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Author Topic: How come blocked nozzles clear themselves sometimes?  (Read 343 times)

narikin

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How come blocked nozzles clear themselves sometimes?
« on: September 29, 2020, 07:56:04 pm »

Had a stubborn blocked LLC nozzle that had one blocked area which would not clear.
Did multiple cleans, normal and heavy, and then finally a service level 'power' clean.

These helped a bit, but none of them got rid of it fully. It was stubbornly there.

So I printed a large image with little of the affected LLC nozzle and voila - it had 95% cleared itself at the end of that
(the tiniest bit remains, but its really insignificant)

So what's going on here - how can a super-duper power cleaning cycle not budge it, but printing a print does?!

(Epson P20000)
« Last Edit: September 29, 2020, 08:02:35 pm by narikin »
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narikin

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Re: How come blocked nozzles clear themselves sometimes?
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2020, 08:14:48 pm »

Oh, and if anyone knows a sure way to clear that last little bit, let me know!

The head is not that old (new mid 2019) but it had a decent Covid shutdown, of course.

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langier

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Re: How come blocked nozzles clear themselves sometimes?
« Reply #2 on: September 30, 2020, 10:57:26 am »

Just had this conversation with my repair guru after replacing the head on my second-hand 9900 that I've had and used for ten years.

I've had that problem once and a while and the only easy way to deal with it is to run some jobs. In my experience, if only a nozzle or two in a head or two are not showing as clean, it's not a big deal. I had that issue with one color after I started using the printer and could never get it totally clean. After the professional cleaning and running several prints through the works, the channel came back 100%.

It's debris (lint, pet hair, etc) that the head catches and accumulates and no matter how many cleaning cycles, it remains. His advise for when I print canvas or other linty/dusty papers is to vacuum around the paper intake afterwards so that it doesn't get further down toward the head. He also showed me how to get to the head with minimal disassembly to gently clean the crud around the head occasionally advised that once cleaned, dry it. Same with the other subsystems that do the cleaning. YRMV and you are on your own if you do this!

In my ten years, I've had him clean my printer one time several years ago and it worked great until this year when all indications pointed to the head finally giving up the ghost. It's now replaced and running just like new!
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narikin

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Re: How come blocked nozzles clear themselves sometimes?
« Reply #3 on: September 30, 2020, 12:26:30 pm »

Thanks. Yes it does sometimes work.

There is the old Windex soaked paper towel trick, but... I think I read that's not so good with the newer heads - anyone know if that's right?

Yeah, when you are doing smooth tones of a light blue sky a small nozzle drop out will still show. All depends how closely you want to look!

Things like this make me miss the Canon head model, where it just maps out a dead nozzle.

True about Canvas, I don't ever use that, but have been using quality all rag MK paper a lot recently, and that can cause cotton lint when cut on the machine.
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