Epson P9000 prints lines despite clean test pattern

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

I can’t comment directly on Epson printers but my experience with Canon is that the symptoms you are describing normally indicate that the printer head needs replacing. I too have found that a nozzle test print will print OK but then printing any areas of solid colour have ‘streaks’ or missing ‘lines’ of ink. No matter how much you clean the heads the symptoms are always the same.  I think this is because the head behaves differently when only printing each nozzle in turn in comparison to printing all the nozzles simultaneously.

The only remedy I found is to bite the bullet and replace the head.

[dgberg]

If your nozzle check was good and then on the latter checks you had 3 colors with missing lines your prints may just  be showing signs of banding. Now what is causing it is unknown. (To me.)

[datro]

I have done 3 nozzle checks, doing a clean at each one until I arrived at the 3rd wedge in the image below.

Well, all three nozzle check prints have missing/deflected nozzles in various channels:
First row: C, VM, LK
Second row:  LC (bottom row missing)
Third row:  C (deflected nozzle)

I can guarantee that any of the above could produce the kind of banding you are seeing. It would also appear that the missing nozzles and deflections are moving around from one cleaning/nozzle test to another.  I think it is pretty likely that either a) you have ink starvation, most likely a result of issues with one or more dampers, or b) the head is failing.  Unless you have 100% clean nozzles during printing an image, you are likely to have banding of some sort.

Note that it is normal for some nozzles to drop out after rigorous head cleaning.  With issues like this,  it's usually best to let the printer rest for a bit after doing cleaning before doing a nozzle check.  When you DO get a 100% clean nozzle check, do a print, then do another nozzle check to see if there have been any dropouts that might have occurred during printing.  If you see dropouts AFTER printing, ink starvation is a possible issue.

So, here's what I would do at this point:

1) Do a head, flushing box, cleaning station maintenance.  Follow these instructions here.  While this step may not solve your issue, it's important to do it just to be sure there are no major other problems with debris and gunk on the head, flushing box and cleaning station, especially if you've never done this before.

2) Replace the wiper on your cleaning assembly (if you've not done this already) - do this only after doing the above.

If you continue to have problems:
3) Replace your Ink Selector (dampers).  I'm guessing your printer is maybe 6 years old.  Replacing the Ink Selector would be even more appropriate if you've never replaced it, or your printer has gone through long periods of non-use.

Good luck.

[larkis]

In serviceman mode, doing a ink selector self check returns an "ok" (whatever that's worth). I will give some of the other stuff you mentioned a shot before calling epson service. I have printed a few more images that maybe narrow down the problem a little bit.