refillable cartridges in! With hindsight, that would have probably help but I never done this in the past?
Moral of the story?
Believe it or not, I had been keeping the printer "alive" for months before this last VM clog reared its ugly head. As a matter of fact, the week before, I ran 15 17x23 prints, all perfect. When I started this particular job, a new set of 25 17x23 prints, the printer progressively started to "clog"... It got a little more than halfway through right but then started acting...
As I was "contemplating" my options, two things went through my mind.
First, I found out newer refillable cartridges have a "Permanent" Auto-Reset Chip, compared to the generation of chip on my refillable cartridges which need to be "reset" from times to times using a little $15.99 gizmo.
At one point, before getting into the Epson Adjustment program ONCE MORE, I toyed with the idea of, perhaps, putting in JUST the VM refillable cartridge (filled with cleaning solution), figuring that, maybe, after printing a few 100% magenta solids from Photoshop, the cleaning fluid would have arrived at the head? But nothing was further from the truth, ha! ha! ha!.
In the course of trying this little experiment, though, I "discovered" that my printer did NOT recognized the refillable cartridge? I tried resetting the ink chip to no avail? I ended up taking a trip to the store where I originally purchased the cartridges to buy a new "ink chip". Once that was done, the printer IMMEDIATELY recognized my VM refillable cartridge.
I have since located a Chinese eBay seller that sells a complete set of chips for these cartridges, for $24.99. I think that's a no brainer.
(At one point, while sweating on swapping the real Epson VM cartridge in an out for my VM refillable cartridge, the printer stopped recognizing the original Epson cartridge -- real trouble !!!!!!). It finally recognized its own cartridge but, boy!, did I ever sweat because the consequences of this would have been dire, to say the least, which brings me to my second point...
If the printer no longer recognized the cartridges, for some reasons, I had to consider replacing the printer with, possibly -- I'm such a masochist --, a new P5000 printer. But knowing that Epson only sells these, out of the box, with mere 80ml cartridges, half of which go to prime the lines, not only would I have to pay the price of the printer itself, $2495 cdn, but a complete set of new cartridges as well, at, what, $100+ a pop, cdn? Sheesh!
Moral of the story? I'll continue maintaining this printer... I may decide to buy a new set of refillable cartridges at one point, the ones with the new "ink chip"... We'll see, but I don't don't do that much printing with it, I know...