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Author Topic: EpsP8000 cleaning heads after every couple of prints - Hahnemuhle German Etching  (Read 385 times)

Richard.Wills

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Doing a quick, intensive print job for a gallery on their very much new P8000.

We've run through about four 24" rolls of German Etching, so have run out down the starter carts, on most channels, but switched them before empty. Printer is now doing nozzle checks and head cleans after pretty much every other print. No visible head strikes, but manual nozzle check prints after every half dozen prints are showing slight defects, not visible in the outputs. Checks absolutely clean after auto head clean.

Prints are not heavy ink usage, A1 size.

I've been Canon for the last decade, with the exception of a Piezography 7880, and a surelab d800.  Before that, a decade of mid to large Epson aqueous.
Temperature is around 75F, RH around 40-50%
Next printing session starts again tomorrow morning (about eleven hours from now...).

Normal behaviour?
Anything I should be doing?
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deanwork

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This is what happens when ink carts are low. Something about the pressure needed. With my refillable 350 ml carts they need to be half full to avoid this behavior. With Epson carts they don’t have to be half full but when they get low air gets in there or whatnot and it’s very common to see this  microbanding or totally blank nozzles.

If the carts were facing down like Hp and Canon you don’t have this problem. Epson loves it that way because a huge amount of ink is wasted by leaving in the carts .  Imagine globally how much is wasted annually. We’ve been complaining about this waste for at least 15 years. Soooo much waste with Epson large formats.

I knew someone in Chicago who used to scavage in dumpsters behind digital labs and recycle all that ink and put it in refillable carts.  He could go for weeks with free ink that way.




Doing a quick, intensive print job for a gallery on their very much new P8000.

We've run through about four 24" rolls of German Etching, so have run out down the starter carts, on most channels, but switched them before empty. Printer is now doing nozzle checks and head cleans after pretty much every other print. No visible head strikes, but manual nozzle check prints after every half dozen prints are showing slight defects, not visible in the outputs. Checks absolutely clean after auto head clean.

Prints are not heavy ink usage, A1 size.

I've been Canon for the last decade, with the exception of a Piezography 7880, and a surelab d800.  Before that, a decade of mid to large Epson aqueous.
Temperature is around 75F, RH around 40-50%
Next printing session starts again tomorrow morning (about eleven hours from now...).

Normal behaviour?
Anything I should be doing?
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Richard.Wills

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Thanks John.
We were switching carts as soon as low showed on a channel (well, as soon as current print finished). Last night, all carts (except PK) were over 50% full, on second sets of carts, still very regular delays for check and clean.
Feels bad to pull carts when there's gold in them, but we're running against a pretty tight production deadline.
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dgberg

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For me refilling is sort of a hobby, others would call it work. Get a set of 700ml refillable carts. I purchased my set of P8000 carts from Ink Owl. They will send the syringes and required tips for pulling ink from your carts. You will probably get 50ml from each cart, some possibly more. P800 and P8000 inks are the same. Put the word out that you are looking for empty carts. (Not really empty) and you may have more ink than you know what to do with. Lots of shops upgrading from P8000 to newer models or they have a bad head and don't want to repair. When I started soliciting for 9900 K3 inks I paid .10 a ml. I reduced that very quickly to .05 a ml. and received quite a few for free. At one point I had 10,000 ml of K3 inks. I never purchased any new inks for approximately 7 years. Takes a little work but well worth the effort.
Note the chips are one use only. When you use your 700 ml's worth of ink you order another $20 chip. Snap in on, fill the cart and go for another 6 months.

NeilPrintArt

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Are you able to do a nozzle check before the 'auto clean' kicks in?
Are the nozzles actually blocked?
Or is the maybe just dust/debris on the 'auto ink sensor' (forget the real name, but the mesh that reads whether the nozzles are firing)
Also, make sure all 'auto clean' options are turned off in the menu, including in the Preferences menu   
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Neil Williamson
Print Art Cape Town
www.printartct.co.za

Richard.Wills

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Thanks Neil,

We were running through a lot of rolls, and now I think about it, the cutter or each print was running at the default 100mph, so probably kicked up more dust.

No visible print defects, but subtle outages in some nozzle checks. I'll check the auto clean setting on the next round of printing.

This was one of those jobs where time was the biggest cost, and wasted ink, a long way behind.
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